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Kimberly Nicholas

Kimberly Nicholas

Senior Lecturer, Docent

Kimberly Nicholas

Sociocultural valuation of ecosystem services for operational ecosystem management : mapping applications by decision contexts in Europe

Author

  • Ariane Walz
  • Katja Schmidt
  • Ana Ruiz-Frau
  • Kimberly A. Nicholas
  • Adéline Bierry
  • Aster de Vries Lentsch
  • Apostol Dyankov
  • Deirdre Joyce
  • Anja H. Liski
  • Nuria Marbà
  • Ines T. Rosário
  • Samantha S.K. Scholte

Summary, in English

Sociocultural valuation (SCV) of ecosystem services (ES) discloses the principles, importance or preferences expressed by people towards nature. Although ES research has increasingly addressed sociocultural values in past years, little effort has been made to systematically review the components of sociocultural valuation applications for different decision contexts (i.e. awareness raising, accounting, priority setting, litigation and instrument design). In this analysis, we investigate the characteristics of 48 different sociocultural valuation applications—characterised by unique combinations of decision context, methods, data collection formats and participants—across ten European case studies. Our findings show that raising awareness for the sociocultural value of ES by capturing people’s perspective and establishing the status quo, was found the most frequent decision context in case studies, followed by priority setting and instrument development. Accounting and litigation issues were not addressed in any of the applications. We reveal that applications for particular decision contexts are methodologically similar, and that decision contexts determine the choice of methods, data collection formats and participants involved. Therefore, we conclude that understanding the decision context is a critical first step to designing and carrying out fit-for-purpose sociocultural valuation of ES in operational ecosystem management.

Department/s

  • LUCSUS (Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies)
  • BECC: Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate

Publishing year

2019-06-20

Language

English

Pages

2245-2259

Publication/Series

Regional Environmental Change

Volume

19

Issue

8

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Springer

Topic

  • Environmental Sciences

Keywords

  • Ecosystem services
  • Local-to-regional scale
  • Operational use
  • Sociocultural valuation

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1436-3798