Ecosystem services or services to ecosystems? Valuing cultivation and reciprocal relationships between humans and ecosystems

Comberti, Claudia; Thornton, Thomas F.; Echeverria, Victoria Wyllie de; Patterson, Trista

doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2015.07.007

Cited by 257 publications

(167 citation statements)

References 85 publications

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“…First, it has the potential to meet various recommendations previously made for implementation of the ESF, including resilience, promotion of interdisciplinary collaboration and involvement of stakeholders [11], focus on direct human encounters with ecosystems and attention to both local and off-site effects [43]. Second, the EVF should function well in non-Western cultures (often found in parts of the world of great conservation importance [38]) by downplaying the 'humans vs. nature' [44] and 'cultural vs. material' [36] dualisms typical of Western worldviews and recognising instead how people's cultural identity and well-being may be closely bound up in relationships with the non-human world [10]. Finally, the independent philosophical foundations of the EVF should give confidence in its robustness and universal validity.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Beyond Ecosystem Services: Valuing the Invaluable

Gunton

Asperen

Basden

et al. 2017

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

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Highlights •Ecosystem services help itemise how we value natural places, but the concept is not robust.• A more robust framework should focus on aspects of human appreciation of places.• We propose an ecosystem valuing framework with 12 universal aspects of appreciation.• This can be unambiguously complemented by ecological analyses where necessary. AbstractThe ecosystem services framework (ESF) is advantageous and widely used for itemising and quantifying ways in which humans benefit from natural places. However, it suffers from two important problems: (i) incoherence of definitions and (ii) a narrow approach to valuation, inadequate to represent the full range of human motives for conservation and the diverse interests of different stakeholders. These shortcomings can lead to a range of problems including doublecounting, blind spots and unintended consequencest. Here we propose an ecosystem valuing framework (EVF) as a broader and more rigorous way to deliver the benefits currently sought from the ESF, without the conceptual problems. The flawed genius of ecosystem servicesThe ecosystem services framework (ESF) is a very popular approach to incentivising nature conservation, increasingly used by conservation campaigners and policy makers around the world as well as by scientists contributing to this cause. Its genius is to facilitate a multi-dimensional analysis of the benefits that humans may derive from natural places, allowing a wide range of interests and conservation concerns to be considered and integrated with a broad view of sustainable development 3 and human wellbeing. As such it supports a consequentialist ethic that can be more successful than deontological approaches (see Glossary) in securing consensus and motivating action [1]. However, criticisms of the ESF as a tool for conservation raise doubts about its effectiveness and legitimacy [2,3]. The most controversial issue is probably that of monetisation, as laid out recently by Silvertown [4]. One set of responses to such problems would continue using the ESF as a general tool for assessing habitats while recognising its multilayered structure [5], supervising it to avoid unintended consequences [6], perhaps discouraging monetisation [7], and even attempting to subjugate intrinsic value under the category of services [8]. Yet there are more profound problems with the ESF that call for a radical shift if we wish to contribute to conservation as part of a sustainable development agenda. Two outstanding issues are sufficient, in our opinion, to demand an overhaul of the ESF so radical as to require a new name. First, the definitions do not work. The fact that definitions of 'ecosystem services' (ES) and of specific categories are often vague, tautologous and/or at variance with the concepts actually employed is symptomatic of deep-seated problems, as we shall explain.Second, collapsing multiple human value judgments into one or a few numerical values is a form of devaluation. We unpack this claim by exploring the inescapably cultural foundation of ...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Several studies have documented how people appreciate places by serving them and their constituent organisms rather than considering themselves served by an ecosystem [38] and by giving up time to protect or improve them [39,40]. To these we add a brief example of stakeholder exclusion in conservation negotiations.…”

Section: Valuing Ecosystemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Ecosystem Services: Valuing the Invaluable

Gunton

Asperen

Basden

et al. 2017

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

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“…And, their support might increase the more they become concerned with the negative externalities of (rapid) growth and excessive consumption (Ghisellini et al 2016). Policy pressure might also arise when society becomes aware of economic and intangible value extracted from sustaining natural resources (Comberti et al 2015). One might refer to the case of renewables (i.e.…”

Section: Discussion: Does Industry Yet Close the Loop?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Creating value, not wasting resources: sustainable innovation strategies

Slowak

Regenfelder

2016

Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research

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“…This assumption, however, ignores the role of human interventions (labour, technology, and capital) in improving the supply of ES (in particular, agricultural goods, but also forest products and cultural or regulating services) by transforming 'natural ecosystems' into human-modified cultural landscapes [21][22][23][24][25]. While one study shows that humans indeed often contribute to the maintenance and enhancement of ecosystems [26], another emphasises "that increased use of manufactured and financial capital might deliver higher quantities of ecosystem services in the short-term but is often associated to several trade-offs in space and time" [27] (p. 271). Such interventions, in reverse, are captured by the concept of colonisation, an important concept of Social Ecology [23,28] (see Section 4) and offer a different starting point for an analysis of the capacity of ecosystems to contribute to human wellbeing.…”

Section: The Ecosystem Services Concept From a Perspective Of Social mentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecosystem Services as a Boundary Concept: Arguments from Social Ecology

et al. 2017

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Ecosystem services (ES) are defined as the interdependencies between society and nature. Despite several years of conceptual discussions, some challenges of the ES concept are far from being resolved. In particular, the usefulness of the concept for nature protection is questioned, and a strong critique is expressed concerning its contribution towards the neoliberal commodification of nature. This paper argues that these challenges can be addressed by dealing more carefully with ES as a boundary concept between different disciplines and between science and society. ES are neither about nature nor about human wellbeing, but about the mutual dependencies between nature and human wellbeing. These mutual interdependencies, however, create tensions and contradictions that manifest themselves in the boundary negotiations between different scientific disciplines and between science and society. This paper shows that approaches from Social Ecology can address these boundary negotiations and the power relations involved more explicitly. Finally, this implies the urgent need for more inter-and transdisciplinary collaboration in ES research. We conclude (1) that the social-ecological nature of ES must be elaborated more carefully while explicitly focussing on the interdependencies between nature and society; (2) to better implement inter-and transdisciplinary methods into ES research; and (3) that such ES research can-and to some extent already does-substantially enhance international research programmes such as Future Earth.

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Ecosystem services or services to ecosystems? Valuing cultivation and reciprocal relationships between humans and ecosystems

Cited by 257 publications

References 85 publications

Beyond Ecosystem Services: Valuing the Invaluable

Beyond Ecosystem Services: Valuing the Invaluable

Creating value, not wasting resources: sustainable innovation strategies

Ecosystem Services as a Boundary Concept: Arguments from Social Ecology

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