Multi-scale mapping of cultural ecosystem services in a socio-ecological landscape: A case study of the international Wadden Sea Region

Frans J Sijtsma,Nora Mehnen,Per Angelstam,José Muñoz-Rojas

doi:10.1007/s10980-019-00841-8

Abstract

ContextThe governance of international natural World Heritage sites is extremely challenging. In the search for effective multilevel governance there is a need to identify the community of people which have place attachment to the areas, i.e. ‘the community of fans’ at local to international levels.ObjectivesFocusing on the landscape of the international Wadden Sea coastal area in the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark as a case study, we address three key questions: What is the spatial distribution of the community of fans? How does the size of this community relate to the overlapping communities of locals and actual visitors to the Wadden Sea coastal area? Which parts of the Wadden Sea coastal area are most appreciated by the community of fans, and how does this relate to its formal protection status?MethodsWe analysed 7650 respondents’ answers to a tri-lateral web survey (the standardized Greenmapper survey) conducted in Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands.ResultsWe estimated that 14 million German, Dutch and Danish citizens can be regarded as the potential—national level—community of fans. The correlation between place or landscape attachment and distance was varied among the three countries. Furthermore, only 37% of the markers placed by fans of the Wadden Sea coastal area are within the protected UNESCO World Heritage limits, suggesting that a broader demarcation could be possible.ConclusionsWe discuss how the identification of fans can potentially contribute to more effective public involvement in the governance of valuable landscapes.

Highlights

Governance of protected areas is the active combination of mechanisms of coordination and network structures for management and decision making; involving different actors from the state, civil society and economic sectors (Ansell and Gash 2008; Mehnen 2013; Chaffin et al 2014)
Only 37% of the markers placed by fans of the Wadden Sea coastal area are within the protected UNESCO World Heritage limits, suggesting that a broader demarcation could be possible
Focusing on the Wadden Sea coastal area as a case study we used an online participatory GIS (PGIS) tool called Greenmapper to address the following three key questions: (1) What is the spatial distribution of the community of fans?

Summary

Introduction

Governance of protected areas is the active combination of mechanisms of coordination and network structures for management and decision making; involving different actors from the state, civil society and economic sectors (Ansell and Gash 2008; Mehnen 2013; Chaffin et al 2014). Natural World Heritage sites involve local communities like any other protected area, but because they explicitly involve the global community, they seem to be among the most demanding cases of multilevel governance. 497) observed, when discussing tropical conservation, that ‘‘community-based natural resource management overemphasizes the place of local communities (...), much as the previous topdown model underemphasized [it]’’. They argue that the scale at which both the ecological and social process function around a particular protected site ‘‘typically far exceeds the space any single [local] community can ably manage’’ Communitybased conservation seems powerful, but the strong focus on the local scale limits its potential

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