Aesthetic and spiritual values of ecosystems: Recognising the ontological and axiological plurality of cultural ecosystem ‘services’

Nigel Cooper, Emily Brady, Helen Steen and Rosalind Bryce

Ecosystem Services, 2016, vol. 21, issue PB, 218-229

Abstract: This paper explores spiritual and aesthetic cultural values associated with ecosystems. We argue that these values are not best captured by instrumental or consequentialist thinking, and they are grounded in conceptions of nature that differ from the ecosystem services conceptual framework. To support our case, we engage with theories of the aesthetic and the spiritual, sample the discourse of ‘wilderness’, and provide empirical evidence from the recent UK National Ecosystem Assessment Follow-on Phase. We observe that accounts of spiritual and aesthetic value in Western culture are diverse and expressed through different media. We recognise that humans do benefit from their aesthetic and spiritual experiences of nature. However, aesthetic and spiritual understandings of the value of nature lead people to develop moral responsibilities towards nature and these are more significant than aesthetic and spiritual benefits from nature. We conclude that aesthetic and spiritual values challenge economic conceptions of ecosystems and of value (including existence value), and that an analysis of cultural productions and a plural-values approach are needed to evidence them appropriately for decision-making.

Keywords: Aesthetic values; Spiritual values; Cultural ecosystem services; Duties; Shared values; Concepts of nature (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (53)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212041616301942
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoser:v:21:y:2016:i:pb:p:218-229

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoser.2016.07.014

Access Statistics for this article

Ecosystem Services is currently edited by Leon C Braat

More articles in Ecosystem Services from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().