The Value Landscape in Ecosystem Services: Value, Value Wherefore Art Thou Value?

Abstract

Abstract:Ecosystem services has risen to become one of the preeminent global policy discourses framing the way we conceive and articulate environment-society relations, integral to the form and function of a number of far-reaching international policies such as the Aichi 2020 Biodiversity Targets and the recently adopted Sustainable Development Goals. Value; its pursuit, definition, quantification, monetization, multiplicity and uncertainty, both in terms of meaning and attribution, is fundamental to the economic foundations of ecosystem services and a core feature driving its inclusion across multiple policy domains such as environmental management and conservation. Distilling current knowledge and developments in this arena are thus highly prescient. In this article, we cast a critical eye over the evidence base and aim to provide a comprehensive synthesis of what values are, why they are important and the methodological approaches employed to elicit them (including their pros and cons and the arguments for and against). We also illustrate the current ecosystem service value landscape, highlight some of the fundamental challenges in discerning and applying values, and outline future research activities. In so doing, we further advance ecosystem valuation discourse, contribute to wider debates linking ecosystem services and sustainability and strengthen connections between ecosystem services and environmental policy.

Three perspectives on relational values of nature

“…Social values have been defined in a variety of ways (Kenter et al 2015) but can be described as those values that people express regarding the environment that are neither strictly ecological nor necessarily captured in meaningful ways by monetary metrics. Social values, like many of those values encompassed by ES valuation methods, are subjective values in a methodological sense, in that they build on social perceptions of environments (Hejnowicz and Rudd 2017). Typical examples are emotional, affective, spiritual and symbolic values (Gómez-Baggethun and Martín-López 2015).…”

“…The fundamental concept of value has been defined and applied with various different meanings in the ES literature (Hejnowicz and Rudd 2017). In the cultural ES literature, value is usually taken to mean "evaluative beliefs about the worth, importance, or usefulness of something or about moral principles" (Hirons et al, 2016, p. 556).…”

Climate research priorities for policy-makers, practitioners, and scientists in Georgia, USA

“…Tenuous links often exist between environmental stressors caused by climate change, changes in ecological structure and function, the production of valued ecosystem services, and the economic value of those services to diverse citizens and stakeholders (Balvanera et al 2006; Weitzman 2012; Hejnowicz and Rudd 2017). In Georgia, further research is required to categorize ecosystem services that provide benefits to humans while assessing the risks they face due to climate change.…”

From Environmental Soundness to Sustainable Development: Improving Applicability of Payment for Ecosystem Services Scheme for Diverting Regional Sustainability Transition in Developing Countries

“…However, putting monetary values on ES is substantially criticized due to the diversity of the human-environment system and the multifaceted socio-ecological linkages that may have an influence on the perception of societal groups on values attached to ES [68][69][70][71]. Among these critiques on monetary valuation of ES, the uncertainty of the ES value receives significant attentions [72]. As for this study, we flagged three sources of valuation uncertainty, namely supply uncertainty, preference uncertainty, and technical uncertainty [72].…”