Harmonizing water infrastructure and spatial planning: An ecosystem services approach

Urban water infrastructures (UWI) and the ecosystem services (ES) with which they interface are crucial to the well-being of city dwellers. UWIs physically link areas of ES production and benefit, thus allowing the flow of ESs to beneficiaries. Scarce resources for the provision of UWIs and the poor state of ESs constitute a challenge especially for rapidly growing cities in the developing world, which are often characterized by the coexistence of a "formal" sector vis-à-vis an "informal" one. Formal UWIs include water supply, drainage and sanitation systems, which are generally built and managed by municipalities, and serve the richer neighborhoods. Informal UWIs comprise on-site solutions which the poor in underserved areas use to meet their basic needs. This research focuses on formal UWIs , and on their harmonisation in spatial planning decisions by adopting an ES approach. Formal UWI connect spatial scales which range from the watershed to the city, and finally the household level. Their spatial and functional configuration, which is typically laid out in spatial plans, determine how UWIs intercept a number of ESs, and play a key role in transforming such services into benefits and values that sustain the well-being of city dwellers. Two crucial aspects seem relevant to address in spatial planning: (a) the sharing of costs and benefits in maintaining ESs, considering the spatial mismatch of ES production and benefit area, and (b) the equity in the access to benefits from ES by city inhabitants, taking into account the coverage by UWIs. This second aspect implicitly includes the issue of informal UWIs and their relationship to the formal ones. This research focuses on spatial relationships between ESs and human well-being as they are mediated by UWIs, under the assumption that they can be considered a significant proxy of the underling more complex socio-economic dynamics. In particular, this study presents and discusses a conceptual framework to: I. Analyze the role of water supply, drainage, and sanitation systems in linking areas of ES production and benefit. II. Identify criteria and indicators for planning urban water infrastructure using an ES approach III. Include the proposed criteria and indicators in spatial planning Preliminary results obtained by applying the framework to a case study in sub-Saharan Africa are used to illustrate the framework.