The importance of cultural ecosystem services in natural resource-dependent communities: Implications for management

In defining cultural ecosystem services as the recreational, aesthetic, and spiritual benefits people obtain from ecosystems, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment conveyed a key aspect of nature-society relationships. Yet, it is reasonable to suppose that this aspect may apply more to to contexts where people enjoy more leisure time to admire a scenic vista or recreate in nature. How relevant is this aspect of nature-society relationships for people who rely more on natural resources, or provisioning ecosystem services, for livelihoods? We integrated qualitative and quantitative field research methods to examine how people in natural resource-dependent communities perceived the importance of different ecosystem services to wellbeing. We found that people with varying degrees of dependence on coastal, marine, and terrestrial provisioning ecosystem services perceived cultural ecosystem services—particularly scenic beauty, biodiversity, and space to recreate—as very important to wellbeing, and also perceived increases in wellbeing following interventions to foment small-scale tourism and conservation. In terms of global ecosystem management, our findings imply that (1) aesthetics and recreation matter, even if these cultural ecosystem services appear more often in the literature, (2) more efforts may be taken to make cultural ecosystem services more accessible, (3) small-scale tourism and conservation interventions may be reconsidered as potential means to increase wellbeing, and (4) reframing ecosystem management as explicit efforts to augment wellbeing may help to garner more widespread support and participation.