Theories of the deep: combining salience and network analyses to produce mental model visualizations of a coastal British Columbia food web

Arriving at shared mental models among multiple stakeholder groups can be crucial for successful management of contested social-ecological systems (SES). Academia can help by first eliciting stakeholders’ initial, often tacit, beliefs about a SES, and representing them in useful ways. We demonstrate a new recombination of techniques for this purpose, focusing specifically on tacit beliefs about food webs. Our approach combines freelisting and sorting techniques, salience analysis, and ultimately network analysis, to produce accessible visualizations of aggregate mental models that can then be used to facilitate discussion or generate further hypotheses about cognitive drivers of conflict. The case study we draw upon to demonstrate this technique is Clayoquot Sound UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, on the west coast of British Columbia, Canada. There, an immanent upsurge in the sea otter (Enhydra lutris) population, which competes with humans for shellfish, has produced tension among government managers, and both First Nations and non-First Nations residents. Our approach helps explain this tension by visually highlighting which trophic relationships appear most cognitively salient among the lay public. We also include speculative representations of models held by managers, and pairs of contrasting demographic subgroups, to further demonstrate potential uses of the method

Relational Values Resonate Broadly and Differently Than Intrinsic or Instrumental Values, or the New Ecological Paradigm

Value orientations used to explain or justify conservation have been rooted in arguments about how much and in what context to emphasize the intrinsic versus instrumental value of nature. Equally prominent are characterizations of beliefs known as the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP), often used to help explain pro-environmental behaviour. A recent alternative to these positions has been identified as ‘relational value’—broadly, values linking people and ecosystems via tangible and intangible relationships to nature as well as the principles, virtues and notions of a good life that may accompany these. This paper examines whether relational values are distinct from other value orientation and have potential to alleviate the intrinsic-instrumental debate. To test this possibility, we sought to operationalize the construct—relational values—by developing six relational statements. We ask: 1) Do the individual statements used to characterize relational values demonstrate internal coherence as either a single or multi-dimensional construct? 2) Do relational value statements (including those strongly stated) resonate with diverse populations? 3) Do people respond to relational value statements in a consistently different way than NEP scale statements? Data for this work is drawn from an online panel of residents of northeastern US (n = 400), as well as a sample of Costa Rican farmers (n = 253) and tourists in Costa Rica (n = 260). Results indicate relational values are distinct as a construct when compared to the NEP

Farmers\u27 relationship with nature: how and why it matters

Understanding why producers adopt best management practices (BMPs) is vital to protecting waterbodies such as the Salish Sea. While the economic bottom line is important to agricultural producers, they also make decisions through a socio-cultural lens influenced by their world-views and psychological biases. This presentation provides insights into economic, and non-economic motivations underling farming practices in British Columbia. We conducted 166 surveys and 30 on-farm interviews with agricultural producers across British Columbia (BC) as part of an assessment of BC’s Environmental Farm Plan program. The survey results find diverse motivations for farming. Non-economic motivations including lifestyle, reputation, and stewardship of the land, can be more important to producers than economic motivations. Given our interest in BMPs and stewardship, we sought to understand producers’ relationships with nature. We used a newly developed set of questions, known as the ‘relational values scale’, to measure dimensions of producers’ relationship with nature, including their responsibility to the land and their kinship with plants and animals. We find that relational values and motivations explain the variance in past adoption and future willingness to adopt BMPs. Also, producers’ motivations and values influence their participation and beliefs regarding incentive programs. By accounting for the diversity of ways producers are motivated by and value nature, incentive programs can better enable the widespread adoption of BMPs

Social preferences for adaptation measures to conserve Australian birds threatened by climate change

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.Debate about climate change adaptation for biodiversity, and the ethics and consequences of assisted colonization in particular, has polarized professional opinion but the views of the wider community are unknown. We tested four hypotheses about the acceptability of adaptation strategies among a sample of the Australian general public using a combination of direct questions and a choice experiment. We found that (1) among the 80% who wanted extinction avoided, increased in situ management of wild populations was preferred to captive breeding or assisted colonization, (2) preferences for adaptation strategies were not explained by gender, income, education or knowledge about birds, (3) genetically distinctive taxa were not actively preferred, (4) > 60% of respondents were content for conservation managers to make decisions about strategies rather than local communities or the general public. The results provide Australian policy makers with a mandate to bolster efforts to retain existing populations but suggest that assisted colonization and captive breeding could be accepted if essential

Sea otters, social justice, and ecosystem-service perceptions in Clayoquot Sound, Canada

In this paper, we take a first step towards better integrating social concerns into empirical ecosystem services (ES) work. We do this by adapting cognitive anthropological techniques to study the Clayoquot Sound social-ecological system, on Canada‘s Pacific coast. There, we used freelisting and ranking exercises to elicit measures of locals‘ ES values, and preferred food species, analyzing the data with ANTHROPAC. We consider the results in light of an ongoing ‗trophic cascade,‘ caused by the reintroduction and spread of sea otters (Enhydra lutris) along the island‘s coast. We find that, one, the standard academic ES typology is not well reflected in the mental categories participants (including trained ecologists) use to think about ES. Two, we find that based on current ecological models it is First Nations individuals, and women, specifically, who are most likely to perceive the most immediate ES losses from the trophic cascade, with the most certainty. The inverse holds true for non-First Nations, and men. This suggests current conservation practice in the region may be inadvertently perpetuating an experience of social injustice amongst historically marginalized demographic groups

Vegetation Management in Ontario's Forests: Survey Research of Public and Professional Perspectives

108 pagesOntario Ministry of Natural Resource

The forest has a story: Cultural ecosystem services in Kona, Hawai‘i

Understanding cultural dimensions of human/environment relationships is now widely seen as key to effective management, yet characterizing these dimensions remains a challenge. We report on an approach for considering the nonmaterial values associated with ecosystems, i.e., cultural ecosystem services. We applied the approach in Kona, Hawai‘i, using 30 semistructured interviews and 205 in-person surveys, striving to balance pragmatism and depth. We found spirituality, heritage, and identity-related values to be particularly salient, with expression of some of these values varying among respondents by ethnicity and duration of residence in Hawai‘i. Although people of various backgrounds reported strong spirituality and heritage-related values, Native Hawaiians rated heritage connections as deeper, and lifetime residents portrayed ecosystem-identity connections as more integral to their wellbeing than did people from other backgrounds. The approach also proved useful in identifying concerns not addressed in survey and interview prompts, including postcolonial issues, access to ecosystems, and relationships between people of different ethnic backgrounds. Although understanding these nonmaterial dimensions of human-ecosystem relationships can be complex, emerging techniques eliciting qualitative and quantitative data provide feasible ways of deepening that understanding

A protocol for eliciting nonmaterial values through a cultural ecosystem services frame

Conservation Biology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society for Conservation Biology. Stakeholders\u27 nonmaterial desires, needs, and values often critically influence the success of conservation projects. These considerations are challenging to articulate and characterize, resulting in their limited uptake in management and policy. We devised an interview protocol designed to enhance understanding of cultural ecosystem services (CES). The protocol begins with discussion of ecosystem-related activities (e.g., recreation, hunting) and management and then addresses CES, prompting for values encompassing concepts identified in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) and explored in other CES research. We piloted the protocol in Hawaii and British Columbia. In each location, we interviewed 30 individuals from diverse backgrounds. We analyzed results from the 2 locations to determine the effectiveness of the interview protocol in elucidating nonmaterial values. The qualitative and spatial components of the protocol helped characterize cultural, social, and ethical values associated with ecosystems in multiple ways. Maps and situational, or vignette-like, questions helped respondents articulate difficult-to-discuss values. Open-ended prompts allowed respondents to express a diversity of ecosystem-related values and proved sufficiently flexible for interviewees to communicate values for which the protocol did not explicitly probe. Finally, the results suggest that certain values, those mentioned frequently throughout the interview, are particularly salient for particular populations. The protocol can provide efficient, contextual, and place-based data on the importance of particular ecosystem attributes for human well-being. Qualitative data are complementary to quantitative and spatial assessments in the comprehensive representation of people\u27s values pertaining to ecosystems, and this protocol may assist in incorporating values frequently overlooked in decision making processes

A social-ecological approach to conservation planning: embedding social considerations

Many conservation plans remain unimplemented, in part because of insufficient consideration of the social processes that influence conservation decisions. Complementing social considerations with an integrated understanding of the ecology of a region can result in a more complete conservation approach. We suggest that linking conservation planning to a social-ecological systems (SES) framework can lead to a more thorough understanding of human-environment interactions and more effective integration of social considerations. By characterizing SES as a set of subsystems, and their interactions with each other and with external factors, the SES framework can improve our understanding of the linkages between social and ecological influences on the environment. Using this framework can help to identify socially and ecologically focused conservation actions that will benefit ecosystems and human communities, and assist in the development of more consistent evidence for evaluating conservation actions by comparing conservation case studies

Opinion: Why Protect Nature? Rethinking Values and the Environment

A cornerstone of environmental policy is the debate over protecting nature for humans’ sake (instrumental values) or for nature’s (intrinsic values) (1). We propose that focusing only on instrumental or intrinsic values may fail to resonate with views on personal and collective well-being, or “what is right,” with regard to nature and the environment. Without complementary attention to other ways that value is expressed and realized by people, such a focus may inadvertently promote worldviews at odds with fair and desirable futures. It is time to engage seriously with a third class of values, one with diverse roots and current expressions: relational values. By doing so, we reframe the discussion about environmental protection, and open the door to new, potentially more productive policy approaches