The users’ socio-cultural value of the Dordwijkzone Green infrastructure project in Dordrecht, The Netherlands

The concept of Ecosystem Services originated in the 1970’s and much research have been done to determine the economic value of the services provided to humans by nature. The monetary assessment of the benefits of nature can be used to inform decisions, make trade-offs, make the benefits of nature visible, drive the conservation agenda and be used as an effective way to communicate the value of nature. The Netherlands embraced an Ecosystem Services policy approach and various Municipalities in the Netherlands agreed to work towards the implementation of “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity” with the use of the TEEB-City Tool. The existing literature, as well as the Dordrecht Municipality, agree that the assessment of the Cultural Ecosystem Services provided by an ecosystem is the most neglected Ecosystem Service and considered difficult to undertake. This results in the omission of Socio-Cultural Value in economic assessments of ecosystems. In this study, a Cultural Ecosystem Services Framework is proposed to clarify concepts and is based on the end result in mind, namely five Socio-Cultural Values to be quantified. In line with this policy approach, an existing project, the Dordwijkzone Green Infrastructure Project in the city of Dordrecht, was selected for assessment of the Cultural Ecosystem Services to the users. In addition, the quantification of the Socio-Cultural Value of the Dorwijkzone Green Infrastructure Project was undertaken, based on the subjective, self-reported appreciation of the social benefits to the users. Finally, an analysis was undertaken to determine to what extent these two aspects differ between different user groups. Gender was the only socio-demographic aspect included in this research to determine the differences in self-reported benefits and subjective appreciation between groups. The hypothesis that gender has an impact on the Cultural Ecosystem Services with differences in the way that men and women passively or actively use, experience and assign meaning to the Dordwijkzone and the hypothesis that no significant variation exists between men and women in their perceived or assigned Socio-Cultural Value to the Dordwijkzone, were both confirmed. An evaluation was included to determine to what extent the Dordrecht Municipality achieved the ecosystem functions for which the Dordwijkzone Green Infrastructure was intended in 1999. The findings show that the Municipality was successful in making provision for the “Information Function”, but less successful in achieving the “Habitat Function”. Recommendations include the refinement of the Cultural Ecosystem Services framework for conceptual clarity. Further research is suggested to incorporate non-monetary value in existing tools or institutions to make society aware of the value of Ecosystem Services and to serve as a communication tool to inform the evaluations and trade-offs being made in land use and development decisions.