Opportunities for Improved Consideration of Cultural Benefits in Environmental Decision-Making

Abstract

Many cultural benefits of ecosystems are difficult to capture in standard ecosystem services (ES) assessments. Scholars and practitioners often respond to this gap by seeking to develop new scientific methods to capture and integrate the plural values associated with diverse cultural benefits categories. This increasing emphasis on value pluralism represents an essential step toward recognitional justice within ES theory and practice. However, current approaches continue to rest on the assumption that ES-knowledge is only made available to decision-makers through scientific documentation. As a result, scholars and decision-makers fail to account for the role of knowledge pluralism as a core element of recognitional justice, and a key enabling factor for meaningful consideration of the plural values linked to cultural benefits of ES. In this paper, we contribute to a pluralist theory of cultural-benefits-knowledge, and ES-knowledge more broadly. Using a Critical Interpretive Synthesis of environmental management literature, we conceptualize a wider range of knowledge forms that convey cultural benefits, based on the knowledge-as-practice concept in addition to the knowledge-as-product concept more familiar to Western actors. As part of the synthesis, we explore when and how diverse forms of cultural-benefits-knowledge intersect with decision-making processes, and the value aspects and categories of cultural benefits most frequently conveyed by each form of knowledge. Our synthesizing argument offers a critique of the concept of “ES-knowledge-use,” proposing a shift in focus toward “learning opportunities” that exist across phases of decision-making. We demonstrate that attention to a greater diversity of knowledge forms (knowledge pluralism), and a fuller spectrum of opportunities to integrate them (learning opportunities) can support more meaningful consideration of the plural values associated with cultural benefits of ecosystem services (value pluralism). In combination, attention to knowledge pluralism and value pluralism can help bring the ES approach into alignment with environmental justice through the recognition and legitimization of multiple identities, well-beings, and human-nature relationships, as reflected in meaningful consideration of the diverse cultural benefits of ES.

Advancing Knowledge Pluralism and Cultural Benefits in Ecosystem Services Theory and Application

“…For example, a focus on knowledge-as-product may fail to readily incorporate relational value aspects or holistic perspectives commonly associated with the cultural benefits of ES (Chan et al, 2016;Fish et al, 2016;Gould et al, 2019a;Raymond et al, 2018); relational/holistic understandings may be more fully and accurately communicated through embodied or encoded forms of ES-knowledge, i.e., knowledge-as-practice. Hoelting et al (2022) refer to the concept of knowledge-as-practice as enacted knowledge forms, which embody, reproduce, and bring ES-knowledge into action. Examples of enacted benefits-knowledge-forms include expression (verbally) and/or demonstration of the linkages between well-being and landbased practices and through, for example, subsistence practices, stewardship as a practice of reciprocal relationship, and/or actions geared toward defending and maintaining these practices and lifeways.…”

“…In contrast, Hoelting et al (2022) discuss the concept of knowledge-as-product using the term translated knowledge forms (Box 2). Translated forms can be understood as a spectrum of approaches to documentation of ES-knowledge, ranging from highly abstracted representations of benefit to more contextualized forms that seek to retain the meanings and values embodied and enacted by knowledge holders.…”

“…However, many cultural benefits of ES, 1 defined as "contributions ecosystems make to human well-being in terms of the identities they help frame, the experiences they help enable, and the capabilities they help equip" (Fish et al, 2016, p. 212), are consistently under-represented in ES assessments provided to environmental decision-makers (Bremer et al, 2015;Gould et al, 2019a). Categories of cultural benefit most marginalized in assessments include knowledge systems and cultural identity (Gould et al, 2019a;Hoelting et al 2022;Milcu et al, 2013), highlighting issues of recognitional injustice that remain to be addressed to bring an ES approach into alignment with environmental justice (Lau et al, 2021;Martin et al 2016); the movement toward more meaningful integration of cultural benefits of ES in decision-making is intertwined with improved recognition and legitimization of multiple human-nature relationships, understandings of well-being, and knowledge systems more broadly.…”

“…Categories of CES included in past CES typologies align with the categories of cultural benefits informing our thinking. See Hoelting et al (2022) for a full list of cultural benefit categories and discussion of how they overlap with past typologies of CES. being (axiology).…”

“…With this foundation, we are better positioned to examine knowledge claims specifically about the cultural benefits of ES. A central question is whether the cultural benefits of ES can be adequately recognized, comprehended, and considered when technical, utilitarian knowledge products are viewed by decision-makers as the primary decision-relevant forms of ESknowledge (Hoelting et al, 2022;Raymond et al, 2018). More explicit conceptualization of the ES-knowledge-system, and the diverse ways humans know and convey evidence of well-being, are critical starting points to enable movement toward knowledge pluralism in the context of ecosystem valuation and decision-making.…”