Recently, Ana Paula García-Nieto and other colleagues of the ESP Mediterranean Biome Working group published an analysis of the “Impacts of urbanization around Mediterranean cities: Changes in ecosystem service supply”. For eight European and four North African cities, we have quantified changes in peri-urban land cover, for periods of sixteen years (1990–2006) in the Northern African, and twenty-two years (1990–2012) in the European cities. Based on land cover changes and using an expert based method, we derived quantitative estimates of the dynamics in the supply of twenty-seven ecosystem services. The most significant land cover changes occur in the peri-urban zone, but little is known about how these changes affect the ecosystem service supply. The nature of land cover changes slightly differed between European and North African Mediterranean cities, but overall it increased in urban areas and decreased in agricultural land. The capacity of the peri-urban areas of Mediterranean cities to supply ecosystem service generally reduced over the last 20–30 years. For nine ecosystem service the potential supply actually increased for all four North African cities and three out of the eight European cities. Across all cities, the ecosystem service timber, wood fuel and religious and spiritual experience increased. Given the expected increase of urban population in the Mediterranean Basin and the current knowledge of ecosystem service deficits in urban areas, the overall decrease in ecosystem service supply capacity of peri-urban areas is a risk for human wellbeing in the Mediterranean and poses a serious challenge for the Sustainable Development Goals in the Mediterranean basin.
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