Public Attitudes and Preferences for Upland Landscapes - Defra

• Cultural services: services providing non-material benefits from ecosystems such as
spiritual enrichment, cognitive development, reflection, recreation and aesthetic
experiences.
• Supporting services: many ecosystem services are necessary for the production of
all other ecosystem services from which society benefits, such as soil formation and
nutrient cycling.
Figure 1 (below) from the Defra report “Provision of Ecosystem Services through
Environmental Stewardship” (2009) illustrates how prescribed changes in hill farming
management (under Environment Stewardship) can affect the provision of ecosystem services;
for example reducing agricultural intensity can lead to less food (shown as orange) but more
regulating (e.g. water quality), cultural (e.g. heritage) and biodiversity services (shown as
green/dark green). Promoting some of the cultural services delivered by the uplands (e.g.
through an environmental stewardship scheme) will also impact on other services; for example a
positive impact on biodiversity. Defra’s forthcoming publication - National Ecosystem Assessment
Scenarios more explicitly illustrates the impacts of trade-offs resulting from social and political
priorities on a range of ecosystems (Defra – forthcoming a). Although the public do not take into
account all of the services provided by the uplands when they visit or value them, there are
various opportunities to involve the public in how we can better understand and capture the value
of the goods delivered by the uplands, and particularly by hill farming.
Figure 1: Potential net service delivery (marginal change) in the uplands under Environmental
Stewardship (positive and negative)*
Source: Provision of Ecosystem Services Through Environmental Stewardship, Defra 2009
*The colours indicating impact follow the principle of a Red, Amber, Green (RAG) rating with dark green indicating
considerable positive impacts, light green indicating some positive impacts, amber indicating no-change and red
indicating negative impacts.
The comprehensive report commissioned by Natural England “Economic valuation of
upland ecosystem services” (Economics for the Environment 2009) directly seeks to value three
cultural services delivered in a number of upland case studies (many of the UK stated
preferences studies used to inform the case studies are included separately in this review). The
three cultural services identified are: the use and enjoyment of uplands for outdoor recreation;
the use and enjoyment of uplands for field sports; and the non-use values of historic and cultural
landscapes. In reality however, it is very difficult to effectively capture data on the non-use value
of ecosystems (or to disaggregate this from use values) and this is reflected in the greater focus
given to recreational use values in the studies reviewed here. A further difficulty is that of
disaggregating the cultural services provided by the landscape (as defined in the Ecosystems
Approach) from other services delivered by the uplands (e.g. biodiversity) and this is considered
further in Section 6, below.
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