The intersection of the cultural and the ecological highlighted in the previous post, including the ways that artists and cultural practitioners engage with cultural dimensions of biodiversity, in this case manifest in language, engages the cultural sector directly with understanding and articulating ecosystem services. Ecosystem Services and the associated assessments provide a critical method used... Continue Reading →
Ecosystems Services and Gaelic Report published
NatureScot recently published a report on the relevance of Gaelic language, place names, literature and song, tradition and folklore to assessing ecosystem services. This is a very significant development in approaching ecosystem service assessment through a cultural lens, understanding that culture is not just tourism and beauty spots, but is the articulation of values, uses... Continue Reading →
Valuing Nature: what do artists contribute?
Artists have been valuing nature probably since we first marked the wall of a cave or whistled like a bird – artists have always rendered nature visible. Artists valuing nature have explored human ‘value’ (Monet’s Haystacks and Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed both render human use of nature visible), but they have also articulated human... Continue Reading →
The Same Hillside
It was a seemingly unlikely pair forming the panel after the Crypic Nights premier of The Same Hillside at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Glasgow. The one who looked like a farmer (checked shirt and flat cap) was the documentary film-maker John Wallace, the other (long hair and beard a t-shirt with a 'pirate'... Continue Reading →
How wolves change rivers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q Mary Bourne highlighted this amazing short film. We are only just beginning to understand the complexity of interactions between different living things in any system. Wolves are not just top predators, it's not just survival of the fittest, systems are not simple cause and effect, physics is not the correct metaphor.
Natural Capital
Does the (natural) world exist to provide 'services' for human beings? Should we attempt to justify the importance of bees or trees or rivers or mountains or bacillus acidophilus in terms of an ecosystems services analysis, i.e. what services they provide to us? Alternatively should we analyse what services we provide to ecosystems? This question... Continue Reading →
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