ABSTRACT
The cross-cutting nature of ecosystem services (ES) has led to deep discussions about the most suitable approaches for defining and classifying them. Among those, cultural ecosystem services (CES) have often been neglected mainly due to their intangible nature, difficulties in agreeing on appropriate quantifying indicators, and the complexity of integrating qualitative and quantitative data into decision-making processes–all leading to a bias towards other more measurable ES. This problem is exacerbated when focusing on marine and coastal ecosystems because the boundaries of the systems are more difficult to determine and the social landscape plays a key role in determining what the marine CES are in a given area or for a given community. Historically (and evolutionary), humans have been living by and interacting with the ocean for millennia, which entails a close link between cultural practices and the environment. Therefore, the study of marine CES is key for the development of sustainable ocean management initiatives and efficient conservation policies. Further developing qualitative and quantitative assessment methodologies for marine and coastal CES is highly encouraged to ultimately provide decision-makers with information that accounts for coastal cultural heritage. Nonetheless most marine research strategies and policy frameworks still lack sufficient representation of CES in their scope and/or origin of their implementation plans.
