Participatory mapping of ecosystem services for marine spatial planning in Vancouver Island, Canada

Background/Question/Methods

Monetary values and biophysical features tend to dominate spatial planning priorities, yet intangible cultural and social values have a large role to play in decision-making. If such considerations are not addressed explicitly, they may be ignored or represented poorly in spatial planning processes. To foster explicit inclusion of intangible values alongside material values connected to ecosystems, we elicited the verbal articulation, spatial identification and a quantitative measure of marine-related values and threats across the seascape of northern Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Our research questions were: (1) Do our interviews involving nautical charts and semi-structured interview prompts enable or impede the elicitation of intangible values? (2) What categories of ecosystem benefits did participants identify as most important? (3) Are spatial distributions of monetary values correlated with that of non-monetary values and environmental threats?

Results/Conclusions

While maps were provocative and all interviewees verbally identified ecosystem-related benefits and values, a sizable minority of interviewees (30%) refused to assign quantified non-monetary value to specific locations and others (16%) chose not to identify specific locations of non-monetary importance. Refusal justifications included 1) it was not appropriate to spatially isolate one location due to the interconnectedness of the marine ecosystem; 2) fear that the information, particularly regarding culturally sensitive areas, would be misused in planning processes; and 3) many values and benefits, especially intangible ones, cannot be pinned to discrete locations; and 4) some interviewees preferred gradients and would not draw hard boundaries around important areas. Despite some refusals, the majority of interviewees did spatially identify and assign relative value to locations. We found that people allocated the highest non-monetary values to places notable for wildlife, followed by outdoor recreation areas, then cultural heritage sites. Our spatial analysis revealed significant pair-wise overlap among monetary, non-monetary and threat distributions, but also sizable deviations.  While recognizing limitations to representing non-monetary values spatially and quantitatively (e.g., some intangible values are better expressed verbally rather than tied to a location or assigned a number), these methods offer an innovative approach to cataloging and mapping ecosystem services to inform spatial planning.