TY - JOUR
T1 - Measuring what matters in the Great Barrier Reef
AU - Marshall, Nadine
AU - Barnes, Michele L.
AU - Birtles, Alistair
AU - Brown, Katrina
AU - Cinner, Joshua
AU - Curnock, Matt
AU - Eakin, Hallie
AU - Goldberg, Jeremy
AU - Gooch, Margaret
AU - Kittinger, Jack
AU - Marshall, Paul
AU - Manuel-Navarrete, David
AU - Pelling, Mark
AU - Pert, Petina L.
AU - Smit, Barry
AU - Tobin, Renae
N1 - Funding Information:
This paper was developed in a workshop funded by the Julius Career Award (CSIRO) to NM. Data were provided by the Social and Economic Long Term Monitoring Program (SELTMP) for the Great Barrier Reef, funded by the Australian Government under the National Environment Research Program. The authors would like to thank the SELTMP team for their support and collaboration, the generosity of the 8300 respondents who agreed to complete the survey, and the very skilled work of the 35 interviewers.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Ecological Society of America
PY - 2018/6
Y1 - 2018/6
N2 - The natural environment plays an integral role in the culture of all people. Although the cultural services provided by ecosystems are often acknowledged, these abstract qualities are difficult to capture and are rarely incorporated into environmental strategic planning. We propose an approach for decision makers to weigh different cultural values across a range of stakeholder groups. We assessed the importance of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) to the lifestyle, sense of place, pride, identity, and well-being of 8300 people across multiple cultural groups, as well as each of these groups’ belief in the aesthetic, scientific, and biodiversity-based value of the GBR. The surveyed population included indigenous and non-indigenous local residents, Australians (non-local), international and domestic tourists, tourism operators, and commercial fishers. We discuss how some groups grant similar levels of importance to some values and how other groups differ in their attachment to certain values. All of the groups possessed the selected cultural values to some extent, suggesting that these values matter, and could be leveraged to secure the future of iconic ecosystems such as the GBR.
AB - The natural environment plays an integral role in the culture of all people. Although the cultural services provided by ecosystems are often acknowledged, these abstract qualities are difficult to capture and are rarely incorporated into environmental strategic planning. We propose an approach for decision makers to weigh different cultural values across a range of stakeholder groups. We assessed the importance of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) to the lifestyle, sense of place, pride, identity, and well-being of 8300 people across multiple cultural groups, as well as each of these groups’ belief in the aesthetic, scientific, and biodiversity-based value of the GBR. The surveyed population included indigenous and non-indigenous local residents, Australians (non-local), international and domestic tourists, tourism operators, and commercial fishers. We discuss how some groups grant similar levels of importance to some values and how other groups differ in their attachment to certain values. All of the groups possessed the selected cultural values to some extent, suggesting that these values matter, and could be leveraged to secure the future of iconic ecosystems such as the GBR.
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U2 - 10.1002/fee.1808
DO - 10.1002/fee.1808
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85046473145
VL - 16
SP - 271
EP - 277
JO - Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment
JF - Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment
SN - 1540-9295
IS - 5
ER -