Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. It is becoming increasingly clear that scientists, managers, lawyers, public policymakers, and the public must decide how to value what is provided by, and is a consequence of, natural resources.
Partly the confusion results from a limited view of natural resources derived from the need to monetize the value of ecosystems and their component parts. In this article, we explore the previous assumptions, and suggest that because cultural resources often derive from, and indeed require, intact and unspoiled natural ecosystems or settings, that these values are rightly part of natural resources.
The distinction is not trivial because of the current emphasis on cleaning up chemically and radiologically contaminated sites, on restoration of damaged ecosystems, on natural resource damage assessments, and on long-term stewardship goals. All of these processes depend upon defining natural resources appropriately.
Several laws, regulations, and protocols depend upon natural resource trustees to protect natural resources on trust lands, which could lead to the circular definition that natural resources are those resources that the trustees feel they are responsible for. Where subsistence or tribal peoples are involved, the definition of natural resources should be broadened to include those ecocultural attributes that are dependent upon, and have incorporated, natural resources.
For example, a traditional hunting and fishing ground is less valued by subsistence peoples if it is despoiled by contamination or physical ecosystem degradation; an Indian sacred ground is tarnished if the surrounding natural environment is degraded; a traditional homeland is less valued if the land itself is contaminated.
