Dancing with cranes: a humanist perspective on cultural ecosystem services of wetlands

Cultural ecosystem services (CES) are important spatial elements providing humans with recreational, esthetic, spiritual, and other benefits. Yet, because of their immaterial, subjective, qualitative, and unmeasurable nature, this means that scientists, decision-makers, and general public often find their value difficult to grasp. We enrich the CES approach with theoretical insights from humanist geography, where we frame CES as arising from perpetual interactions between humans and their environment. Places are formed through various processes, both organic and planned, which endow people with unique identities, experiences, capabilities, knowledge, and skills. We use the rural wetland area of Lake Hornborga, Sweden, with its complex history of restoration phases, to explore the profound interrelations between environmental spaces and cultural practices expressed in the everyday activities of learning, playing, creating, caring, producing, and consuming. The data was collected through qualitative methods, including interviews, observations, and a focused group interview, in order to capture these unique senses and experiences. Thefindings outline CES as key drivers behind the formation of place, rather than mere labels for inventorying benefits people receive from nature. The presence of the iconic migratory crane is especially conducive to a positive sense of place and the practice of various activities, including tourism, around the wetland. We frame the implications for planning and future research of our findings within a context of ethics.