Page - 225 - in Biodiversity and Health in the Face of Climate Change

225 10.3.3 Spiritual Domain Within Ecosystem Services A third way in which biodiversity and the spiritual domain of human health and well-being can be considered is through the lens of ecosystem services (ESS). The ESS concept broadly frames the relationship between people and nature in terms of benefits and services, i.e. the benefits people derive from the ‘services’ provided by ecosystems (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment [MEA] 2005). This framework has been used to try to incorporate the value  – often in monetary terms  – of these ser- vices for use in decision-making (Fisher, B. et  al. 2009). The MEA (2005) struc- tured ESS into four clusters: provisioning (the products obtained from ecosystems, e.g. food, water), regulating (benefits obtained from the regulation of ecosystems, e.g. water purification, pest control), supporting (processes necessary to produce other ESS, e.g. soil formation, photosynthesis) and cultural (“nonmaterial benefits that people obtain from ecosystems through spiritual enrichment, cognitive devel- opment, reflection, recreation and aesthetic experiences” [MEA 2005, p.  4]). There is ongoing debate over the concept of and categorisation of ESS, the relationship between and operationalisation of ‘service’ and ‘benefit’  – in particular those con- ceived of as ‘cultural’  – as well as the knowledge base that has informed such effort (see Daniel et  al. 2012; Díaz et  al. 2018). Our focus here is to understand how spiri- tual well-being is discussed and operationalised in relation to biodiversity in this literature. The language within this literature refers to spirituality, spiritual enrichment, spiritual values, spiritual fulfilment and spiritual benefits (e.g. MEA 2005; WHO and CBD 2015; UK National Ecosystem Assessment Follow-on 2014). One of the few specific mentions of spiritual well-being is found within the framing of spiritual and religious values, described as: Sacred elements of the biota, worship of biota, kindness and gratitude toward biota together or individually make a contribution to spiritual well-being, and a sense of wholeness and being ‘at one’, everywhere and forever (connecting the present with the past and the future) (WHO and CBD 2015, p.  213). This description implies that spiritual well-being  – and aspects conceived in this chapter as features of spiritual well-being, i.e. wholeness and connectedness (Table  10.1)  – could be indirectly related to biodiversity through incorporating ele- ments of the natural world into religious/spiritual practices. For example, a cere- mony dedicated to the jaguar in southern Mexico among the Nahuatl (Caballero et  al. 1998, cited in Russell et  al. 2013) demonstrates how a particular species could serve local communities’ spiritual well-being. Another route through which one might experience spiritual well-being is through acts of ‘kindness and gratitude’, for example, through environmental conservation volunteering. The following examples illustrate ways in which researchers have sought to measure the spiritual dimension of ESS and integrate biodiversity to enhance understanding of the relationship. 10 Biodiversity and  Spiritual Well-being