Contributions of Ecosystem Services to Human Well-Being in Puerto Rico

Abstract

Ecosystem services, including availability of greenspace, clean air, and clean water, can have benefits to human well-being, but their relative importance compared to economic or social services is often overlooked. In Puerto Rico, for example, improving community well-being, including economic and cultural opportunities, human health, and safety, are often overarching goals of environmental management decisions, but the degree to which improvements in ecological condition and provision of ecosystem services could impact local communities is complicated by wide variation in social and economic conditions. This study quantifies and maps neighborhood-scale indicators of human well-being and ecosystem services for Puerto Rico to better understand the degree to which ecosystem services provisioning, alongside co-occurring social and economic services, explains variability in a number of indicators of human well-being. In Puerto Rico, variability in indicators of human well-being were predominately explained by economic services related to accumulating income and personal savings, and social services, including availability of family services, healthcare services, and access to communication technology. Despite the large explanatory power of economic and social services, however, the analysis detected that substantial portions of well-being, in particular education and human health, could be explained by variability in ecosystem services over space and time, especially availability of greenspace. Linking ecosystem services to multivariate elements of human well-being can serve to complement more traditional community planning or environmental management efforts by helping identify potential unintended consequences or overlooked benefits of decisions.

Improving Well-Being of Farmers Using Ecological Awareness around Protected Areas: Evidence from Qinling Region, China

“…From the results of the impact of the perception of regulated services on overall well-being, it can be seen that the improvement of air quality has a significant impact on the overall well-being of farmers. The better the air quality, the higher the satisfaction with well-being, which also indicates that the farmers desire increasingly higher environmental standards and green spaces [ 59 ]. From the results of the impact of cultural service perception on overall well-being, it can be seen that the sense of belonging and the value of ecotourism are the most significant factors affecting the overall well-being of farmers.…”

Synthesis of Two Decades of US EPA’s Ecosystem Services Research to Inform Environmental, Community and Sustainability Decision Making

“…The Puerto Rico case study used tools and approaches to investigate impacts of alternative decisions on ES and their social and economic benefits [163], focusing on specific SDM elements: (1) clarify the decision context; (2) characterize goals and metrics;…”

“…In a pair of studies, Refs. [45,163] examined integrated assessment approaches for connecting ES, human well-being, and the economic, social, and ecological elements of sustainability decision making. Their approach involves mapping and quantifying indicators of ES and human well-being at a neighborhood-scale to examine whether ES information explains variability in elements of human well-being.…”

A Study on Temporal and Spatial Differences in Women’s Well-Being in an Ecologically Vulnerable Area in Northwest China

“…Scholars have advanced the indicators by incorporating ecological aspects into the HDI in response to the environment's growing effect on human existence [24,25]. Both domestic and international scholars have developed indicator systems to measure the level of well-being of residents in accordance with the status of ecosystem services in various natural regions [26][27][28][29][30] since the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report proposed the contribution of ecosystem services to human well-being. A review of related studies elucidated the following: 1 Currently, studies on well-being have developed a variety of indicator systems that cover health well-being [31][32][33][34][35], psychological well-being [36][37][38][39][40][41], social well-being [42][43][44][45][46], and other aspects [47,48].…”