ABSTRACT
Considering 'cultural ecosystem services' (CES) forces one to grapple with sustainability as a process of managing three different aspects: ecosystems, human preferences and values, and resulting social-ecological interactions. Although people adapt to changing circumstances and baselines, ecosystem quality does seem to matter for the maintenance of CES. The dynamic nature of values, and CES, demands a thorough consideration of appropriate methods for making all manner of decisions, including about energy futures, urban plans, infrastructure projects, etc. The study of CES, as nature's benefits to people through non-material processes, is a small subset of a much larger set of interdisciplinary literatures on social-ecological interactions. In the sustainability literature, CES have received short shrift. The lion's share of discussion about sustainability appears to be about the management of resources or environmental sustainability and not about the relationship between ecosystem services (ES) and CES.
