Traditionally, it has been believed that wealthier urban areas are more prone to greater biodiversity, which is known as the "luxury effect". However, recent research suggests that this relationship is more complex than previously thought. Madhusudan Katti, an associate professor of forestry and environmental resources at North Carolina State University, points out that viewing biodiversity as a luxury diminishes people's ability to create it.

Reevaluating the "luxury effect"

"Biodiversity is not a luxury; it is something we can nurture in cities," says Katti. "It is not just a passive byproduct of wealth. Instead of relying on the correlation between wealth and biodiversity, we wanted to understand the many ways in which biodiversity interacts with different social pressures and systems."

Analysis of socio-ecological factors

To achieve this, the researchers began by analyzing the land itself. First, they identified the common characteristics of biodiverse areas and then investigated the processes that promote biodiversity and the social structures that enable these processes. Katti calls this the socio-ecological framework, which examines how human activities shape nature in a social context.

The role of the POSE framework

These decisions are part of what the study calls the POSE framework. Instead of using terms like "luxury", the framework describes four social factors that determine how an individual, community group, or institution can influence biodiversity: power, objectives, social/ecological context, and effort (POSE). Each part of the framework represents a point of influence that communities can leverage to build biodiversity and may explain the luxury effect. A person with more wealth who owns a house, for example, will have more power over the landscape on their property than someone living in an apartment complex. By using the POSE framework, communities with less wealth can find ways to leverage the resources they have, such as focusing on increasing effort through collective organizing.

Encouraging collective initiatives

Katti hopes that the POSE framework will inspire people to work towards healthier landscapes in their communities. "We want people to understand that they can influence the landscape around them even without a lot of money," says Katti. "This is what community groups have been doing for a long time: organizing to overcome the lack of wealth through effort. Our work is a call to action. Biodiversity is achievable, and people have the power to create it together."

The paper titled "Biodiversity is Not a Luxury: Unpacking Wealth and Power to Accommodate the Complexity of Urban Biodiversity" was published in the journal Ecosystems. The first author of the paper is Renata Poulton Kamakura from Duke University. The co-authors are Jin Bai and Vallari Sheel, Ph.D. students at North Carolina State University.

The work was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant 2139754 and by the U.S. Geological Survey Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Center.