Disentangling Values in the Interrelations between Cultural Ecosystem Services and Landscape Conservation—A Case Study of the Ifugao Rice Terraces in the Philippines

Bianca Tilliger,Beatriz Rodríguez-Labajos,Josef Settele,Jesus Bustamante

doi:10.3390/land4030888

Abstract

In the past few years, there has been a growing amount of research on economic quantifications and valuations of ecosystem services (ES) in agricultural systems. However, little attention has been given to cultural ESs (CES) in general and their link to the landscape in particular. This paper tries to tackle this gap with a case study on the Ifugao Rice Terraces of the Philippines. The study aims to understand the interrelations between the different CESs and their relationships with the landscape. Besides contributing to knowledge about the degradation of the rice terraces, this study was conducted in order to discuss at a theoretical level how CESs and their relationship with the landscape must be addressed in ES management and policy decisions. The methodological approach includes a combination of semi-structured interviews (n = 60) and a perception survey (n = 66). The results reveal that CESs, apart from being interrelated, are also responsible for and affected by the degradation of the rice terraces, which is why they are important factors to consider in ecosystem conservation. This paper finally provides policy recommendations for the empirical case and demonstrates the importance of connecting CES analysis with landscape studies looking at agricultural systems.

Highlights

The growing body of research on ecosystem services (ES) in agroecosystems has concentrated mainly on the provision of food, fibre and fuel and its supporting and regulating services [1,2,3,4]. cultural ESs (CES) play a crucial role in agroecosystems, they have been rather neglected or just mentioned marginally in the literature [5]
The fact that our study aims at analysing these CESs and their interrelations in an agricultural landscape underpins this selection
One preliminary result is that the vast majority of the interviewees perceived a change in the landscape and a degradation of the rice terraces

Summary

Introduction

The growing body of research on ecosystem services (ES) in agroecosystems has concentrated mainly on the provision of food, fibre and fuel and its supporting and regulating services [1,2,3,4]. cultural ESs (CES) play a crucial role in agroecosystems, they have been rather neglected or just mentioned marginally in the literature [5]. The focus of this study is precisely to analyse the link between an agroecosystem, its CES and the cultural landscape, with a case study of the Ifugao Rice Terraces in the Philippines. The area was chosen as a case study because its unique cultural landscape provides several CESs, which is why the rice terraces were declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1995. In 2001, the terraces were added to the List of World Heritage Sites in Danger as experts estimated that almost one third of them have been abandoned. While the anthropological and ethnographic research on the Ifugao is relatively abundant [11,12,13,14,15], so far little work has focused on the cultural landscape-CES link, and there has not yet been an evaluation of the different CESs in this area

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Discussion

Conclusion