Julie Urquhart

A Sense of Place in Cultural Ecosystem Services: The Case of Cornish Fishing Communities

Fishing communities in Europe are facing significant challenges due to policy measures aimed at reducing fishing effort in order to cope with the “crisis” in key stocks. While it is imperative to ensure sustainability of the resource, such policies may overlook the contribution of fisheries to the social and cultural well-being of coastal communities. This article explores the contribution that sense of place can make to understanding the relationship between fishing and cultural ecosystem services, drawing on case studies from Cornwall, southwest England. Through semistructured interviews with fishing community stakeholders we outline how fishing contributes to sense of place in terms of individual and community identities, as well as a particular place character associated with the physical presence of fishing. We suggest that a co-constructionist account of the relationship between sea and land can provide a starting point for understanding the cultural landscape that emerges as a result of fishing.

Private Ownership and Public Good Provision in English Woodlands

There is increasing emphasis on multipurpose forestry within UK national and regional forest strategies, with the aim of co-delivering the social, environmental and economic benefits of woodlands. Private woodland ownership is also changing, with an increase in owners without a farming or forestry background. However, there is little substantive evidence relating to the motivations of private woodland owners and, in particular, their ability and willingness to deliver public goods. A qualitative study is adopted, using semi-structured interviews in three areas in England, to address this theoretical gap. Exploratory findings indicate that private woodland owners have a diverse range of objectives, motivations and management regimes which influence the potential for public good delivery. It is shown that some private woodland owners, such as those less motivated by economic return, may be better placed than others to deliver certain public goods; that conflicts can arise between the provision of recreation and nature conservation, especially in smaller woodlands; and that many private woodland owners are sceptical about becoming involved in grant schemes which may help foster public good provision in the private sector.

Sense of place and socio-cultural values in fishing communities along the English Channel

There is increasing interest in the social and cultural impacts of marine fisheries in coastal communities. This chapter uses the idea of ‘sense of place’ to explore the material and perceptual relations that emerge as a result of marine fishing in a range of villages and towns in France and England along the English Channel. Currently sense of place is an underused concept in resource management in general and within fisheries management in particular. We show how sense of place can be used to make visible a range of social and cultural values that emerge from the process of marine fishing. These values can then be expressed within a cultural ecosystem services framework, potentially helping to make the results accessible to a broader range of stakeholders, including policy makers and those involved in developing sustainable communities. The chapter concludes with some thoughts about the usefulness of approaches like actor network theory in providing relational perspectives for understanding marine fisheries management.

The social amplification of risk on Twitter: the case of ash dieback disease in the United Kingdom

It has long been recognised that the traditional media play a key role in representing risk and are a significant source of information which can shape how people perceive and respond to hazard events. Early work utilising the social amplification of risk framework (SARF) sought to understand the discrepancy between expert and lay perceptions of risk and patterns of risk intensification and attenuation with reference to the media. However, the advent of Web 2.0 challenges traditional models of communication. To date there has been limited consideration of social media within the SARF and its role in mediating processes of risk perception and communication. Against this backdrop, we focus on the social media platform Twitter to consider the social amplification of risk in relation to ash dieback disease (Hymenoscyphus fraxineus); a tree health issue that attracted intense media attention when it was first identified in the UK in 2012. We present an empirical analysis of 25,600 tweets in order to explore what people were saying about ash dieback on Twitter, who was talking about it and how they talked about it. Our discussion outlines the themes around which talk about ash dieback was orientated, the significance of users’ environmental ‘affiliations’ and the role of including links (URLs) to traditional media coverage. We utilise the notion of ‘piggybacking’ to demonstrate how information is customised in line with group/individual identities and interests and introduce the concept of the ‘frame fragment’ to illustrate how information is selected and moved around Twitter emphasising certain features of the messages. The paper affords a detailed consideration of the way in which people and organisations simultaneously appropriate, construct and pass on risk-relevant information. A conclusion is that social media has the potential to transform the media landscape within which the SARF was originally conceived, presenting renewed challenges for risk communication.

Social Wellbeing and the Values of Small-scale Fisheries

This book advances discussions of values in fisheries by showing the rich theoretical insights and connections possible when value is grounded in a multi-dimensional social well being approach. Questions of value have long been a central, if often unacknowledged, concern in maritime studies and in research on fisheries. Social scientists have looked at changing perceptions of value as coastal regions and fisheries have industrialized, economic interconnections have deepened, ecosystems have been depleted, shifts in population have occurred, and governance arrangements have been transformed. With a focus on the diverse ways in which small-scale fisheries are valued, the contributions to this volume address these and other themes through cases from numerous countries in Asia, Europe, and Latin America.

The role of the social sciences and economics in understanding and informing tree biosecurity policy and planning: a global summary and synthesis

Increased global biosecurity threats to trees, woods and forests have been strongly linked to the upsurge in worldwide trade and the expansion of tourism. A whole range of social, economic and political actors are implicated and affected by the movement of pests and diseases along these international pathways. A number of factors affect the actions of stakeholders, and wider public, including their values and motivations, how risks are perceived and acted upon, their ability to act, as well as the existing regulatory and economic environment. Understanding these factors is key to any future attempts to improve biosecurity policy and practice, and we present available evidence on six key dimension: (1) the role of different stakeholders and the broader public within tree health; (2) levels of knowledge and awareness of tree pests and diseases amongst the variety of end-user ‘stakeholder’ groups, and influences on their attitudes and practices; (3) social acceptability of management approaches; (4) the impact of formal and informal governance arrangements; (5) risk communication; (6) economic analyses on the impact of tree pests. We conclude by identifying evidence gaps and emphasising the need for better integration within the social sciences and between the social and natural sciences to promote effective interdisciplinary and policy-relevant contributions to tree health.

Woodland Management and Public Good Outputs: Appraising the Trade-offs in English Woodlands

This paper examines the trade-offs between woodland management for timber and public good outputs in English woodlands. Recent evidence suggests that some public good values may be declining as a result of a lack of woodland management. Such under-management has been attributed to the decline in timber values and reduction in the productivity of woodlands and forests for timber products. It is argued that assessing the management needs of woodlands in order to enhance public good outputs presents a complex challenge and often depends on a variety of factors, including location, type of woodland, age, condition, substitutability and ownership motivation. However, in most instances a moderate level of management (whether for timber or otherwise) is likely to be beneficial for public good outputs.

Expert risk perceptions and the social amplification of risk: A case study in invasive tree pests and diseases

Highlights • Expert risk perceptions are socially-mediated, relational and incremental.• Challenges experts’ ‘real’ risk around which public perceptions are amplified.• Tree health risks characterised by uncertainty and conflicts about what is at risk.• Experts attribute concern to publics as they assemble risk judgments.• Risk managers deal with the ‘risk event’ alongside ‘the social construction of risk’.

Co-constructing Cultural Ecosystem Services and Wellbeing Through a Place-Based Approach

Reductive practices in fisheries management have tended to focus on ecological and economic dimensions that have rendered the social and cultural importance of fishing largely invisible, at least in the context of governance and policy making. This chapter builds on 5 years’ research in the English Channel and Southern North Sea in which the authors adopted a sense of place perspective as a framework for understanding the social and cultural value of small-scale fisheries. Through a number of case studies, the chapter describes how small-scale fisheries result in a series of ‘transformations’ as the marine environment is translated into cultural ecosystem services in coastal settings giving rise to socio-cultural value. This perspective is further developed by considering the value of the social wellbeing ‘lens’ to broaden the sense of place / cultural ecosystem services framework. In pursuing ‘values’ through sense of place, cultural ecosystem services and social wellbeing we discuss how the dualistic treatment of nature and society is problematic. We conclude that a relational co-constructionist approach, although challenging, offers a way of making visible an array of social and cultural values that emerge from the activity of small-scale fisheries.

Introduction: Social Issues in Sustainable Fisheries Management

Throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries fisheries policies and management systems worldwide changed as commercial fish stocks declined and fishing pressure intensified. Increased technological developments have enabled fishing fleets to become highly mobile and efficient and, together with a growing demand for fish for human consumption, have contributed to 87 % of commercial fish stocks being either fully exploited or overexploited (FAO 2012). Unsurprisingly, the focus of fisheries policy and management has been directed at biological and economic dimensions in the effort to bring stocks back to sustainable levels and to protect marine environments. However, in the broad global context, social and cultural issues in fisheries policy and management have largely been ignored. Yet omitting socio-cultural objectives has consequences for many fishing communities that today are struggling to deal with the implications of such decision making (Symes and Phillipson, 2009; Urquhart et al., 2011). Examples may include increased levels of unemployment, outmigration, weaker community structures and economic difficulties, which are especially felt in fisheries dependent communities (Scottish Government 2009). These examples have a strong socio-cultural dimension while biological and economic factors are important contributing factors. Consequently, it is increasingly being recognised that sustainable fisheries will only be achieved by integrating management and policy across biological, social and economic dimensions (FCR, 2009).