ABSTRACT
We live in the world. The environment is not just a physical precondition for human life and productive activity, it is where humans (and other species) lead their lives. Environments matter to us for social, aesthetic and cultural reasons. Some of this dimension often comes under the heading of ‘recreation value’ in economic texts, and for some part of the role that the environment plays in human life the term is a quite proper one: it catches the way in which forests, beaches, mountains and rivers are places in which social and individual recreational activities – of walking, fishing, climbing, swimming, of family picnics and play – take place. With some stretching of the term, elements of the aesthetic appreciation of landscape might also come under the heading of ‘recreation’. Concerns about quality of bathing water, the loss of recreational fish stocks, and the visual impact of quarries or open-cast mines, in part reflect this value. However, the term ‘recreation’ can be misleading in the sense that it suggests a view of the natural environment as merely a playground or spectacle, which might have substitutes in a local gym, or art gallery, whereas the places in question might have a different and more central part in the social identities of individuals and communities. Particular places matter to both individuals and communities
in virtue of embodying their history and cultural identities. The loss of aesthetically and culturally significant landscapes or the despoliation of particular areas matters in virtue of this fact. Thus, for example, the public significance attached to the damage to forests and lakes in Scandinavia and Germany reflects their cultural as much as their economic importance. This social and cultural dimension also has a more local aspect, for example in the importance that local communities place on the ‘ordinary’ places in or near which they live – a pond or copse of woods – places that from the economic or biological point of view have limited significance (Clifford and King 1993). The cultural dimension is also realised in issues concerning the quality of the urban environment: in the kinds of social life that different urban environments make possible, the effects of the car not only on the quiet of the city, but also on the capacity of individuals to meet in public spaces: in the heritage the built environment embodies and the sources of cultural identity it provides, and hence concern with the effects of pollution and urban development on that environment.
