Urban greening and provisioning of ecosystem services within hesitant decision making framework

The Serbian city of Novi Sad is experiencing problems in managing its ecosystems and the services they provide. The problems are mostly affected by both the institutional organization and societal behavior, and a participative decision-making framework is required to motivate residents to better communicate with institutions. Our earlier research also indicated a need to more explicitly relate urban and ecosystem development indicators with management of city areas covered by public parks and other green areas, to quantify their mutual impact and to trace the road toward synergy. The hesitant analytic hierarchy process is applied in a group context to derive the priorities of ecosystems and their services, respecting both coinciding and conflicting goals and objectives of different interest groups involved. The group context enabled better communication and mutual understanding of participants (societal and institutional representatives, and experts). A discussion and evaluation process indicated options for reaching consensus between experts about recommendations to be made to the city government on how to harmonize urban and ecosystem development. The applied methodology is considered adequate because it manipulates qualitative and quantitative decision elements, commonly expressed in non-commensurate units, and because it provides a trustful environment for the participants involved while making decisions.