Box 3.1. Linkages between Ecosystem Services and Human Well-being:
Good Social Relations
(see figure on linkages in Box 3.1  ).
See also specific information for each main component:
"Good social relations refer to the presence of social cohesion, mutual respect, and the ability to help others and provide for children. Changes in provisioning and regulating ecosystem services can affect social relations, principally through their more direct impacts on material well-being. These, too, can be mediated by socioeconomic circumstances, but to a smaller extent. Changes in cultural services have relatively weak linkages to material elements of well-being, health, and security. Changes in cultural services can have a strong influence on social relations, particularly in cultures that have retained strong connections to local environments. Changes in provisioning and regulating services can be mediated by socioeconomic factors, but those in cultural services cannot. Even a wealthy country like Sweden or the United Kingdom cannot readily purchase a substitute to a cultural landscape that is valued by the people in the community.
Changes in ecosystems have tended to increase the accessibility that people have to ecosystems for recreation and ecotourism. There are clear examples of declining ecosystem services disrupting social relations or resulting in conflicts. Indigenous societies whose cultural identities are tied closely to particular habitats or wildlife suffer if habitats are destroyed or wildlife populations decline. Such impacts have been observed in coastal fishing communities, Arctic populations, traditional forest societies, and pastoral nomadic societies (C5.4.4)."
Source & ©
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
 Synthesis Report (2005),
Chapter 3, pp.53-54
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