Sociocultural valuation of ecosystem services for operational ecosystem management: mapping applications by decision contexts in Europe

Abstract

Sociocultural valuation (SCV) of ecosystem services (ES) discloses the principles, importance or preferences expressed by people towards nature. Although ES research has increasingly addressed sociocultural values in past years, little effort has been made to systematically review the components of sociocultural valuation applications for different decision contexts (i.e. awareness raising, accounting, priority setting, litigation and instrument design). In this analysis, we investigate the characteristics of 48 different sociocultural valuation applications-characterised by unique combinations of decision context, methods, data collection formats and participants-across ten European case studies. Our findings show that raising awareness for the sociocultural value of ES by capturing people's perspective and establishing the status quo, was found the most frequent decision context in case studies, followed by priority setting and instrument development. Accounting and litigation issues were not addressed in any of the applications. We reveal that applications for particular decision contexts are methodologically similar, and that decision contexts determine the choice of methods, data collection formats and participants involved. Therefore, we conclude that understanding the decision context is a critical first step to designing and carrying out fit-for-purpose sociocultural valuation of ES in operational ecosystem management.

Three perspectives on relational values of nature

“…Application of sociocultural valuation of ES in Europe has been shown to mainly been intended for 'awareness raising', i.e. establishing and communicating knowledge of values and preferences that stakeholders and citizens hold and assign to ES for decisionmaking (Walz et al 2019).…”

Residents’ Views on Landscape and Ecosystem Services during a Wind Farm Proposal in an Island Protected Area

“…The first part of the questionnaire comprised an ES survey based on socio-cultural valuation [67,76], aiming to provide indications of perceptions about the ecosystem's material and non-material services and benefits to society. Most of the respondents had not heard of the ES before and there were queries about the concept during the survey.…”

Operationalising ecosystem services in Europe

“…Between 2012 and 2017, the European Commission funded the OPERAs project (Operationalising Ecosystem Research Applications) to explore how and under what conditions the ES concept can move beyond the academic domain towards practical implementation in support of sustainable decisionmaking and ecosystem management (Ainscough et al 2019). OPERAs co-produced a diversity of approaches in twelve 'exemplar' case studies across a range of ecosystems (Patenaude et al 2019;Schoonover et al 2019;Walz et al 2019): Swiss Alps, French Alps, Scotland, Barcelona, the Lower Danube, the Montado region, Dublin, Mediterranean agriculture, the Balearic islands, global, Pan-Europe and the wine sector (see Fig. 2).…”

“…Increase knowledge and understanding to support policy and decision-making (Lee et al 2019a;Liski et al 2019a) 3. Improve and develop methods, tools and instruments to support ecosystem management (Liski et al 2019a;Smith et al 2019;Walz et al 2019) 4. Co-develop and test these approaches in practice with stakeholders across a range of ecosystems in the 'exemplar' case studies (Liski et al 2019b;Rosário et al 2019;Walz et al 2019) 5.…”

“…Improve and develop methods, tools and instruments to support ecosystem management (Liski et al 2019a;Smith et al 2019;Walz et al 2019) 4. Co-develop and test these approaches in practice with stakeholders across a range of ecosystems in the 'exemplar' case studies (Liski et al 2019b;Rosário et al 2019;Walz et al 2019) 5. Establish communities of practice (Metzger et al 2019) and a marketplace for knowledge dissemination (the Oppla online platform; www.oppla.eu)…”