What matters to whom and why? Understanding the importance of coastal ecosystem services in developing coastal communities

Abstract

16Coastal ecosystems support the livelihoods and wellbeing of millions of people worldwide. 17However, the marine and terrestrial ecosystem services that coastal ecosystems provide are 18 particularly vulnerable to global environmental change, as are the coastal communities who directly depend on them. To navigate these changes and ensure the wellbeing of coastal communities, policy-makers must know which coastal ecosystem services matter to whom, and why. Yet, capturing people's perceptions of the importance of ecosystem services in developing coastal settings is challenging for several reasons. Firstly, coastal ecosystem services encompass both terrestrial and marine services across multiple categories (i.e. provisioning, supporting and cultural), that are difficult to value together. Secondly, widely used monetary valuation techniques are often inappropriate, because of culturally specific attributions of value, and the intangible nature of key cultural ecosystem services. Thirdly, people within communities may hold different ecosystem services values. In this paper, we examine how people ascribe and explain the importance of a range of marine and terrestrial ecosystem services in three coastal communities in Papua New Guinea. We use a mixedmethods approach that combines a non-monetary, ranking and rating assessment of multiple ecosystem services, with a socio-economic survey (N=139) and qualitative explanations of why ecosystem services matter. We find that people uniformly ascribe the most importance to marine and terrestrial provisioning services that directly support their livelihoods and material wellbeing. However, within communities, gender, wealth, and years of formal schooling do shape some differences in how people rate ecosystem services. In addition, although cultural ecosystem services were often rated lower, people emphasized that part of the reason they ranked provisioning services highly was because of their contribution to, for instance, bequest. People also expressed concern about more extractive ecosystem services, like coral materials and fuelwood, which tended to be used and rated slightly more important by women. We contend that integrated ecosystem services assessments that include narratives can capture the broad importance of a range of ecosystem services, alongside relational values and normative judgements. This exploratory approach is a useful step towards understanding the complexities of ecosystem services in coastal settings. Key words gender, Papua New Guinea, non-monetary valuation, plural values, social differentiation Words: 7,488 1. Introduction Humans have changed the climate, lands and seas, forests and coasts, in ways that may destabilize earth's key systems (Steffen et al., 2018(Steffen et al., , 2015. Marine and coastal ecosystems are already highly exploited and rapidly depleting. Already, half of all the world's salt marches, and approximately one third of mangroves, coral reefs, and sea-grasses have been lost or degraded (Barbier, 2017). Yet, responsibility for and v...

Sixteen years of social and ecological dynamics reveal challenges and opportunities for adaptive management in sustaining the commons

“…All key informants for this specific study were male, but our complementary research has explored gendered perceptions about ecosystem services (e.g., ref. 60). We conducted key informant interviews (ranging from 10 min to 1 h) in Papua New Guinean Tok Pisin.…”

Gleaning: beyond the subsistence narrative

“…It is also likely that the life stage and household context of gleaners shaped how and why different reasons were ranked together (Coulthard et al 2020). The varied priorities for gleaning within one community support wider calls for disaggregating coastal ecosystem service beneficiaries to assess how and why coastal ecosystem values are distributed socially and therefore to support equitable resource management for poverty alleviation (Chan et al 2019;Daw et al 2011;Lau et al 2019).…”

“…Firstly, ecosystem services approaches can capture the complex, dynamic, and socially disaggregated links between human wellbeing and ecosystems. Progress in ecosystem services has turned to plural value approaches to account for the diversity and distribution of coastal ecosystem values (Blythe et al 2019;Lau et al 2019). Such approaches emphasise that different people derive different values from ecosystems.…”

Global Variation in Climate, Human Development, and Population Density Has Implications for Urban Ecosystem Services

“…The Human Development Index is a composite index of education, life expectancy, and per capita gross national income, and is used as an indicator for the socio-economic characteristics of the urban areas included in this study. Wealth and education are known to influence people's opinions about the relative importance of ecosystem services [54]. Since average wealth and educational status are components of the HDI, it is likely that cities with different HDI will prioritise ecosystem services differently.…”