Does everything reduce itself to an ecosystem service and I was wondering whether the overall things people value is more than the sum of the services that are involved? I was wondering how you within your framework deal with that particular problem?
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#1
It is a question that we have debated quite a bit. If I’m honest, I think there are limitations to the ecosystem services framework, it’s not the right tool for each and every situation although I think it offers a lot of benefits. When we started with open ended questions, it could be very difficult to align what our stakeholders told us with the ecosystem services framework. For one example, one of my master’s students did her research in Mallorca on seagrasses and when we asked open ended questions to visitors of Mallorca of why they were there, for them it was about quality time with family and friends. That was one of the top services and we found that very difficult to map onto an ecosystem services framework. So I can say we learned a lot from using the ecosystem services approach and we found it helpful. Many of the things stakeholders’ value could be connected to or were well explained by the ecosystem services framework but certainly not everything.