Cultural ecosystem services from marine and coastal systems: Counting the intangibles (EBM)

The field of ecosystem service science has begun to align economic incentives with conservation outcomes by identifying and valuing a more compete set of the services provided to humans by ecosystems than is traditionally considered in decision-making processes. Ecosystem services are the provision of things and experiences by ecosystems for people. The ecologists and economists working in this field have primarily focused on measuring, mapping, and valuing provisioning and regulating services; cultural services are always mentioned, but the integrated incorporation of such services into decision-making remains decades behind the more tangible services. We propose to change this by jump-starting the integration of cultural services into ecosystem-service decision-making tools. This working group will bring together an interdisciplinary group of ecologists, anthropologists, political scientists, philosophers, sociologists, and practitioners to tackle the thorny question “How do changes in ecosystems affect changes in cultural values in different scenarios for use of coastal and marine regions?” We will review the available data linking such ecosystem change to changes in cultural values, paying particular attention to interactions between services, and to non-linearities. Our project will provide a framework for employing quantitative and—where necessary—qualitative methods to explicitly consider such values in marine and coastal planning.