Linking ecosystem services and human-values theory

Optical Remote Sensing in Provisioning of Ecosystem-Functions Analysis-Review

Keeping natural ecosystems and their functions in the proper condition is necessary. One of the best contactless monitoring methods is remote sensing, especially optical remote sensing, which is used for vegetation applications. In addition to satellite data, data from ground sensors are necessary for validation or training in ecosystem-function quantification. This article focuses on the ecosystem functions associated with aboveground-biomass production and storage. The study contains an overview of the remote-sensing methods used for ecosystem-function monitoring, especially methods for detecting primary variables linked to ecosystem functions. The related studies are summarized in multiple tables. Most studies use freely available Sentinel-2 or Landsat imagery, with Sentinel-2 mostly producing better results at larger scales and in areas with vegetation. The spatial resolution is a key factor that plays a significant role in the accuracy with which ecosystem functions are quantified. However, factors such as spectral bands, algorithm selection, and validation data are also important. In general, optical data are usable even without supplementary data.

Climate values as predictor of climate change perception in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Background

Understanding public perceptions of climate change and how individuals perceive it is critical to developing effective communication strategies, policies, and socially robust technologies to relieve the risks of climate change. Despite the growing literature on climate change, until now, researchers in Arab countries have not been interested in studying citizens' perceptions of climate change or identifying the factors that predict it. This study aimed to identify and understand the nature and dynamics of public perceptions of climate change among Arab citizens and detect the level of climate change perception (CCP) and climate values (CV). Also, to detect the predictability of CCP from CV. As well as to reveal the differences between CCP and CV.

Methods

A random sample consisted of 465 participants (236 male and 229 female), residents of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; their ages ranged from 30 years and over. The Climate Change Perception Questionnaire (CCPQ) and Climate Values Questionnaire (CVQ) were applied online.

Results

The results found average levels of CCP and CV among the study sample. The results also revealed significant statistical differences in the CCP and CV due to gender in favor of females. As well as, there were significant statistical differences in the CCP due to the career field in favor of agriculture, engineering, and construction workers. Also, there were statistical differences in the emotional subscale of climate perception and CV due to age groups in favor of individuals whose ages ranged from 30 to 45 years. The results also found that the CV were a statistically significant predictor (1.2% of total variance) of climate perception.

Conclusion

The current study showed an average level of CCP and CV among individuals in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabian. The findings also concluded that individuals' perceptions of climate change are an individual response determined by the individual's gender, age, and career field and are affected by his values about climate. These findings shed light on the need for climate communications to increase the level of CCP and CV, especially among males and individuals in the age group over 45 years and individuals working in various career fields, whether education, engineering and construction, and commerce and business, etc.; to improve the engagement in mitigation and adaptation measures to climate change.

Marine protected areas in the context of climate change: key challenges for coastal social-ecological systems

Climate and ecological emergencies play out acutely in coastal systems with devastating impacts on biodiversity, and the livelihoods of communities and their cultural values. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are one of the key management and regulatory tools against biodiversity loss, playing a role in strengthening bio-cultural diversity and sustainability of coastal social-ecological systems. What is unclear though is the effectiveness of static protections under climate change as species move. Next to ecological uncertainty, regulatory uncertainty may play a role in weakening marine conservation. We asked whether MPAs are ecologically effective now and can sustain or improve to be so in the future while facing key climate and regulatory uncertainties. MPAs can support the protection of cultural values and have an impact on activities of sea-users and the sustainability of social-ecological systems. As such, questions surrounding their legitimacy under a changing climate and increased uncertainty are pertinent. We argue that MPA governance must be cognisant of the interdependency between natural and human systems and their joint reaction to climate change impacts based on an integrated, co-developed, and interdisciplinary approach. Focusing on the UK as a case study, we highlight some of the challenges to achieve effective, adaptive and legitimate governance of MPAs. This article is part of the theme issue 'Nurturing resilient marine ecosystems'.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on environmental values

Environmental values emphasize protection of the natural environment and promote behaviors that express this broad motivational goal. Thus, changes in these values at the community and individual levels are likely to have significant consequences for sustainability efforts. We examined the relative importance of environmental values in Australian adults at five time points over 4 years, including a period of stability (2017-2019) and a period of crisis (early and late in the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic). We found that the relative importance of environmental values increased from 2017 to 2019 and decreased during the pandemic. Importantly, the decrease in 2020 was lessened by individuals' connection with nature.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11625-022-01151-w.

The influence of ecosystems services depletion to climate change adaptation efforts in Africa

Climate change is one of the major challenges societies round the world face at present. Apart from efforts to achieve a reduction of emissions of greenhouse gases so as to mitigate the problem, there is a perceived need for adaptation initiatives urgently. Ecosystems are known to play an important role in climate change adaptation processes, since some of the services they provide, may reduce the impacts of extreme events and disturbance, such as wildfires, floods, and droughts. This role is especially important in regions vulnerable to climate change such as the African continent, whose adaptation capacity is limited by many geographic and socio-economic constraints. In Africa, interventions aimed at enhancing ecosystem services may play a key role in supporting climate change adaptation efforts. In order to shed some light on this aspect, this paper reviews the role of ecosystems services and investigates how they are being influenced by climate change in Africa. It contains a set of case studies from a sample of African countries, which serve the purpose to demonstrate the damages incurred, and how such damages disrupt ecosystem services. Based on the data gathered, some measures which may assist in fostering the cause of ecosystems services are listed, so as to cater for a better protection of some of the endangered Africa ecosystems, and the services they provide.

Public support for restoration: Does including ecosystem services as a goal engage a different set of values and attitudes than biodiversity protection alone?

The ecosystem services concept has come into wide use in conservation and natural resource management, partly due to its appeal as an anthropocentric rationale for protecting and restoring nature. Proponents of the ecosystem services concept expect that presenting these arguments alongside biodiversity arguments should lead to a broader base of support for conservation. This raises the question of whether support for activities that ensure ecosystem service provision relates to different sets of core values, or environmental attitudes, than support for biodiversity protection. We surveyed adult Australians to evaluate the influence of values and attitudes on willingness to pay for different habitat restoration outcomes. We hypothesized that when restoration is framed with an anthropocentric rationale (such as ecosystem service provision), support for restoration would align more strongly with anthropocentric or self-centered values and attitudes. Specifically, we tested if preference for ecosystem service benefits over biodiversity attributes, as indicated by willingness to pay in different restoration scenarios, is more strongly associated with self-enhancing (Egoistic) than self-transcending (Altruistic and Biospheric) values, and more associated with a pro-use attitude towards nature (Utilization) than an anti-use attitude (Preservation). We found that support for habitat restoration is generally based on ecocentric values and attitudes, but that positive associations between pro-environmental behavior and Egoistic values emerge when emphasis is placed on ecosystem service outcomes. Individuals scoring higher on Egoistic/Utilization metrics were also more likely to anticipate disservices from restoration. Attitudes predicted behavioral intention (willingness to pay) better than core values. Our results support the notion that the ecosystem services concept garners nontraditional backers and broadens the appeal of ecological restoration.

Interventions to help coral reefs under global change-A complex decision challenge

Climate change is impacting coral reefs now. Recent pan-tropical bleaching events driven by unprecedented global heat waves have shifted the playing field for coral reef management and policy. While best-practice conventional management remains essential, it may no longer be enough to sustain coral reefs under continued climate change. Nor will climate change mitigation be sufficient on its own. Committed warming and projected reef decline means solutions must involve a portfolio of mitigation, best-practice conventional management and coordinated restoration and adaptation measures involving new and perhaps radical interventions, including local and regional cooling and shading, assisted coral evolution, assisted gene flow, and measures to support and enhance coral recruitment. We propose that proactive research and development to expand the reef management toolbox fast but safely, combined with expedient trialling of promising interventions is now urgently needed, whatever emissions trajectory the world follows. We discuss the challenges and opportunities of embracing new interventions in a race against time, including their risks and uncertainties. Ultimately, solutions to the climate challenge for coral reefs will require consideration of what society wants, what can be achieved technically and economically, and what opportunities we have for action in a rapidly closing window. Finding solutions that work for coral reefs and people will require exceptional levels of coordination of science, management and policy, and open engagement with society. It will also require compromise, because reefs will change under climate change despite our best interventions. We argue that being clear about society's priorities, and understanding both the opportunities and risks that come with an expanded toolset, can help us make the most of a challenging situation. We offer a conceptual model to help reef managers frame decision problems and objectives, and to guide effective strategy choices in the face of complexity and uncertainty.

A novel telecoupling framework to assess social relations across spatial scales for ecosystem services research

Access to ecosystem services and influence on their management are structured by social relations among actors, which often occur across spatial scales. Such cross-scale social relations can be analysed through a telecoupling framework as decisions taken at local scales are often shaped by actors at larger scales. Analyzing these cross-scale relations is critical to create effective and equitable strategies to manage ecosystem services. Here, we develop an analytical framework -i.e. the 'cross-scale influence-dependence framework'- to facilitate the analysis of power asymmetries and the distribution of ecosystem services among the beneficiaries. We illustrate the suitability of this framework through its retrospective application across four case studies, in which we characterize the level of dependence of multiple actors on a particular set of ecosystem services, and their influence on decision-making regarding these services across three spatial scales. The 'cross-scale influence-dependence framework' can improve our understanding of distributional and procedural equity and thus support the development of policies for sustainable management of ecosystem services.

Our Environmental Value Orientations Influence How We Respond to Climate Change

People variably respond to global change in their beliefs, behaviors, and grief (associated with losses incurred). People that are less likely to believe in climate change, adopt pro-environmental behaviors, or report ecological grief are assumed to have different psycho-cultural orientations, and do not perceive changes in environmental condition or any impact upon themselves. We test these assumptions within the context of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), a region currently experiencing significant climate change impacts in the form of coral reef bleaching and increasingly severe cyclones. We develop knowledge of environmental cultural services with the Environmental Schwartz Value Survey (ESVS) into four human value orientations that can explain individuals’ environmental beliefs and behaviors: biospheric (i.e., concern for environment), altruistic (i.e., concern for others, and intrinsic values), egoistic (i.e., concern for personal resources) and hedonic values (i.e., concern for pleasure, comfort, esthetic, and spirituality). Using face-to-face quantitative survey techniques, where 1,934 residents were asked to agree or disagree with a range of statements on a scale of 1–10, we investigate people’s (i) environmental values and value orientations, (ii) perceptions of environmental condition, and (iii) perceptions of impact on self. We show how they relate to the following climate change responses; (i) beliefs at a global and local scale, (ii) participation in pro-environmental behaviors, and (iii) levels of grief associated with ecological change, as measured by respective single survey questions. Results suggest that biospheric and altruistic values influenced all climate change responses. Egoistic values were only influential on grief responses. Perception of environmental change was important in influencing beliefs and grief, and perceptions of impact on self were only important in influencing beliefs. These results suggest that environmental managers could use people’s environmental value orientations to more effectively influence climate change responses toward environmental stewardship and sustainability. Communications that target or encourage altruism (through understanding and empathy), biospherism (through information on climate change impacts on the environment), and egoism (through emphasizing the benefits, health and wellbeing derived from a natural resource in good condition), could work.

Do financial incentives motivate conservation on private land?

Financial incentives may aid in conservation if they broaden the numbers and types of landowners who engage in protection and conservation management on private land. We examined the hypotheses that financial incentives (1) encourage participation of people with lower autonomous motivation towards conservation and lower self-transcendence (i.e. benevolence and universalism) values compared to participants in similar programmes without such incentives; (2) enable more on-ground works and activities; and (3) enhance feelings of competence and autonomy with respect to conservation actions. We surveyed 193 landowners in private land conservation programmes in Tasmania, only some of whom had received financial incentives. All of these landowners had high self-transcendence values, and autonomous motivation towards the environment. Owners of large properties and participants with higher self-enhancement values, lower self-transcendence values and lower autonomous motivation towards the environment were slightly more likely to engage in incentive programmes. However, people who received funding did not report more conservation actions than people in programmes without incentives. Owners of larger properties receiving incentives reported fewer conservation actions. Thus financial incentives probably recruited a few into nature conservation who may not have otherwise engaged, but did not result in a more intensive level of conservation management. Our results caution against the blanket-use of incentives amongst landowners who may already have values and motivations consistent with environmental action, and point to the need for further research on the socio-psychological characteristics of landowners, to examine the contextual factors that influence the effects of conservation payments.

Community Perceptions of Ecosystem Services and the Management of Mt. Marsabit Forest in Northern Kenya

Identifying and characterizing ecosystem services (ES) has been shown to have an important role in sustainable natural resource management. However, understanding communities’ perspectives is critical in determining opportunities and constraints for ES management in multi-use landscapes. To do so, a study was conducted around Mt. Marsabit forest, a multiuse landscape in Kenya. Using stratification, participants from 11 administrative locations adjacent to the forest were selected. A total of 265 households were interviewed using semi-structured questionnaires. The study analyzed local communities’ perceptions of ES derived from the forest and their involvement in its management. Respondents identified trees, forage, water, fallback land cultivation, aesthetic enjoyment, and shade as key services derived from the forest. However, overexploitation of forest resources has led to degradation. Degradation and insecurity were perceived as the major threats to the ecosystem. The local communities were minimally involved in developing governance structures or management of this forest. Family size, education level, and age were important predictors of level of involvement in management. Lack of involvement in the forest management may have largely contributed to the unsustainable extraction of resources by local communities. We suggest that meaningful engagement of communities in the management of this forest will be critical to its sustainability.

Using people's perceptions of ecosystem services to guide modeling and management efforts

Although ecosystem service (ES) approaches are showing promise in moving environmental decision-making processes toward better outcomes for ecosystems and people, ES modeling (i.e., tools that estimate the supply of nature's benefits given biophysical constraints) and valuation methods (i.e., tools to understand people's demand for nature's benefits) largely remain disconnected, preventing them from reaching their full potential to guide management efforts. Here, we show how knowledge of environmental perceptions explicitly links these two lines of research. We examined how a diverse community of people with varying degrees of dependencies on coastal and marine ecosystems in southern Chile perceived the importance of different ecosystem services (ESs), their states (e.g., doing well, needs improvement), and management options. Our analysis indicates that an understanding of people's perceptions may usefully guide ecosystem modeling and management efforts by helping to: (1) define which ESs to enter into models and tradeoff analyses (i.e., what matters most?), (2) guide where to focus management efforts (i.e., what matters yet needs improvement?), and, (3) anticipate potential support or controversy surrounding management interventions. Finally, we discuss the complexity inherent in defining which ESs matter most to people. We propose that future research address how to design ES approaches and assessments that are more inclusive to diverse world views and notions of human wellbeing.

Long-term evolution of preferences for conservation projects in the Seto Inland Sea, Japan: a comprehensive analytic framework

Background

The long-term evolution of preferences for nature is crucial to conservation projects, given their targeted long-term horizons. Neglecting to account for this evolution could lead to undesirable human–nature relationships. This study compares the willingness to pay (WTP) for three coastal conservation projects in the Seto Inland Sea, Japan, at two distant time points (1998 and 2015), and tests for temporal transferability. It also compares protest responses that are often overlooked in WTP practices, regardless of their utility for conservation projects.

Methods

Given the lack of a unanimous protocol for protest response analyses and their use in estimating WTP, we propose a comprehensive analytic framework that integrates the two.

Results

We show that, while preferences for coastal ecosystem services were overall stable and temporarily transferable, the preferences for certain aspects of conservation projects considerably changed.

Discussion

This suggests the need to reconsider the projects’ scheme, not the ecosystem services themselves, along with the clarification of beneficiaries and those responsible for past destruction. We conclude by suggesting further studies with a focus on regions experiencing significant social-ecological changes, such as developing countries, by exploiting the rich asset of existing valuations. This could contribute to the database for more temporal-sensitive ecosystem service valuations utilized for benefit transfers.

Biodiversity in the Anthropocene: prospects and policy

Meeting the ever-increasing needs of the Earth's human population without excessively reducing biological diversity is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity, suggesting that new approaches to biodiversity conservation are required. One idea rapidly gaining momentum-as well as opposition-is to incorporate the values of biodiversity into decision-making using economic methods. Here, we develop several lines of argument for how biodiversity might be valued, building on recent developments in natural science, economics and science-policy processes. Then we provide a synoptic guide to the papers in this special feature, summarizing recent research advances relevant to biodiversity valuation and management. Current evidence suggests that more biodiverse systems have greater stability and resilience, and that by maximizing key components of biodiversity we maximize an ecosystem's long-term value. Moreover, many services and values arising from biodiversity are interdependent, and often poorly captured by standard economic models. We conclude that economic valuation approaches to biodiversity conservation should (i) account for interdependency and (ii) complement rather than replace traditional approaches. To identify possible solutions, we present a framework for understanding the foundational role of hard-to-quantify 'biodiversity services' in sustaining the value of ecosystems to humanity, and then use this framework to highlight new directions for pure and applied research. In most cases, clarifying the links between biodiversity and ecosystem services, and developing effective policy and practice for managing biodiversity, will require a genuinely interdisciplinary approach.

Why social values cannot be changed for the sake of conservation

The hope for creating widespread change in social values has endured among conservation professionals since early calls by Aldo Leopold for a "land ethic." However, there has been little serious attention in conservation to the fields of investigation that address values, how they are formed, and how they change. We introduce a social-ecological systems conceptual approach in which values are seen not only as motivational goals people hold but also as ideas that are deeply embedded in society's material culture, collective behaviors, traditions, and institutions. Values define and bind groups, organizations, and societies; serve an adaptive role; and are typically stable across generations. When abrupt value changes occur, they are in response to substantial alterations in the social-ecological context. Such changes build on prior value structures and do not result in complete replacement. Given this understanding of values, we conclude that deliberate efforts to orchestrate value shifts for conservation are unlikely to be effective. Instead, there is an urgent need for research on values with a multilevel and dynamic view that can inform innovative conservation strategies for working within existing value structures. New directions facilitated by a systems approach will enhance understanding of the role values play in shaping conservation challenges and improve management of the human component of conservation.

Who Cares about Forests and Why? Individual Values Attributed to Forests in a Post-Frontier Region in Amazonia

Understanding the multiple ways people value forests is important, as individual values regarding nature have been shown to partly determine willingness to participate in conservation initiatives. As individual values are influenced by past experiences, the way people value forests may be related to the ecosystem services they use and receive. We here aim to investigate if people value forests because of material and non-material benefits forest provide (material and non-material values), and if these values are defined by previous experiences associated with using forest resources and having frequent contact with forests. By interviewing 363 residents across 20 landscapes varying in forest cover in a post-frontier region in Amazonia, we evaluated: (1) if the use of forest resources-especially bushmeat, important for sustenance and cash income in virtually all tropical forests-is associated with attributing higher material value to forests; (2) whether the contact with forest (estimated by local forest cover and visits to forests) is associated with attributing higher non-material value to forests. As expected, respondents from households where hunting occurs and bushmeat consumption is more frequent attributed higher material value to forests, and those living in more deforested landscapes and that visited forests less often attributed lower non-material value to forests. The importance of bushmeat in shaping the way people value forests suggests that encouraging the sustainable use of this product will encourage forest conservation. Results also point to a potential dangerous reinforcing cycle: low forest cover and the loss of contact with forests may erode forest values and facilitate further deforestation. Engaging rural communities in forest conservation initiatives is challenging yet urgent in degraded landscapes, although harnessing appreciation for bushmeat could offer a starting point.