The maturation of ecosystem services: Social and policy research expands, but whither biophysically informed valuation?

Abstract

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Assessing People’s Values of Nature: Where Is the Link to Sustainability Transformations?

“…Even though the ES concept was developed for sustainability purposes, it has not been conceptualised with regard to specific sustainability principles or criteria, such as justice or ecological integrity (Schröter et al, 2017). The focus in ES assessments is often not on how to manage for sustainability transformations, but on how to measure current or past states of specific ES (Costanza et al, 2017;Rau et al, 2018;Chan and Satterfield, 2020). While biophysical assessments of current states can show dependence on ecosystems, and be conducted within a transformative framework, there is reason to believe it does not work as well for the social sphere of assessments.…”

“…Within IPBES, the scope of conceptualising values of nature is focussed on "the values that people associate with nature (principles, importance, and preference) and the measures and indicators used to elicit these values" (IPBES, 2016, p. 3). In ES research, value has often been defined based on the contribution to human wellbeing, and operationalised through assessment (Costanza et al, 2017;Hejnowicz and Rudd, 2017;Chan and Satterfield, 2020). Thus, in discussion around values of nature within ES and NCP, the term 'values' often refers to the products of descriptive scientific assessments of the links between human-wellbeing and ecosystems.…”

“…These aspects are also associated with cultural ES, and are considered especially unsuitable for monetary valuation since they deal with not easily quantifiable notions of e.g., identity, sense of place, cultural heritage, perceptions, spirituality, psychological wellbeing (Abson and Termansen, 2011;Chan et al, 2012;James, 2015;Cooper et al, 2016;Stålhammar and Pedersen, 2017). Overall, the field of socio-cultural valuation seeks to capture non-material or intangible social and cultural aspects and preferences in non-monetary terms (Kelemen et al, 2016), and has grown significantly in the recent years (Chan and Satterfield, 2020).…”

Spatiotemporal determinants of seasonal gleaning

“…These relational values are defined as the ‘ [P]references, principles, virtues about/based on meaning‐saturated relationships ’ (Chan et al., 2018) and encompass a diversity of tangible and intangible values, rooted in human–nature interactions (unlike intrinsic values) and are distinct from instrumental values by being non‐substitutable (Himes & Muraca, 2018). The importance of relational values is gaining traction in research frontiers that seek to better attend to the social dimensions of ecosystem services (Chan & Satterfield, 2020). A key development on the concept of ecosystem services is the proposed Nature's Contributions to People (NCP) framework, which includes cultural context as a crosscutting factor in recognition that worldviews underpin how human–nature interactions are perceived and valued (Díaz et al, 2018; Pascual et al., 2017).…”

Limited Economic-Ecological Trade-Offs in a Shifting Agricultural Landscape: A Case Study From Kern County, California

“…Despite an increase in research investigating multiple ecosystem functions in agricultural landscapes, spatially-explicit assessments of multiple ecosystem indicators remain limited (Barral et al, 2020;Chan and Satterfield, 2020). This may be exacerbated by the time-and labor-intensive nature of field-data collection, and frequent incompatibility of different datasets across a range of indicators, time points, scales, and geographic locations (Rindfuss et al, 2004;Feld et al, 2009).…”