Cultural ecosystem services
Cultural ecosystem services, quality of life and their role in private land use
Background
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European cultural landscapes are shaped by agricultural and silvicultural uses geared towards the production of food or raw materials, such as timber. Beside these economically exploitable goods, cultural landscapes also deliver benefits which typically are not directly noticed, acknowledged or rewarded by society. These include, for example, soil formation or flood control, but also so-called cultural ecosystem services: the intangible benefits of ecosystems that become most evident at the landscape scale. Usually, these services are, in the first place, discussed in terms of the use of a landscape for tourism and recreation. However, ecosystems also form the matrix for aesthetic and spiritual experiences. Last but not least, and leaving aside a variety of other forms of intangible benefits, ecosystems and their use as cultural landscapes are said to play a crucial role in the identity, social networks and lifestyles of local populations.
This leads to the hypothesis that cultural ecosystem services can be strongly correlated with the quality of life of a rural population and particularly the well-being of those people who are directly occupied with land use in that specific region. However, up to now, the specific forms and relations between landscape elements as well as land use practices and quality of life have been elusive.
There are many studies which document the failure of political incentives to govern private land use. In this context, socially and culturally rooted motives of private land users have been identified as reasons why, for example, people continue land use practices which are, from an economic point of view, not rational. However, here as well, the specific interactions and correlations between ecosystem services, human well-being and decision-making remain unclear.
Objectives:
The overarching goal of this study is to advance the understanding of cultural ecosystem services and their correlation with given land use practices / landscape elements as well as the quality of life of a rural population and particularly private land users. This is expected to deliver insights into landscape-related decision-making and into the potential for policy incentives to govern ecosystem services.
The project ist part of the Ecosystem Services Research Group, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, under the Social-Ecological Research Programme. Within this framework, it will make contributions to the group's topic "Market-Based Instruments for Ecosystem Services – Drivers, Impacts and Policy Options Using the Example of Climate Protection and Nature Conservation in Central-European Cultural Landscapes".
Research Questions
- Which aspects of landscapes and selected land use practices are connected to immaterial benefits for a rural population and private land users?
- How do cultural and other ecosystem services relate to the quality of life of a local population and private land users, and what other services are relevant?
- What is the role of cultural ecosystem services and aspects of quality of life in landscape-related decision-making?
- How do strategies for commodifying ecosystem services affect cultural ecosystem services and human well-being?
- How can the issue of cultural ecosystem services be integrated in governance strategies and what forms and standards of participation of the relevant actors need to be created to achieve this?
Design and methodology
The project focuses on two investigation areas in Germany, the MAB-Biosphere Reserves Schwäbische Alb and Oberlausitzer Heide- und Teichlandschaft.
The study is rooted in qualitative social research. The specific methods range from in-field observations over text analysis to semi-structured interviews. Special attention is given to the development of new methods for capturing cultural ecosystem services.
A special short interview technique will be applied to investigate the linkages between landscapes and quality of life. This technique delivers quantifiable insights and takes up the idea of free listing interviews that are common in ethnology. This tool will be tested for the two investigation areas in Germany as well as for the National Park Hohe Tauern in Austria.
First Results
A project and literature analysis at the outset of the project showed that there are severe gaps concerning knowledge on cultural ecosystem services and methods for investigating these. In this regard, the cultural landscape research community offers concepts, methods and insights. Consequently, integrating cultural landscape-based approaches is indispensable for studying cultural ecosystem services.
Focusing on visible manifestations of cultural ecosystem services, a field-based method to record and assess cultural ecosystem services was developed and tested. This method provides concrete and spatially explicit insights into the relevance of different types of cultural ecosystem services in a given region.
Preliminary in-depth insights into immaterial landscape benefits, their connections with quality of life as well as their relevance in terms of landscape-related decisions are based on two sources: Firstly, semi-structured interviews have been conducted with land users on the Swabian Alb and in the Upper Lusatia. Secondly, for the Swabian Alb region, short stories which were written for a contest initiated by the biosphere reserve management team have been analyzed in terms of perceptions and values people connect with the region. Manifold forms of cultural ecosystem services became evident. Going beyond catchphrases, the results allow for in-depth descriptions of values associated with landscapes and also point to the ways in which people create meaning. The results most notably underline that immaterial benefits associated with landscapes are specific to the respective place and, in contrast to many other ecosystem services, cannot be replaced or substituted e.g. through technical means. Cultural ecosystem services are highly relevant for quality of life and landscape-related decisions – both as a central motive in land use decisions and as an argument to motivate society to engage in the maintenance of cultural landscapes.
May 2009 - July 2013
Dr. Claudia Bieling
Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Ökoinstitut, Ecologic