Ecosystems services research in action: reflexively valuing environments in the South Pacific

Abstract

Ecosystem services (ES) are heralded as an approach that communicates across disciplines and between researchers and resource managers, encouraging more environmentally sustainable human behavior. However, most studies presuppose that "values" are ontologically distinct from "ecosystem services" without examining what this framing enables and occludes about human and other-than-human relations. Through a reflexive research approach, we conduct a conventional photo elicitation ES survey among four groups in Moorea, French Polynesia, while also eliciting respondents' evaluations of the survey method, and documenting the method in action as participants interacted with it. Photo elicitation results suggest that fishers valued the subsistence fishery while scientists favored habitats, yet all stakeholders were concerned about the role of economic activities in contributing to environmental degradation. Yet, survey participants had difficulties with interpreting the photos of ecosystem services as intended, an indication that the ES framework commits to a nature-culture dualism and displaces other ways of ordering human and other-than-human relations, particularly those present throughout the Global South. We argue that ecosystem services research is best treated as a situated practice where researcher and research participants jointly produce intended and unintended results and outcomes.

Keywords

• cultural ecosystem services
• nature-cultural dualism
• pacific
• reflexive methods