Culture, Economy and Environment in an Age of Market Value

The many qualities of marine environments are at the heart of debates about ‘environments and economies’. Reflecting across papers presented in this session and case studies from coastal B.C., we explore questions about what we choose to value and why in the marine environment, and the problem of ‘winner-take-all’ systems of economic development and the concentration or risks versus benefits given particular environmental changes. Our cases indicate ways of thinking about marine economies less as discrete acts of extraction to be valued on markets or substituted with cash equivalents than as environments best understood as a cultural landscapes with long histories of economic, cultural and livelihood security. Examples are provided of richly inhabited landscapes with long histories of intergenerational knowledge transmission through seasonal acts of cultivation and harvesting; areas vibrantly alive with origin stories recorded and retold in place, where abundance and wealth of resources feed complex social and ceremonial orders that provide for cultural resilience. Cases also include efforts to maintain and reintroduce food sovereignty as coastal communities become depopulated and increasingly burdened by household poverty. Finally, we consider all of these cases in reference to new models for environmental planning, known as ecosystem service and cultural services approaches, which aim to reconcile the unnecessary decoupling of ‘environments’ and ‘economies’. As a metaphor and method, ecosystem services seek to integrate these to better link physical and cultural worlds; include values that people hold dear, and maintain the livelihoods and well being on which cultural continuity depends