Historical and contemporary cultural ecosystem service values in the rapidly urbanizing city state of Singapore

Abstract

Cultural ecosystem services are a function of people and place, so may change as a location transitions from rural to urban. Singapore has undergone rapid urbanization after its independence in 1965, with a concomitant decline in natural habitat extent and accessibility. Using coastal mangrove forests as a case study habitat, changing cultural values were explored with a novel array of techniques, including qualitative archival analysis (photographs, oral histories), current sources (publically uploaded social media photographs), and surveys of (a) the general public and (b) visitors to publically accessible mangroves. Cultural value changed through time, with a significant transition from intrinsic, intrapersonal values (spiritual, cultural heritage) to instrumental, interpersonal values (recreation, education). Additionally, cultural value varied between different mangroves depending on their public accessibility, and the evolving degree of human interaction with the ecosystem as urban development occured. Cultural values change as development transitions, though mangroves still play an important cultural role in a heavily urbanized environment.

Mapping the intangible: Using geolocated social media data to examine landscape aesthetics

“…Although Panoramio and Instagram provide a similar coverage (van Zanten et al, 2016b) and could be valid sources, Instagram restricts research availability and Panoramio ceased operation after 2016. Flickr data is also the main data source for previous CES assessments (Dunkel, 2015;Gliozzo et al, 2016;Tenerelli et al, 2016;Thiagarajah et al, 2015;Yoshimura and Hiura, 2017). To use Flickr photos for the LA-flow assessment, it is hypothesized that people who take photos of landscapes (and upload them to the Flickr platform) consider those landscapes to be aesthetically pleasing.…”

“…Common approaches for assessing LA in the ecosystem services literature include economic valuation approaches, such as hedonic pricing (Cho et al, 2008;Jiao and Liu, 2010) and contingent valuation (Willis and Garrod, 1993), and social-cultural valuation approaches based on interviews and surveys (Frank et al, 2013), focus groups (Scolozzi et al, 2012), photo elicitation (Tveit, 2009;van Zanten et al, 2016b), participatory mapping (Brown and Fagerholm, 2015;Plieninger et al, 2013), as well as qualitative archival analysis of photographs, audio-visual recordings and transcripts of historical interviews (Thiagarajah et al, 2015). However, most of these methods provide limited spatial information and/or are limited to a small group of stakeholders expressing their subjective perceptions, as is the case for most participatory mapping exercises (Paracchini et al, 2014;van Zanten et al, 2016a).…”

Ecosystem Services and Disservices of Mangrove Forests: Insights from Historical Colonial Observations

“…Cultural ecosystem services are relatively neglected in contemporary ecosystem services research, and this is particularly the case when considering mangrove forests, where few contemporary studies exist [11,12]. This was also the case between 1823 and 1883, where only three reports (8% of all ecosystem services articles) discussed the cultural value of mangrove forests for local communities in the Pacific and Australia.…”

“…These regulating services are potentially important at very large scales, with carbon storage in Indonesia being so high that mangrove deforestation may account for as much as 10%-31% of all carbon emissions related to national land cover change [10]. Mangrove forests also provide a broad suite of cultural ecosystem services to coastal populations living close to mangrove forests, ranging from the tangible (tourism, recreation, education) to the abstract (cultural heritage, aesthetics, sense of place) [11,12]. While huge challenges to quantifying and valuing ecosystem services remain, mangrove forest ecosystem services have been tentatively estimated at an average of US 4185 per hectare per year [13], though substantial spatial and temporal variation in this value would be expected.…”

Stakeholder Views on Land Reclamation and Marine Environment in Doha, Qatar

“…Although land reclamation boosts rapid economic development, it has caused serious cumulative effects on the ecological environment in the Netherlands, North America (OSPAR Commission, 2008), Bahrain (Zainal et al 2012), Singapore (Thiagaraiah et al 2015), Malaysia (Yin and Kwang 2016) and Hong Kong (Chan et al 2017). Land reclamation reduces species diversity, decline in the quality of inshore seawater quality, coastal morphology and tidal current speeds .Those who argue that land reclamation is a necessary development option are prompted by demand for housing, industrial sites and coastal resorts.…”