Challenges to understanding and managing cultural ecosystem services in the global South

Abstract

Cultural ecosystem services (CES) have been proposed as the "intangible and non-material benefits that people enjoy from ecosystems", and the literature has been expanding on how CES are defined, identified, valued, and incorporated into policy. However, the literature on CES has a strong geographical bias toward Europe and North America. In this Special Feature, authors examine how and in what ways CES concepts and frameworks have applicability in diverse developing country settings, and the particular challenges that CES approaches face. By looking at CES across different contexts in the global South, the articles emphasize the usefulness of a range of methodologies for eliciting and valuing CES; the importance of CES for a variety of people, including urban dwellers and Indigenous peoples; and the need for more practices and programs for ecosystem management that incorporate CES. Overall, the articles in this Special Feature show that research focusing on the global South can make positive contributions to the growing CES literature by drawing attention to key challenges such as power and inequality in access to CES, pressures from social and environmental change on CES, and the importance of relational and other culturally diverse values elicited through appropriate methodologies.

The complexity of evaluating, categorising and quantifying marine cultural heritage

“…In addition to concurring with existing literature pointing out the current inadequacies of integrating CES into policies and EBM governance (see [16][17][18][19]), we argue that the quantification and simplification of marine cultural heritage and connections should be avoided altogether, as this can result in ecosystem collapse instead of ecosystem flourishing. Instead, we recommend that marine resource management and development decisions adopt a more precautionary approach before humanity does more harm than good, and that researchers and research institutions employ and support contextual participatory methodologies to better understand marine cultural heritage in social-ecological systems with knowledge holders themselves.…”

“…This diminishment of alternative worldviews becomes evident when the FAO or European Commission understandings of CES outlined above are imposed onto 'Global South' contexts (see [12] for Chile; [29] for Singapore; [30] for South Africa). The result is a danger of diminishing what constitutes cultures and cultural heritages in specific contexts [17], reducing their value and silencing their history. Allen et al [16] point out that CES "by definition" are context-specific.…”

Nature's contributions to human well‐being under climate change: Evidence from Central and Eastern Madagascar

“…Despite limitations in our study due to the limited sample size, we can draw conclusions on the basis of the comparison of the four case study sites which highlights the importance of considering the context‐specificity of NCP and well‐being when addressing environmental and climate change (McElwee et al., 2022). Across all sites, various material and non‐material NCP contribute to well‐being in different ways.…”

“…Our findings demonstrate the existential challenges for these populations due to increasing climate-related ecosystem degradation-not only due to impacts on material contributions, but also on regulating and especially the non-material ones. In this way, our study contributes to a better understanding of the value of nonmaterial well-being benefits for resource-dependent communities of the Global South-beyond monetary terms (McElwee et al, 2022).…”

“…Our bottom‐up approach includes the voices of different social subgroups and stresses the importance of considering aspects of demography and intersectionality connected to concerns of availability of nature benefits through all sensory forms (i.e. sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell) and access to nature under changing environmental conditions (McElwee et al., 2022), for example, for the well‐being of people with disabilities (Kosanic et al., 2022) and the specific impacts on women (Romanello et al., 2022). Additionally, a generational shift is leading to changes in human‐nature and human‐human relationships and potentially reduced adaptive capacity due to a lack of environmental awareness and loss of customs, confirming observations from other sites in Madagascar (Raharinjanahary & Gueunier, 2006; Rakotomalala et al., 2001).…”