Natural Environments and Cultural Services

Natural environments provide us with a range of material benefits, from the provision of hydroelectric power to the capture and storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Yet some of the benefits we derive from them are better described as 'cultural' rather than 'material'. For instance, a certain wetland might provide inspiration to - and hence benefit - landscape photographers and water-colour artists. A desert might provide a religious ascetic with an emblem of God's power and divine simplicity. A certain area of upland might contribute to the sense of identity of a particular alpine community.

Organisations such as DEFRA and the US Environmental Protection Agency tend to conceive of such benefits as 'cultural services' that natural environments provide to human beings. They typically hold, moreover, that those environments that yield important cultural services are, all things being equal, of higher value than those that provide less important ones.

In the first, 'critical' half of the project, I will explore the limitations of the practice of evaluating natural (or at least semi-natural) environments on the basis of the cultural services they provide. In particular, I will develop and appraise the charge that this practice misrepresents the kinds of benefits we derive from such environments.

To appreciate the force of this charge, consider the example of a hill farmer for whom a certain area of upland is pervaded by personal significance. These, she thinks, are the same hills that my parents knew, and their parents before them. The hills do not just provide her with material benefits such as shelter and land on which to rear sheep. They give her a sense of the wider family- and community-orientated narratives within which her own life has meaning. Yet it is not clear that this non-material benefit can be accurately described as a service. On the one hand, talk of services suggests the existence of alternative 'service providers'. For the farmer, however, there are no alternative providers. 'It is these hills,' she might insist, 'that tell the story of my community.' On the other hand, the hills are not a means to the end of the farmer obtaining a sense of the narratives within which her life has meaning. The hills are partly constitutive of that end, which is to say that one cannot provide an adequate description of the relevant narratives without referring to the upland environment within which they were played out. Hence in such cases - in those, as I put it, when an environment provides certain 'constitutive' benefits - there are reasons to think that the environment is not properly conceived as providing a cultural service.

In the second, 'constructive' half of the project, I will explain how the cultural value of natural environments should be conceived in cases like that of the fictitious hill farmer. I will defend the claim that in such instances environments benefit people, not simply by giving them pleasure, but by providing the foci of certain practices (such as farming, bird-watching or fell running) which help to give their lives meaning. Furthermore, I will argue that it is in many cases this capacity to confer meaning that accounts for the distinctive cultural value of such environments.

Ultimately, the project will, I believe, transform the way that we understand the value of woods, wetlands and other natural environments. It will show that they can be of value, not simply because they provide material benefits such as food, fuel and flood defences, but because they contribute to the overall 'meaningfulness' of our lives.

The project is likely to have the following impacts on non-academic communities:

(i) As noted under 'Research Context', there has been some critical discussion of the cultural services approach in academic journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The project's third output - an essay published in the magazine Resurgence & Ecologist - will introduce the relevant issues to a much wider audience and, in so doing, develop public awareness and understanding of the methods by which natural environments are evaluated.

(ii) As explained under 'Pathways to Impact', the 2014 workshop will bring together a multi-disciplinary and multinational group of academic researchers. But the participants will also include representatives of local environmental organisations, including:

--- Ewan Allinson - Vice Chair of the Heart of Teesdale Landscape Partnership (HOTLP) and Director of the Stone Academy
--- Charlotte Hursey - Programme Development Officer for HOTLP
--- Paul Frodsham - Historic Environment Officer for the North Pennines branch of the National Association for Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (NAAONB)

Each of these individuals is keen to collaborate on the proposed project. Furthermore, the organisations they represent are centrally concerned with the sorts of issues I will consider in my research. The NAAONB emphasises the importance of identifying and evaluating the cultural services provided by the areas that fall within its purview, while the HOTLP, for its part, is concerned with the relations between the ecology and geology of the Teesdale area and its inhabitants' sense of identity. Although it is too early to finalise the specifics, it is therefore very likely that the 2014 workshop (and the project from which it stems) will have an impact upon the thinking and practice of these organisations - by, for instance, shaping the way that issues pertaining to cultural value are presented in their public-facing literature (both printed and online). I already have strong links with both the HOTLP and the NAAONB. Since these links will continue beyond June 2014, I will be in a position to monitor the resulting impacts.

(iii) The project has the potential to influence environmental policymakers and, through them, environmental policy. There are two potential impacts here. First, the 2014 workshop will be attended by some of the researchers who are currently drafting the 'Cultural Services' section of Phase Two of the UK National Ecosystem Assessment, the results of which will form the basis of DEFRA's future environmental policies. Through influencing them, it therefore has the potential to influence how the topic of nature's cultural value is presented in government publications such as the successors to DEFRA's 2011 White Paper, 'The Natural Choice: securing the value of nature'. Second, the project's results will be forwarded for the consideration of the members of DEFRA's Ecosystems Knowledge Network (of which I am a member). Through influencing the members of that network, the project is likely to have an impact upon the policies and practices, not just of DEFRA, but of the various organisations that those members represent.