Untapped Potential: Do Stakeholders Value Forests for Providing Clean Drinking Water?

Abstract

Billions of people around the world rely on forests to filter and provide clean drinking water. The immense value of drinking water can be a strong rationale for conserving and sustainably managing forests, however, people are often unaware of this forest ecosystem service of providing clean drinking water which can lead to the service's degradation. Using a qualitative case-study approach we conducted semi-structured interviews in three watersheds in Michigan, USA to investigate the values and perceptions stakeholders have for forests and drinking water. Our results show that (1) stakeholders value forest's role enhancing water quality but do not connect this forest role to providing drinking water, (2) no stakeholder groups interviewed engage in actions or behavior that explicitly address the connection between forests and drinking water, and (3) that policy makers have a large influence on the functioning of the forest provision of drinking water while nonprofit organizations are best positioned to influence conservation strategies that include this forest role. While stakeholders may not explicitly value forests for the provision of clean drinking water, there is untapped potential for incorporating this ecosystem service in future conservation strategies.

Considerations for using alternative technologies in nutrient management on Cape Cod: Beyond cost and performance

“…Past work employing semi‐structured interviews has been used to investigate a number of water research topics. These include a range of topics from drinking water provisioning from forests (Huizenga et al, 2022), the urban use and exploitation of groundwater (Akpabio & Udom, 2018), approaches for protecting isolated wetlands (Floress et al, 2017), through the major challenges from climate change and social change related to water management (Burnham et al, 2016).…”

“…Five of the interviews had multiple participants leading to a higher number of interview participants ( n = 37) than interviews ( n = 26). Qualitative sampling is not designed to be generalizable, but rather to capture a richness in perspective among decision makers and technical experts that can highlight important dimensions in water decision making and that are comprehensive in scope to explicate the scope of the topic (Morse, 2010; similar to Huizenga et al, 2022; Popovici et al, 2021; Floress et al, 2017). In the interviews, data saturation was reached, meaning no additional novel information was generated in the final interviews of the process (Corbin & Strauss, 2014).…”

'Women's Dependency Rate on the Kerinci Seblat National Park Area in Fulfilling Their Basic Needs

“…Drinking, cooking, bathing, washing, and using latrines all require water. There is much untapped potential for forest conservation by focusing on their role in providing quality drinking water (Huizenga et al, 2022). In addition, the community uses water for livestock and crop irrigation.…”