Aesthetics & Access to Nature for Ecological Management

During my first semester in the Master of Landscape Architecture, there are some topics that have been particularly interesting to me, of course, are innumerable, and still need some time to process all that I have learned. Here I will share a revisited extract from an essay about the relevance of access to beautiful landscapes for ecological management. This was part of the class Ecological Analysis with Iryna Dronova.

Humanity has assigned nature the role of providing for needs, extracting useful sources, therefore ecosystem services have been acknowledged, like regulating, supporting, and cultural services. Aesthetic Ecosystem Services a major cultural component has been minorly discussed (Dronova, 2019). Furthermore, the article “Landscape beauty: A wicked problem in sustainable ecosystem management?” by Iryna Dronova stipulates that minimizing the relevance of aesthetic values induces “wicked problems”. Inequalities in access to resources and services is one of the three major issues discussed by the author, even though this term seems to be more related to social than environmental sciences, it directly determines the management and function of ecosystems.

Indeed, aesthetics are a relevant component of the connection between environmental and human well-being, since the most intuitive way to relate to nature is visual. Unfortunately, natural aesthetic values have been widely related to wealth causing tremendous differences in the access to ecosystem resources and services. Because of the lack of contact with nature, it is challenging to promote environmental consciousness in vulnerable communities, besides improving, environmental conditions increase the risk of displacement. To improve Inequalities in access to resources and services, one alternative is to develop a locally-based plan with humans and non-humans that belong to that area. Since most of the disturbances in nature are a consequence of human alteration it is necessary to re-think how we relate to the environment, therefore the urgency of equal access to ecosystem resources and services.

Reference: Dronova, I., 2019. Landscape beauty: A wicked problem in sustainable ecosystem management? Science of The Total Environment 688, 584–591. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.06.248