Connecting people to biodiversity in cities of tomorrow: Is urban foraging a powerful tool?

As global population becomes increasingly urban, opportunities for people to experience nature have decreased. Counteracting this trend is a key challenge for future urban development as interactions of urban people with biodiversity support human health and wellbeing, and may also result in positive attitudes towards biodiversity conservation. Collecting edible plants in urban surroundings, especially outside of gardens (urban foraging) is a traditional interaction with nature, based on knowledge about multiple uses of plants. Although some studies exist from different cities around the world, urban foraging has been revealed as a critically understudied phenomenon. We now analyze (i) the relevance of this human-nature interaction in Berlin, one of Europe's metropolises, (ii) how people's sociocultural background matters in attitudes of urban foragers vs. non-foragers towards this activity, and (iii) whether urban foraging may lead to conflicts with biodiversity conservation. Our survey revealed urban foraging as a relevant human-nature interaction with a high potential to grow: 33% of 535 respondents already collected edible plants outside of gardens and another 38% would be doing so given certain conditions, e.g. when contamination risks can be excluded. Many sociocultural groups (differing, e.g. on gender, age, childhood experience) shared attitudes towards foraging and existing barriers. Risks to biodiversity seem to be manageable as neither native species nor rare species were over-foraged in relation to species' abundance in the local flora, with more abundant species being collected more frequently. We conclude that urban foraging can be a powerful tool for connecting urban people to nature without putting native biodiversity at risk. We make a claim for integrated approaches towards environmental policy, environmental education and greenspace management: these should aim on keeping potential health risks at a minimum, and should support urban foraging as a biodiversity-friendly and sustainable human-nature interaction in the cities of tomorrow.