A systematic review of cultural ecosystem services and human wellbeing

Environmental degradation is increasing globally through direct anthropogenic interventions, such as urbanisation and unsustainable land use, and human-induced drivers, such as climate change. A result is the loss of ecosystem services. The way humans benefit from diverse ecosystem services for their physical and mental wellbeing differs from place to place and between communities and social groups. While the existing research on ecosystem services is rich on the relevance of provisioning ecosystem services for human wellbeing, the role of cultural ecosystem services is not sufficiently understood. Moreover, a variety of methods and a wide range of approaches are adopted to study how landscapes provide ecosystem services and how important they are for different people. Therefore, this paper systematically reviews where and how cultural ecosystem services are studied explicitly with respect to aspects of human physical and mental wellbeing and various social groups. Our review provides an overview of research biases and gaps that need to be addressed to advance our understanding of this link, which is critical to implementing meaningful environmental conservation and protection for local communities and vulnerable populations.