Contents

Highlights

Introduction

Method
- What questions did we ask?
- What we included
- What we didn’t include

Findings
- Valuing environmental heritage: cultural ecosystems services
- Life Framework of Values
- Cultural ecosystems services in action
- Green heritage
- Green heritage in action

Implications for researchers, practitioners and policymakers

Summary

Studies included in this review

Glossary

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Highlights

• Understanding how a ‘sense of place’ evolves alongside environmental changes is crucial. Longitudinal research exploring this connection can help inform improved decision-making frameworks in heritage conservation, ensuring that community identity and collective memory are preserved alongside environmental sustainability.
• Emphasis should be placed on supporting community-led projects that value local knowledge, cultural heritage and diverse stakeholder perspectives. This can help communities develop tools to assess and preserve both environmental and cultural ecosystems.
• Creative methods, for example storytelling and cultural representations, are essential for capturing intangible cultural values such as spiritual and emotional connections to nature. Creative methods should be integrated into cultural ecosystem services research and policy to gain a richer understanding of community relationships with environmental heritage.
• Funders, policymakers and practitioners must consider the ecological dimensions of cultural spaces, especially in urban environments, to address issues around sustainability, climate change and biodiversity.
• There are benefits to funders, policymakers and heritage organisations from focusing on projects and research that bring together environmental science, the arts and cultural heritage. Through working together they can develop improved solutions for managing cultural ecosystems services and tackling complex problems connected to the environment and cultural heritage.
• There is a need for policies and frameworks that integrate cultural and natural heritage management. Policymakers and heritage organisations should shift towards more inclusive, community-based frameworks that reflect diverse cultural values and inform long-term strategies for land use, conservation and sustainability.

University of Leeds. Photo by Andy Lord. 

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Introduction

Since the early 1990s, international bodies such as UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) and ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites) have significantly broadened the definition of heritage.

The focus has mainly shifted away from thinking solely about tangible heritage such as buildings and monuments, to including intangible cultural heritage such as oral expressions, storytelling, folklore, social acts and rituals (UNESCO, 2003). Crucially, this was also an attempt to recognise indigenous ways of knowing, which continue to be marginalised by ‘Western science’ in national and international decision-making processes.

In parallel to these debates, both natural and cultural heritage have grown in significance, leading to researchers, practitioners, scientists and some policymakers critically questioning and challenging the distinction between the two. David Lowenthal (2006), in his essay on the convergences and divergences of natural and cultural heritage, stated that “increasingly, the heritages of culture and nature came to be viewed as interconnected, indeed, indivisible” (p.85).

In practice, the interconnections between natural and cultural heritage have a long history. In 1895, the National Trust was formed in the UK with the aim of preserving historic and natural places of national significance. This was part of a growing understanding of humanity’s environmental impact.

Researchers have widely recognised that discussions about the relationship between natural and cultural heritage tend to be narrowly defined. Often the focus is on issues of climate change, tourism or the economic significance of built heritage assets within ‘natural’ landscapes, overlooking the more complex environmental human-nature interactions.

This was recently highlighted in the UK in a case study of Heritage Action Zones by Magnus Copps (2024). The study found that there were some “misunderstandings about what was possible in terms of adapting historic buildings in climate-positive ways” (p.21).

This issue was echoed by a group of researchers writing in a recent special issue of People and Nature (2022) who stated:

“While the link between heritage and nature is often alluded to, the full implications of considering the heritage dimension and value of nature in unison are not yet well recognised nor elaborated in the conservation and sustainability fields.” (Azzopardi et al. 2022, p.369)

As its starting point, this digest adopts the position of discussing the complexity of environmental heritage by considering both cultural and natural heritage interactions and what these interactions tell us about the places we live in.

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Method

This digest continues the Centre’s scoping research on place, which has been conducted since early 2023. Through roundtables and discussions with cultural workers, our partners and local policymakers, themes of natural and cultural heritage have emerged. Terms such as ‘green heritage’ and ‘environmental heritage’ were used to describe how they connect people to different places.

Building on our previous digest on Culture and Placemaking, we have taken a deeper dive into the literature concerning environmental and heritage values. In collaboration with Dr Nina White, a researcher in the School of Performance and Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds, we combined a rapid literature review of green heritage with a systematic review of cultural ecosystem services.

What questions did we ask?

• How is environmental heritage currently being valued?
• What assumptions are made about the roles of nature and culture in environmental research versus arts and heritage research?
• What can arts and heritage learn from environmental research, and vice versa?
• What does the term ‘green heritage’ mean, and why is it being used?
• What are the policy implications for environmental heritage?

What we included

As part of a wider review of research addressing benefits and services in arts, culture and heritage, a rapid review of peer-reviewed studies relating to ecosystem services and arts, culture and heritage was conducted. The keywords used in the searches were: ecosystem services; cultural ecosystem services; arts and culture; heritage; and place.

From a total of 1,714 papers, 87 were selected that were found to address the broad theme of cultural ecosystem services with specific reference to heritage and/or arts and culture.

Additionally, 32 papers were recommended by colleagues with expertise in environmental economics and tourism. We also conducted web searches to identify the key policy documents and frameworks that form the basis of international ecosystem services assessment. Following this, a rapid review of the term ‘green heritage’ initially led to 439 articles. This was then narrowed down to 23 using the specific search terms: green; heritage; arts and culture; and place.

This process was enhanced by:

• a search of the ‘grey’ (non-peer-reviewed) or unpublished literature (including theses and dissertations)
• searches of key websites
• a limited Google search

The literature we reviewed was published between 1 January 2014 and 31 August 2024 to provide a snapshot of the most recent research and evidence.

What we didn’t include

This review does not attempt to draw upon global debates within philosophy on culture-nature binaries, as this is a much broader field of study. Similarly, literature in Anthropocene studies is also omitted due to its vast scope and non-direct relevance to heritage. While the theme of place was integral to the studies we reviewed, we do not attempt to define place within this digest, as this would be reductive. Furthermore, the literature reviewed was limited to works published in the English language.

Mafwa Theatre, Field Trip. Photo by Bei Gao.

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Findings

Valuing environmental heritage: cultural ecosystem services

The concept and name of ‘natural heritage’ straddles two distinct fields:

• environmental sciences
• arts, culture and heritage

As a result, the ways that environmental heritage is understood can reveal clashes between the values and norms of the sciences versus the arts and humanities. An example of where this can be seen is in ecosystem services.

What are ecosystem services? Defined as “the indirect and direct contributions that the environment makes to human wellbeing, survival and quality of life” (Costanza et al. 1997).

There are four main types of ecosystem services:

• Provisioning services – the ability of humans to extract and develop products from natural resources such as food and water.
• Regulating services – usually framed as the benefits that can be obtained from natural resources, such as pollination by bees, climate regulation or food regulation services.
• Cultural services – these include the non-material benefits that people can obtain from natural resources, such as spiritual value, intellectual development and leisure activities.
• Supporting services – these relate to all the processes that make a habitat functional, such as photosynthesis, water cycles and soil nutrients.

Researchers, policymakers and international bodies such as UNESCO have increasingly adopted ecosystems services approaches. For this reason, these frameworks provide an important intersection and practical perspective for this digest, which focuses on the relationship between cultural heritage, environments and place.

One of the key issues with ecosystems services is its human-centric focus. This can become extractive and focused on how humanity benefits from a resource rather than a more holistic and relational view.

Often ecosystem services lend themselves to econometric valuations and perspectives which promote a transactional perspective. For example, the UK Office for National Statistics uses an ecosystems service approach to quantify economic valuations of different services. For example, “an estimated 1,335,686 tonnes of air pollution were removed by nature in the UK in 2021, with an annual value of around £2.5 billion” (ONS, 2024).

As a critique of this human-centric perspective, researchers and scholars have begun to pay attention to cultural ecosystem services which do not fit neatly into extractive, utilitarian notions of value. Instead, they present both challenges and opportunities to rethink notions of cultural value and what constitutes environmental heritage.

The 2005 United Nations-backed Millennium Ecosystem Assessment produced a report that detailed ecosystem changes and what was needed for human wellbeing and continued prosperity. This was the first time cultural ecosystems services had undergone a thorough expansion in definition.

The Millennium Ecosystems Assessment suggested these services are primarily intangible; they cannot be measured or sensed physically like levels of air pollution or counting a number of species. Instead, they are the non-physical, emotional, spiritual, cultural, communal and personal meanings that humans infer, construct and pass down from their relationship and engagement with the natural environment. These values are subjective and can change with time, geography, context and the individual, and thus are difficult to pin down and quantify (MEA, 2005).

More recently, this complexity has been analysed in two reviews. The first, by Mark Hirons, Claudia Comberti and Robert Dunford (2016), found that cultural ecosystems services are still viewed from a human-benefit position. They also emphasised the need for a pluralistic approach to valuation, as different elements in ecosystems require different ways of knowing, methods and approaches.

In the report, the researchers stated that “the aesthetic values of a walk, the value attached to individual and collective heritage, or the identity values associated with a close relationship to a place or ecological inspiration for music, for example, cannot be substituted for each other” (p.557). This also highlights the challenge in how these different approaches can be brought together and assessed.

The second report, by Robert Fish, Andrew Church and Michael Winter (2016), begins to develop a framework for research that navigates the relational nature of cultural ecosystems services and supports their practical application. Key findings suggest “our overall argument is that environmental spaces and cultural practices should be considered mutually reinforcing cultural ecosystem services through which cultural benefits to wellbeing arise” (p.212).

Both reports advocate a relational approach to cultural value within ecosystems services and suggest that researchers and decision makers should carefully consider the need for collaboration across disciplines. Relying on one value system risks losing important elements of another and can lead to negative or destructive decisions being made about an ecosystem.

Life Framework of Values

Research from the PERICLES project, published by Elaine Azzopardi, Jasper Kenter, Juliette Young, Chris Leakey and others (2022), demonstrates a relational and collaborative approach to ecosystem management. The authors propose using the ‘Life Framework of Values’ (Kenter & O’Connor, 2022) to link together the values of heritage and nature. (Azzopardi et al. p.369).

Originally conceived to overcome the extractive and instrumental framing of nature as a resource for human activity and benefit, the framework positions human-nature relations in four ‘frames’: ‘living from’; ‘living in’; ‘living with’; and ‘living as’ (Azzopardi et al. p.371). The Life Framework of Values can be applied as much to nature as to heritage, helping to recognise and value the ways that:

“heritage is used as an educational, economic or livelihood resource [...] contributes to a sense of place and place identity, [...] can be what people are aware of but do not personally relate to or [...] outside personal awareness [...] and comes into play when there is a perspective or direct experience of oneness, or being an inseparable part of cultural landscapes or the natural world” (p.372).

The Life Framework of Values approach bridges traditionally siloed values of heritage and nature. It also highlights the key role heritage plays in underpinning human-nature relationships, moving beyond viewing the environment as a resource to recognising it as heritage.

Cultural ecosystems services in action

Increasingly, interdisciplinary research attempts to bridge the gap between culture and heritage research and ecosystems (López Sánchez et al. 2020; Azzopardi 2023). This includes the development of arts-based methods to identify and value cultural ecosystems.

This digest highlights three site-specific research case studies that illustrate the potential of creative methods to understand the value of cultural ecosystems in collaboration with communities and places.

In Germany, Claudia Bieling’s 2014 analysis of short stories collected from residents of the Swabian Alb, a biosphere reserve in the south of the country, revealed “rich evidence regarding connections to identity, heritage values, inspiration, aesthetic values and recreation. They underline, most importantly, that nonmaterial benefits are actively created by people” (p.207).

Bieling argued that this kind of method – drawing on perspectives and insights from communities about place – “provides an excellent opportunity for comparing the academically developed… conceptual outlines and terminology with the ways people actually perceive and express nonmaterial benefits related to a particular area” (p.213).

In Scotland, Edwards et al. (2016) described the use of artist-led dialogue, a form of creative enquiry, to engage communities in Caledonia about the value of the Black Wood of Rannoch. The interpretive nature of these arts and humanities methods “questions, challenges or reimagines the narratives that give meaning to a subject, problem or place, rather than just specific decisions” (p.321).

In the Black Wood case study, artist-led dialogue “revealed tensions and misunderstandings between agencies and locals, and the artists themselves… [whereby] it appeared that the social and cultural values of the Black Wood were viewed as an antithesis to the precepts of scientific conservation” (p.324).

In Ireland, the Cultural Value of Coastlines project, led by University College Dublin, has produced research that advocates for “cultural materialist practice” in approaching cultural ecosystem services. This “draws upon place-based research in the humanities and social sciences, [and] has much to add to a more holistic understanding and practice of ecosystem services research” (Ryfield et al. 2019, pp.1-2).

The cultural representations of place method is notably absent from other existing methods of cultural ecosystems services. It bridges the gap between arts, culture and heritage, and cultural ecosystems services by acknowledging that “cultural representations are vital sources of what stories and images people associate with place, especially pertaining to the social, historical or cultural bonds between a community and its environment, and to defining features of cultural identity and heritage” (p.7) Ryfield et al.

Through the publication of a research toolkit, the Cultural Value of Coastlines project also sets out to empower communities to value their cultural heritage themselves, independently of academic research.

Artists and Community Landowners. The Stove. Photo credit Abriachan Forest Trust.

Green heritage

‘Green heritage’ is an interrelated term that emerged frequently during the scoping phase for this digest. Policymakers and heritage specialists used the term to describe how places encompass complex layers of histories constructed by both culture and nature.

What is green heritage? “Green heritage is an approach to heritage sites that values nature (wild, semi-natural and cultivated environments) and seeks to provide a distinctive place for it that improves both human wellbeing and the health of the planet. It involves nurturing or restoring the living element within heritage spaces. It also involves interpretation of these sites via reference to the living world in the broadest sense, both in the past and the present” (Vujakovic, 2022).

There is a long history of heritage conservation research and practice globally. The specific emergence of the term ‘green heritage’ can be seen as a re-emphasis of both environmental and cultural factors in how heritage is valued. Use of the term varies greatly.

For example, it is included in a European Union-funded project specifically focusing on climate change in historic spaces, and in Historic England’s Green Flag accreditation which recognises heritage sites that meet sustainability and biodiversity criteria. While the term has not yet been widely adopted in the heritage sector, it is gaining traction within research communities.

Three key studies have begun to elaborate on the field and provide useful findings for this digest. An early use of the term ‘green heritage’ can be seen in a study by Tekeli & Turer Baskaya (2015) of historic groves along the Bosphorus, near Istanbul. The researchers found that this ‘network of groves’ was historically part of a much larger geographic ‘green’ area which had been partially cultivated during the Ottoman Empire but had subsequently undergone intense urbanisation from the 1920s.

This urban development greatly reduced the area, creating a ‘pocketed’ landscape and a complex mixture of natural and culturally developed spaces. These exist in both the tangible groves and the intangible heritage of their cultural significance with the communities that continue to live with them (Tekeli & Turer Baskaya, 2015, p.606).

Similarly, another key study by Ben Salem et al. (2021) focused on the interplay between culture nature heritage assemblages in Morocco. The study found that social, economic and environmental changes brought about by rapid urbanisation in ancient Islamic citadels had begun to cause heat island effects. The study suggested ways in which this could be mitigated through the development of urban green infrastructure (UGI) methods within the region (Ben Salem et al. 2021, p.811).

These methods included utilising historic Islamic inner-city garden designs which are sensitive to both religious and social aspects of cultural heritage but also provide ways to regulate heat and water levels, increase pollinators and regulate soil nutrients.

These studies have focused on redefining culture-nature relationships within heritage places to address major issues of sustainable development, urban planning and ecological change. However, they remain focused on tangible aspects such as physical buildings and infrastructure.

Green heritage in action

In the UK, a study by Karen Jones (2020) has further developed the concept of green heritage. The research focused on a case study from an event in Canterbury, called Growing Canterbury’s Green Heritage: Inspiring the Future, held in October 2018. This event was led by a group of academics, businesses, cultural practitioners, nongovernmental organisations and the local authority.

The event aimed to “put issues of green space on the local authority heritage management plan, which was undergoing public consultation, and to raise consciousness about the various green heritage assets within the district” (Jones, 2020, p.63). The event featured collaborative activities including participatory mapping of the green spaces and discussion groups addressing areas that needed preservation or immediate action.

A key finding from this study, and others examined for this digest, is that green heritage can contribute to ‘a sense of place’. This is supported by findings from cultural ecosystems services research that highlights storytelling practices based on “intimate and collective memories of human–environmental encounter” can change how we view the places we live in (ibid, p.63). This emerging evidence suggests that by breaking down the nature-culture binaries within these heritage spaces, new perspectives and more sustainable ways of living can be developed.

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Implications for researchers, practitioners and policymakers

Together, green heritage and ecosystem services provide new and emergent forms of both practice and theory. Arts-based methods for cultural ecosystems services highlight the reciprocal, co-produced relationship between humans and nature on which ecosystems rely. They challenge the one-way, utilitarian, human-centred nature of conventional, more scientific, ecosystems services approaches and methods.

At the same time, the studies examined in this digest highlight the disconnect between the ways that communities value – and articulate the values – of environmental heritage and the ways that scientific agencies and academics value ecosystem services (Edwards et al. 2016. p.324; Cabana et al. 2020. p.13).

Many projects and organisations work closely in and with environmental heritage but do not necessarily use the term ‘ecosystem services’ to describe their work. Engaging with those working in environmental heritage offers a way to bring in a wider range of stakeholders and communities and uncover new creative methods for addressing cultural ecosystems services. All while developing a common language to bridge the gap between ecological economics and arts, culture and heritage.

New projects we have connected with throughout the scoping of this digest are moving into this space.

Examples include:

• Living with the River – a podcast series by Agora Space in Assam, India, which takes the Brahmaputra River as a force that can “remind us of the collective joy and pain” that living from, with and for the river entails.
• In the UK, Arts&Heritage is an organisation working at the intersection of communities, contemporary artists and heritage places. Their recent project, Common Lands (2023), focuses on how collaborative methodologies between artists, communities and heritage sites can critically question land ownership and access rights and what can be done to help preserve environmental heritage.
• The Canterbury project which engaged with green heritage concepts has since led to the creation of a manifesto for green heritage. This has been adopted into Canterbury’s heritage strategy and within the city’s Business Improvement District (BID).
• National-level funding schemes such as the DCMS and AHRC Culture and Heritage Capital programme have supported researchers to work with stakeholders across the environment, arts, culture and heritage sectors, to better assess the cultural value of natural heritage.

These interdisciplinary, collaborative projects – bringing together researchers and methodologies from across cultural ecosystems services, and arts, culture and heritage – offer models for ensuring that community perspectives on the value of natural heritage are heard and represented. They provide a bridge between agencies responsible for cultural heritage and those responsible for natural heritage such as Natural England and English Heritage.

By doing so, these approaches can contribute to better informed decision-making on large-scale policy and spending decisions affecting natural heritage, such as the UK government’s proposals to allow for building on the country’s ‘green belt’.

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Summary

Green heritage and cultural ecosystems services both work to break down the divide between natural and cultural heritage. They reposition humanity in a more relational way, with the environment being framed in a ‘more-than-human’ perspective. This shift has important implications for funders, policymakers and heritage sectors. It suggests a more integrated approach between agencies, communities and those working in heritage organisations is needed. By considering multiple intersecting value systems – social, environmental and cultural – more comprehensive frameworks can be developed to inform decision-making in different contexts.

A key theme emerging from this research is the interconnection between ‘sense of place’ and the interplay of nature and cultural heritage. Although this sense of place is always changing and unique to individuals, it is closely tied to the way these nature-culture assemblages come together. This idea is repeated across the literature and warrants further research to inform our understanding of how and why these connections occur.

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Studies included in this review

(ONS), Office for National Statistics. 2023. UK natural capital accounts: 2023. [Online] Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/environmentalaccounts/bulletins/uknaturalcapitalaccounts/2023#cultural-services [Accessed 27 September 2024]

Azzopardi, E. et al. 2023. What are heritage values? Integrating natural and cultural heritage into environmental valuation. People and Nature, 5(2), pp. 368-383.

Bieling, C. 2014. Cultural ecosystem services as revealed through short stories from residents of the Swabian Alb (Germany). Ecosystem Services, 8, pp. 207-215.

Brannigan, J., Cabana, D., Crowe, T. & Ryfield, F. 2019. The Cultural Value of Coastlines: A Toolkit for Assessing Cultural Ecosystem Services. Dublin: University College Dublin.

Cabana, D., Ryfield, F., Brannigan, J. & Crowe, T. 2020. Evaluating and communicating cultural ecosystem services. Ecosystem Services, 42, pp. 1-15.

Chan, K. M. et al. 2012. Where Are Cultural and Social in Ecosystem Services? A Framework for Constructive Engagement. BioScience, 62(8), pp. 744-756.

Chan, K. M., Satterfield, T. & Goldstein, J. 2012. Rethinking ecosystem services to better address and navigate cultural values. Ecological Economics, 74, pp. 8-18.

Copps, M. 2024. Whose High Streets? Clore Leadership-AHRC Online Research Library Paper. Available at: https://www.cloreleadership.org/research/whose-high-streets/ [Accessed 20 October 2024].

Costanza, R. et al. 1997. The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital. Nature, 387, pp. 253-260.

Daily, G. C. 1997. Introduction: What are Ecosystem Services? In: G. C. Daily, ed. Nature’s Services: Societal Dependence on Natural Ecosystems. Washington, DC: Island Press, pp. 1-10.

Daniel, T. C. et al. 2012. Contributions of cultural services to the ecosystem services agenda. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), 109(23), pp. 8812-8819.

De Groot, R., Wilson, M. A. & Boumans, R. M. 2002. A typology for the classification, description and valuation of ecosystem functions, goods and services. Ecological Economics, 41(3), pp. 393-408.

Edwards, D. M., Collins, T. M. & Goto, R. 2016. An arts-led dialogue to elicit shared, plural and cultural values of ecosystems. Ecosystem Services, 21, pp. 319-328.

Fish, R., Church, A. & Winter, M. 2016. Conceptualising cultural ecosystem services: A novel framework for research and critical engagement. Ecosystem Services, 21(Part B), pp. 208-217.

Gould, R. K. & Lincoln, N. K. 2017. Expanding the suite of Cultural Ecosystem Services to include ingenuity, perspective and life teaching. Ecosystem Services, 25, pp. 117-127.

Haines-Young, R. & Potschin, M. 2018. Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES) 5(1) - Guidance on the Application of the Revised Structure, S.l.: CICES.

Hernández-Morcillo, M., Plieninger, T. & Bieling, C. 2013. An empirical review of cultural ecosystem service indicators. Ecological Indicators, 29, pp. 434-444.

Hirons, M., Comberti, C. & Dunford, R. 2016. Valuing Cultural Ecosystem Services. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 41, pp. 545-574.

Jones, K. 2022. Greening the past: putting history in its place at the ecological university. Emerald, International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 23(1), pp. 58-66.

Kenter, J.O. & O’Connor, S. 2022. The Life Framework of Values and living as nature; towards a full recognition of holistic and relational ontologies. Sustainability Science, 17, pp. 2529–2542.

López Sánchez, M., Cabrera, A. T. & Gómez del Pulgar, M. L. 2020. The potential role of cultural ecosystem services in heritage research through a set of indicators. Ecological Indicators, 117, pp. 1-12.

Lowenthal, D. 2005. Natural and cultural heritage. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 11(1), pp. 81–92.

Mansfield, L., Darral, J. & Partington, L. 2023. Investigating the Public Benefits of Little Asby Common Using a Multiple Capitals Approach. Kendal: Friends of the Lake District.

Marquez, L. A. M. et al. 2023. Trends in valuation approaches for cultural ecosystem services: A systematic literature review. Ecosystem Services, 64, pp. 1-11.

Milcu, A. I., Hanspach, J., Abson, D. & Fischer, J. 2013. Cultural Ecosystem Services: A Literature Review and Prospects for Future Research. Ecology and Society, 18(3), pp. 1-34.

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005. Ecosystems and Human Wellbeing: A Framework for Assessment, S.l.: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

Romanazzi, G. R. et al. 2023. Cultural ecosystem services: A review of methods and tools for economic evaluation. Environmental and Sustainability Indicators, 20, pp. 1-13.

Ryfield, F., Cabana, D., Brannigan, J. & Crowe, T. 2019. Conceptualizing ‘sense of place’ in cultural ecosystem services: A framework for interdisciplinary research. Ecosystem Services, 36, pp. 1-13.

Salem, B., Chaima Lahmar, S., Simon, M. and Szilágyi, K. 2021. Green System Development in the Medinas of Tunis and Marrakesh—Green Heritage and Urban Livability. Earth, 2(4) pp. 809-825.

TEEB, 2010. The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity Ecological and Economic Foundations. London and Washington: TEEB.

Tekeli, E. and Turer Baskaya, F. A. 2015. Revealing strategies for the green heritage of Istanbul – the case of historical groves. WIT Transactions on Ecology and The Environment, 193, pp. 597-607.

UNESCO, 2003. Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Available at: https://ich.unesco.org/doc/src/18440-EN.pdf [Accessed 14 October 2024].

Vujakovic, P. 2022. Manifesto for Green Heritage - Linking the living world and cultural heritage, Canterbury Christ Church University (CCCU). Available at: https://www.canterbury.ac.uk/asset-library/about-us/sustainability/Green-Heritage-Manifesto.pdf [Accessed 23 August 2024].

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Glossary

Conservation	The practice of protecting and preserving cultural and natural heritage resources for future generations.
Cultural ecosystem services	The non-material benefits that people obtain from ecosystems, such as spiritual, cultural and intellectual development, rather than physical goods.
Cultural heritage	The legacy of physical artefacts and intangible attributes of a group or society inherited from past generations, including traditions, languages and historical sites.
Culture-nature assemblages	The interconnected relationships between cultural practices and natural environments. This concept emphasises how human cultures are not separate from nature but are instead deeply embedded within and influenced by their ecological contexts.
Ecological change	Alterations in the structure, composition and functioning of ecosystems over time.
Econometric valuations	The application of statistical and mathematical methods to quantify the value of non-economic assets, such as nature or pollution control. It involves using quantitative techniques to test hypotheses, estimate economic models and forecast future trends based on historical data.
Ecosystem	A community of living organisms (plants, animals, microbes) interacting with one another and their physical environment (air, water, soil, etc). These interactions form a network of relationships where organisms depend on each other and their surroundings to survive, thrive and maintain balance. Ecosystems can vary in size and can be as small as a pond or as large as a forest or ocean. They include both living and non-living components that work together as a system, cycling energy and nutrients.
Ecosystem services	The benefits humans obtain from ecosystems, including provisioning (food, water), regulating (climate regulation), cultural (leisure, aesthetic) and supporting services (soil minerals).
Human-centric focus	A perspective that emphasises human benefits from natural resources, often criticised for ignoring broader ecological or relational values.
Indigenous ways of knowing	Traditional knowledge held by indigenous peoples about the relationship of living beings with one another and the environment, often rooted in cultural practices and oral traditions.
Life Framework of Values	A conceptual framework that categorises human-nature relationships into four distinct ‘frames’ to overcome extractive perspectives on nature.
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA)	A global scientific initiative (2005) aimed at evaluating the consequences of ecosystem changes for human wellbeing.
Natural heritage	Geological formations and ecosystems considered valuable for conservation, including biodiversity hotspots and unique landscapes.
Pluralistic approach	A method that acknowledges and integrates multiple perspectives or value systems, especially in environmental or cultural assessments.
Sustainable development	Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, balancing economic, social and environmental goals.
Urban green infrastructure (UGI)	Infrastructure designed to enhance environmental sustainability in urban areas, such as green spaces that mitigate heat and improve biodiversity.
Utilitarian	An approach that emphasises the greatest benefit for the greatest number of people. It involves measuring and comparing the benefits and harms of different actions focused on outcomes or consequences. It prioritises practicality, efficiency and functionality, often at the expense of aesthetics or personal preferences.