Dr Jasper Kenter & Prof Mark Reed

Shared and cultural values of ecosystems

What are cultural ecosystem services?

“The individual or shared benefits to human well-being that arise from interactions between environmental spaces (e.g. gardens, parks, beaches and landscapes) and cultural practices (e.g. gardening, walking, painting and watching wildlife).”

What are cultural ecosystem services?

How can we measure cultural ecosystem services?

Indicators of the supply of different types of environmental spaces

Arts and Humanities perspectiveson cultural values

Qualitative data• Texts • Stories• Performance• Films• Artwork• Photography• Maps

Gray and Coleridge’s tours through the Lake District as recorded in their texts

What are shared values?

• The values that bind us together as communities, societies and cultures (‘communal’, ‘societal’ and ‘cultural’ values)

• Our moral principles and overarching life goals (‘transcendental’ values)

• Other-regarding values and values in relation to society

• The values that arise from deliberation and group-based decisions (‘deliberated’ and ‘group’ values)

Key findings

• Shared values resulting from deliberative, group-based valuation are different from individual values. Case study evidence suggests that they are more informed, considered, confident and reflective of participants’ deeper-held, transcendental values

Key findings

• It is particularly important to consider shared values when dealing with uncertainty & complexity, where values are likely to be subtle & implicit (e.g. cultural services), and for issues that are contested and/or have large numbers of different stakeholders

Key findings

• A mixed method approach is required to elicit the multiple dimensions of shared values and to translate deeper-held, transcendental values into contextual values and preferences

Key findings

• Deliberative and social learning processes help people to understand the values held by others; they can lead to increased sharing of values and/or to greater acceptance of the decisions emerging from such processes

What is deliberation?• Searching for & acquiring information,

gaining knowledge (by learning), and forming reasoned opinions

• Expressing logical/reasoned opinions (not exerting power/coercion) through dialogue

• Identifying & critically evaluating options that might address a problem

• Integrating insights from deliberation to determine a preferred option, which is well informed and reasoned

Social learning

Social learning partly explains how deliberation works– A change in the relationship between a

person and the world (i.e. change in understanding)

– This change in understanding occurs through social interaction

– The learning occurs across more than one person, at the scale of social units or communities of practice

Extent to which deliberation & social learning leads to greater sharing of values depends on:– Diversity of initial values in a group– How effectively values are made explicit in the

deliberation (may be easier for some participants to do than others)

– How deeply held those values are– How effectively the process is designed and

facilitated (ensuring opportunities for deliberation between participants and managing power dynamics)

– Length of time over which deliberation occurs

Often the value of deliberation is not in sharing values and reaching consensus, but in understanding the diversity of values, appreciating the reasons behind other people’s values, helping people to “live with” decisions that emerge from the process

Handbook for decision-makers

• Overview of key deliberative, psychometric and interpretive methods for assessing shared values

• Different stages of the policy cycle• Indication of resources/timescales needed• Examples at different scales and short case

studies to demon- strate how methods can be combined

www.lwec.org/sharedvalues

More information

• Video• Handbook for decision-makers• Full report• Summary

www.lwec.org.uk/sharedvalues