Espacio y homoerotismo: perspectivas teóricas

2.13.1 Theoretical perspectives

Following the literature review and based on the historical background of the study area (see Chapter 1), it was posited that community-led management of green common spaces, particularly with an emphasis on food production, could provide benefits to urban residents by way of ecosystem services as a form of social-ecological innovation which fulfils the criteria in Section 2.12. Furthermore, such examples of local ecological innovation, co- emerging around individuals or groups of concerted socio-environmental actors across the urban landscape, could represent a significant cross-scale ingredient of adaptive

management and social-ecological resilience (Sections 2.10 to 2.12). Such innovation, emerging from urban actor groups, has the potential to comprehensively address those tenets of environmental stewardship, explored earlier in this chapter (Section 2.1). The local production or enhancement of ecosystem services by urban social-ecological networks of community-led nature-based initiatives could represent a significant contribution to urban natural resource management (Sections 2.5 and 2.6). Such initiatives, as a form of organised social-ecological innovation (OSEI), address concurrently those principles and aims drawn from the ecosystems, resilience and sustainability management frameworks. As detailed earlier in this chapter, much has been asserted in the literature regarding the importance of the healthy production of ecosystem services for the future of urban areas (Sections 2.3 and 2.4). To this end, the need for a more polycentric form of resource governance has been identified (Section 2.6). The hallmark of such governance should be an emphasis on building adaptive capacity and response diversity in order to enable urban social-ecological systems to withstand internal and external fluctuations and ensure the continued production of vital ecosystem services into the future (Sections 2.1 and 2.6). Informal, civic approaches to management of urban green spaces has been increasingly posited as one of the social- ecological elements in the urban landscape which may contribute to such forms of adaptive governance (Sections 2.10 and 2.11). The majority of the research underpinning such assertions however, has adopted a conceptual, theoretical stance in its appreciation of the role of such approaches without offering a detailed, empirically based quantitative

evaluation of the contribution of such elements to adaptive capacity and actual production of ecosystem services. A clearer understanding of the dynamics which influence the

51 emergence of such innovation in the landscape as well as the implications for short-term productivity and long-term resilience of ecosystem services is therefore timely, and is the main purpose of this thesis.

Upon completion of the literature review and based on existing knowledge of the study area, three key theoretical perspectives were clarified, as follows:

I. Organised social-ecological innovation could contribute vital urban-relevant ecosystem services to local areas.

II. Such forms of innovation are implicit in the social-ecological resilience of the urban landscape.

III. Food production may be a principal ingredient of OSEI, significantly mediating its emergence and subsequent productivity.

In order to explore the validity and salience of the theoretical perspectives drawn out from previous sections in this chapter, a series of aims and objectives were drawn up which provided the basis for focussed research into these aspects of OSEI:

2.13.2 Research aims

1. To define the role of social-ecological innovation in relation to the interconnected management goals of ecosystem services, sustainability and social-ecological resilience as represented in Figures 2.6 and 2.7.

2. Evaluate the contribution of OSEI to adaptive governance in the urban social- ecological landscape.

2.13.3 Objectives

i) Map the occurrence, distribution and social-ecological context of OSEI, at the landscape-scale, in the areas of Salford, Manchester, and Trafford. Specifically, evaluate socio-economic and ecological characteristics of OSEI localities as drivers of innovation which identify OSEI as a potentially adaptive response.

ii) Identify common practices and evaluate the prominence of UA in social-ecological innovation towards a working typology of OSEI.

iii) Example the impact of OSEIs in terms of provision of ecosystem services to the locality through an exploration of specific cases.

52 iv) Investigate variability in OSEI design and management in order to highlight the

implications thereof for ecosystem service provision and response diversity in the landscape. v) Evaluate the economic value added to ecosystem services by OSEI-related ecosystem services.

vi) Measure trade-offs and synergies between ecosystem services and OSEI characteristics which contribute to ecosystem services.

The exploration of research objectives i) and ii) will involve an examination of OSEI at the landscape-scale to test whether the occurrence of OSEI is influenced by social and ecological conditions. As such, these conditions define the context of OSEIs and it is with specific reference to these local environmental conditions that the term context is largely used in this thesis. Likewise, terms such as adaptive, adaptability and niche describe OSEI

distribution as revealed by a landscape-scale investigation of the distribution of the

phenomenon according to a snapshot assessment of social-ecological conditions (although some historic data related to change in social deprivation over time is considered in the analysis in Section 4.2.4). Similarly, objectives iv) and vi) are completed through an in depth case study which takes a snapshot view of OSEI design and management and draws on quantitative data in the drawing of statistical conclusions. Objective v) is met through a combination of data from both landscape-scale and local-scale studies and uses proxy values in a valuation if OSEI in the study area (Section 6.1.1). A view of changes in OSEI

management, design or distribution over time did not form part of the research aims of this thesis, which would require a much longer time-based study and the inclusion of a greater range of qualitative as well as quantitative methods. As such the analysis presented herein presents a point in time perspective of the phenomenon of social-ecological innovation.

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Chapter Three: Research Methodology