project
Understanding and influencing cultures and behaviours to maintain and enhance the delivery of ecosystem services and take better account of cultural, shared and plural values.
1 May 2012 - 30 November 2013
PI/s in Exeter: Professor Duncan Russel
Research partners: Alan Bond, Andrew Jordan, John Turnpenny & Camilla Adelle (University of East Anglia) William Sheate (Collingwood Environmental Planning Ltd./Imperial College London)
Funding awarded: £ 100,000
Sponsor(s): Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA)
Project webpage(s)
About the research
This project will investigate capacities and constraints to the routine embedding consideration of ecosystem services in policy decision-making through appraisal, with a specific focus on the role played by institutional behaviours and cultures as both barriers and enablers. The importance of appraisal for integrating ecosystems knowledge into policy-making is explicitly recognised in the Natural Environment White Paper and in related guidance in the Treasury’s Green Book. Therefore, this project will review the relevant literature, examine how an ecosystems approach is being applied currently and, with the aid of interviews, investigate the role of different institutional cultures and behaviours in shaping the embedding of an ecosystems approach in appraisal and policy-making more widely. In so doing, pathways for improving ecosystems services knowledge in decision-making and everyday behaviours will be explored.