The Routledge Handbook of Cultural Ecosystem Services

The Routledge Handbook of Cultural Ecosystem Services provides an overview of Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES), which are the nonmaterial aspects of benefits that people derive from nature. These diverse and multifaceted contributions can include experiences, capabilities, and identities, among others. The Handbook addresses how these CES are valued, how they reflect human-nonhuman relationships, and what roles they can play in improved human well-being, ecosystem management, and trajectories towards sustainability.

This Handbook presents a wide array of perspectives on the roles CES can play in understanding relationships to nature, and on how those relationships might translate into policy. The Handbook includes philosophical approaches to CES, typologies and classifications of types of CES, and case studies of places, people, policies and projects engaging CES. Across seven distinctive Parts, the chapters deliver a number of important practical lessons on how to understand, measure, and value CES, and use examples and applications from around the world, including how CES apply across different biomes. The Handbook also includes a selection of compelling artworks that represent CES in different cultural contexts. The 91 authors represent 19 different countries, providing a rich range of experiences, including a strong focus on the Global South.

This book can serve as a comprehensive guide to researchers who are new to CES and wish to understand more about the field, and as a set of go-to instructions for experienced CES researchers. It can also inform policymakers who wish to better incorporate CES into their work.

The Open Access version of this book, available at , has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license

"Cultural ecosystem services are the glue that binds people and nature together. Charting its way through an important, if often diffusing emerging, field of knowledge, this authoritative handbook will be an essential guide for researchers and practitioners concerned with the cultural dimensions of natural resource management."

Professor Rob Fish, Imperial College London

"The Handbook of Cultural Ecosystem Services is an essential tool to illuminate the vital, yet often overlooked, intangible benefits humans gain from nature. By providing a global perspective and diverse examples, it sets the foundation for future research while offering guidance for integrating culture into environmental policy and practice."

Victoria Reyes-García, ICREA Research Professor at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB)

“How do we do conservation differently, to pursue well-being of people and nature together? This rich volume presents a multitude of approaches, tools and perspectives addressing cultural dimensions and meaningful reciprocal human-nature relations as a key way forward. An important resource to guide research, policy and practice.”

Maria Tengö, Professor, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, and the Nature College Special Chair in Human-Nature Relationships in the Anthropocene at Wageningen University

"Extractive, profit-based, relationships between people and nature support our current civilizational crisis. This book offers a refreshing focus on the deeply rooted and very diverse non-material benefits to people from nature across the world. It provides a roadmap to better weave individuals, communities and non-humans through reciprocal and just relations."

Patricia Balvanera, Researcher at the Institute of Research in Ecosystems of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and Professor of Biology and Human Well-being

Pamela D. McElwee is trained as an anthropologist and forester and is a Professor of Human Ecology at Rutgers University. Her work focuses on human dimensions of environmental change related to biodiversity and climate. She has served key roles in science-policy assessments, including the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and US National Climate Assessment.

Karen E. Allen is a cultural anthropologist who works in conservation and sustainability science. Her research focuses on the sustainability of social-ecological systems and the interaction between environmental policy and human decision-making. She is an Associate Professor at Furman University.

Rachelle K. Gould is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work involves social science, the humanities, and ecology. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Vermont. Her research explores the relationship between people and ecosystems and focuses on (1) environmental values, including Cultural Ecosystem Services and relational values; (2) lifelong and life-wide environmental learning and its relationship to behavior; and (3) how issues of equity, inclusion, and justice permeate environmental issues.

Minna Hsu is a human geographer whose work focuses on Indigenous peoples' rights and knowledges in natural resource and disaster management. She is the co-lead of the IUCN Cultural Practices and Ecosystem Management Thematic Group (Commission on Ecosystem Management).

Jun He is a Professor of human ecology at the School of Ethnology and Sociology, Yunnan University, China. His research interests lie in global value chains, Indigenous knowledge, non-timber forest products, agroforestry and forest governance.

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