The Challenges of Incorporating Cultural Ecosystem Services into Environmental Assessment
Document Type
Article
Journal/Book Title
AMBIO
Publisher
Springer
Publication Date
2-24-2013
Volume
42
Issue
6
First Page
675
Last Page
684
Abstract
The ecosystem services concept is used to make explicit the diverse benefits ecosystems provide to people, with the goal of improving assessment and, ultimately, decision-making. Alongside material benefits such as natural resources (e.g., clean water, timber), this concept includes—through the ‘cultural’ category of ecosystem services—diverse non-material benefits that people obtain through interactions with ecosystems (e.g., spiritual inspiration, cultural identity, recreation). Despite the longstanding focus of ecosystem services research on measurement, most cultural ecosystem services have defined measurement and inclusion alongside other more ‘material’ services. This gap in measurement of cultural ecosystem services is a product of several perceived problems, some of which are not real problems and some of which can be mitigated or even solved without undue difficulty. Because of the fractured nature of the literature, these problems continue to plague the discussion of cultural services. In this paper we discuss several such problems, which although they have been addressed singly, have not been brought together in a single discussion. There is a need for a single, accessible treatment of the importance and feasibility of integrating cultural ecosystem services alongside others.
Recommended Citation
Satz, D., Gould, R.K., Chan, K.M.A., Guerry, A., norton, B., Satterfield, T., Halpern, B.S., Levine, J., Woodside, U., Hannahs, N., Basurto, X., Klain, S. (2013). The Challenges of Incorporating Cultural Ecosystem Services into Environmental Assessment. AMBIO 42, 675–684. doi:10.1007/s13280-013-0386-6
