Chan, K.M.A., R.K. Gould, R. López de la Lama and H.N. Eyster (2025). What if cultural ecosystem services were relational? A research agenda for nature’s contributions to well-being—and human action. The Routledge Handbook of Cultural Ecosystem Services. P. McElwee, K. Allen, R. Gould, M. Hsu and J. Ye: 13. Doi: 10.4324/9781003414896-40
Cultural ecosystem services (CES) are an epicentre for relational thinking in interdisciplinary environmental science, and yet the study of CES is not truly relational. Nature is still commonly conceived of as static or undifferentiated in CES, and separate from people. This denies the agency of the more-than-human world and precludes rich representation of relationships with people. We ask, what would research on cultural ecosystem services look like if it were truly relational? Even in a purely economic context, a relational understanding of a service must include what is paid or given in return. Thus, we contend that (A) a relational understanding of CES requires changing the definition from nature’s (provision of) non-material benefits for people, to the work done for non-material relationships between people and nature—work by both nature and people. (B) Relational CES research must represent the relationship between CES and benefits through a feedback cycle by which nature-based experiences « interest « capability and relationships « more experiences. This feedback cycle mediates how CES yield long-term well-being and identity formation including norms, nature connection, place attachment, and other relational values. (C) We argue that relational research of CES would require the focused study of how five factors affect CES: (1) biome, ecological integrity, diversity, and other ecological and landscape attributes; (2) senses engaged (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste); (3) attention (intentional vs. passive engagement); (4) human companions (in nature activities) and their views and values; (5) personal interactions with particular non-human entities (e.g., care-taking, interspecies communication). Rather than being an ill-fitting subfield within a hegemonic study of ecosystems’ economic contributions, CES research could be the centre of a bold new agenda for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research on people-nature relationships where both people and nature have agency.