Social values and growth and their implications for ecosystem services in the long-run

Abstract

Social values are dynamic and may change with development, potentially having severe consequences on a region’s ecosystem services. These values are often inadequately captured. We consider a region rich in natural capital—the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, Australia—and examine how important a range of different factors which include, but are not limited to, ecosystem services (ES) are to people’s overall quality of life. We acknowledge that people’s perception of the importance of different factors vary systematically between those who are dependent upon different industries for their household income. Community values are thus shown to depend upon industry composition and demographic composition. We conclude that in small communities, rapid growth in particular sectors may start an endogenous cycle of changing values which define future economic trajectories. This will affect ecological trajectories.