Evaluating taboo trade-offs in ecosystems services and human well-being

Evaluating taboo trade-offs in ecosystems services and human well-being [1]

Environmental management inevitably involves trade-offs among different objectives, values, and stakeholders. Most evaluations of such trade-offs involve monetary valuation or calculation of aggregate production of ecosystem services, which can mask individual winners and losers. We combine a participatory, modeling, and scenarios approach to identify social–ecological trade-offs in a tropical fishery and the implications on well-being of different stakeholders. Such trade-offs are often ignored because losers are marginalized or not represented by quantification, and because the nature of underlying values may result in socially “taboo” trade-offs that pit incommensurable values against one another. A participatory modeling and scenarios approach can increase awareness of such trade-offs, promote discussion of what is socially acceptable, and potentially identify and reduce obstacles to compliance.

Publication Date:

02/06/2015

Author(s): Tim M. Daw [2], Sarah Coulthard [3], William W. L. Cheung & et al [4]

Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [5]

Vol:

112

Issue:

pp:

6949–6954

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