OUR OCEAN HAS VALUESue Ranger

Education and Engagement Manager, Conservation at Marine Conservation Society

Increasingly people arerecognising the need tounderstand and takeaccount of the valuespeople attach to the naturalsettings they live and workin or visit when they can

t happened again, the rolling eyes and wry smilewhen I mentioned Ecosystem Services andconservation in the same sentence. Admittedly,my tea companion gave a little ground when I told

him that my interest is in Cultural Ecosystem Servicesand trying to better understand, communicate and takeaccount of people’s love of the coast and sea and thebenefits they get from time spent in natural places.“The only part that isn’t evil,” he replied.

I often find myself confronted with this sort of responsewhen I use the language of Ecosystem Services to talkabout non-monetary value – the ways in which peopleuse and benefit from the environment that have no realbasis in the traded economy.

We have one planet. One Ocean. The evidence ofits value, across disciplines, is clear, convincing andgrowing. We know that unless we ensure that ourocean is clean, healthy and productive, our futurehealth and wellbeing will be compromised.

Our wellbeing is underpinned by our health, byhaving clean air and clean water, by being able toprovide for ourselves and our families – and in oursociety that means having a job or a way to earnmoney. But our wellbeing is also affected by a greatdeal that is less tangible and harder to measure.

It turns out that spending time in natural settingsenhances our sense of wellbeing and that peoplewho spend time at the coast or by the sea are notonly healthier, but happier too.

Over the past three or four years, the CalousteGulbenkian Foundation has been supporting MCSwork around value and particularly exploring waysof measuring a sense of wellbeing. One outcomeof this is a developing tool to measure subjectivewellbeing. It draws on existing literature and could

enable us to measure the relative value of environmentsin terms of a number of parameters including people’ssense of connectedness with nature, their aestheticappreciation, sense of place/belonging, spirituality andsocial bonding.

We have been using this measure as part of aGulbenkian funded ‘experiment’ in taking a valuesbased approach to participatory decision-making inEast Anglia, alongside detailed qualitative interviews.

Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of spending a coupleof hours with the last licensed fisherman working offthe beach at Sizewell in Suffolk, in the shadow of thenuclear power station. He is a gentleman named NoelCattermole and he fishes single handed in an under 7mwooden boat.

Unsurprisingly Noel’s responses to the wellbeingquestions were all strongly positive.

He said to me: “Whoever put this together knows whatit means to love the sea!”

In fact responses were strongly positive across allparticipants, from shrimp trawlers to marine educators.

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Crab hunting in Anstruther, Fife Abandoned lido at Beaumaris, Anglesey Enjoying fish'n'chipsat Bexhill-on-Sea

I

What excites me about this experiment is that taking avalues based approach is testing what happens when,instead of starting from our points of difference, westart from our point of convergence – our shared,deeply held value of the ocean.

There is no denying that we live in a system which iseconomically driven – life and money are inextricablylinked – but looking beyond how we secure the financialresources to keep body and soul together brings us intoperhaps more interesting and fertile territory.   

I have worked in conservation, almost exclusivelymarine conservation, for over 20 years. Without fail,the most productive and impactful moments havebeen where people – practitioners, resource users,academics, whoever they may be – identify andmutually recognise shared value. Seeing the commonground not only makes it possible to build respect, trustand positive dialogue, but it allows people to focusmore swiftly on finding solutions instead of becoming

bogged down in mistrust, uncertainty, fear and conflict.The shared values that bind people to the environmentand to each other are often more deeply held, lessfrequently expressed things that form the guidingprinciples in people’s lives.

Why does a fisherman feel there is no other job in theworld he could do? Why do I feel an immediate senseof peace and wellbeing when I let my eyes go to theocean horizon?  

Increasingly people are recognising the need tounderstand and take account of the values peopleattach to the natural settings they live and work inor visit when they can. Places that inspire a desire forfuture generations to know, enjoy and be connectedwith the environment. Settings that instill a sense ofplace and of belonging, of beauty and learning. Thisstuff is hard to quantify – so while the valuationstudies proliferate, work to value what really matterslags behind, resulting in imbalance and inequalityin the types of values that come into play whenimportant decisions are made about the stewardshipof natural resources.

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… looking beyond howwe secure the financialresources to keep bodyand soul together bringsus into perhaps moreinteresting and fertileterritory

Kayaking on the Norfolk Broads

Noel Cattermole, fisherman at Sizewell, Suffolk

Community based shellfish farming, Somerset

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In the eyes of many the language of EcosystemServices has been hijacked by economics; for manypeople it tells a story only of trying to put a price onthe environment and monetize its functions. This setsoff all sorts of alarm bells. If you put a price on theenvironment, it suggests that it can be bought or soldor even worse that having a fistful of notes in your handis somehow equivalent to having an ancient woodland,a reef, a kelp forest or a saltmarsh teeming with birdlife.

My reading of Ecosystem Services is that it includesall services, benefits and value that our environmentdelivers. These are defined as the benefits provided byecosystems that contribute to making human life bothpossible and worth living. It is in understanding whatmakes our lives worth living that we need to answerquestions about feelings and experiences that arepriceless, that cannot be bought or sold, that are deeplyheld and extremely valuable – the things wrapped upin Cultural Ecosystem Services.

In policy and decision-making the language of ESseems to be taking a firm hold. We can either standby and let the narrative be dominated by monetizationand economics or grasp the opportunity to develop aframework for a credible language which could be usedto better understand, capture, communicate and takeaccount of value in the most holistic sense.

In the Marine CoLABoration we have come togetheraround common ground – a shared recognition of themultifaceted value of the ocean and the potential fordriving change through a values based approach.The potential in that excites me.

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Calouste Gulbenkian FoundationUK Branch50 Hoxton SquareLondon N1 6PB+44 (0)20 7012 1400info@gulbenkian.org.ukwww.gulbenkian.pt/uk-branch

If you put a price on theenvironment, it suggests thatit can be bought or sold oreven worse that having afistful of notes in your handis somehow equivalent tohaving an ancient woodland,a reef, a kelp forest or asaltmarsh teeming withbirdlife

Pillbox in Hemsby, Norfolk Skegness, Lincolnshire

Our Ocean Has Value was firstpublished in April 2016