How do rural-urban relations affect our natural resources?

Ecosystems provide a wide variety of goods and services such as renewable energy, air and water purification, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. Urbanisation trends impact upon land use and therefore on the availability, accessibility and quality of ecosystem goods and services. This makes it important to identify the functional relationships between rural and urban areas and their effect on the provision of these services.

On this page you will soon find more information about ecosystem services and their rural-urban dimension.