Ecosystem Services Cultural Services Conservation Areas

Conservation areas and Cultural heritage, in this context, refers to biophysical features, historical objects as well as traditional practices that are significant in some way to the present. We include species conservation within this category as representing the existence/bequest benefit of maintaining biological and physical assets for future generations. Examples include Aboriginal fish traps (Bark et al. 2014), Pacific lampreys (Close et al. 2002) or the Balinese subak system for water allocation (Lansing and Fox, 2011). One common method to assess these benefits is by measuring protected/conservation areas (Bottrill et al. 2014) as this is a signal that stakeholders have identified values worth preserving in these areas.

1. Create map with area boundaries: Begin by estimating the total area within the basin that has a designation as “protected” for their heritage values. Protected areas (PAs) may not be explicitly preserving water-related cultural services and so use judgment to determine whether to exclude these. The World Database on Protected Areas (https://www.protectedplanet.net/) offers a starting point, but this should be supplemented with information on other national/provincial/local recognized sites. If you elect to use area as the final metric, it would have to be scaled against what might be considered the “ideal” amount of protected area, which is a nontrivial task. There is also a range of management effectiveness within these areas, meaning that, in principle, some areas are better able to protect, and thus provide heritage values, than others. Finally, the cultural value of these sites is not necessarily a function of their size. In fact, their scarcity may contribute to their value. For these reasons, it is advisable to complete a second step in the assessment, by weighting by protected area (PA) according to the relative amount of cultural value they provide.

2. Weighting sites: There are various ways to assign weights to PAs. Participatory research is usually recommended so that stakeholders inform these differential values (Hernandez et al. 2013). As a starting point, weights could be assigned based on a hierarchy of PA classifications. For example, sites with the UNESCO World Heritage or Ramsar designations might be weighted highest, with descending weights assigned to nationally, provincially and locally recognized sites. However, consultation with stakeholders help refine this approach as well as provide insight into the specific features (e.g., water quality) that influence their perception of the relative value of a site. A summary of participatory methods for doing so can be found in Chan et al. (2012) and a more specific description of engaging stakeholders to quantify values from sites on a pre-identified map in Plieninger et al. (2013).