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The role of tourism impacts on cultural ecosystem services.

1. Introduction

1.1. facilitating cultural ecosystem services–well-being through nature experiences, 1.2. current study, 2.1. participants, 2.2. materials and measures, 2.3. procedure, 4. discussion, limitations and future research, 5. conclusions, author contributions, acknowledgments, conflicts of interest.

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Taff, B.D.; Benfield, J.; Miller, Z.D.; D’Antonio, A.; Schwartz, F. The Role of Tourism Impacts on Cultural Ecosystem Services. Environments 2019 , 6 , 43. https://doi.org/10.3390/environments6040043

Taff BD, Benfield J, Miller ZD, D’Antonio A, Schwartz F. The Role of Tourism Impacts on Cultural Ecosystem Services. Environments . 2019; 6(4):43. https://doi.org/10.3390/environments6040043

Taff, B. Derrick, Jacob Benfield, Zachary D. Miller, Ashley D’Antonio, and Forrest Schwartz. 2019. "The Role of Tourism Impacts on Cultural Ecosystem Services" Environments 6, no. 4: 43. https://doi.org/10.3390/environments6040043

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• A-Z Publications

Annual Review of Environment and Resources

Volume 41, 2016, review article, valuing cultural ecosystem services.

• Mark Hirons 1,2 , Claudia Comberti 1 , and Robert Dunford 1,3
• View Affiliations Hide Affiliations Affiliations: 1 School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QY, United Kingdom; email: [email protected] 2 School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, University of Reading, Reading RG6 6AR, United Kingdom 3 Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Wallingford OX10 8BB, United Kingdom
• Vol. 41:545-574 (Volume publication date October 2016) https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-110615-085831
• First published as a Review in Advance on July 14, 2016
• © Annual Reviews

The ecosystem services (ES) framework was developed to articulate and measure the benefits humans receive from ecosystems. Cultural ecosystem services (CES), usually defined as the intangible and nonmaterial benefits ecosystems provide, have been relatively neglected by researchers and policy-makers compared to provisioning, supporting, and regulating services. Although valuing CES poses several conceptual and methodological difficulties, it is of huge interest and importance because of the linkages between cultural values, valuation methods, and the individual and collective decision-making that influence ecosystems and human wellbeing. This review is not a how-to guide, but rather examines key conceptual issues and maps critical areas of debate. There is a range of potential approaches to assessing CES; however, choices regarding valuation methods and their role in decision-making are shaped by cultural and political dynamics. CES are at a crossroads. They can potentially act as a fruitful conceptual container for a broad range of interdisciplinary research into human-environment relations and transform how decisions regarding the environment are made, but they can also be used to legitimize and entrench modes of decision-making that marginalize and undermine the very values they are intended to protect.

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Five frontiers of ces, conclusions, acknowledgments, references cited.

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Frontiers in Cultural Ecosystem Services: Toward Greater Equity and Justice in Ecosystem Services Research and Practice

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Rachelle K Gould, Leah L Bremer, Pua'ala Pascua, Kelly Meza-Prado, Frontiers in Cultural Ecosystem Services: Toward Greater Equity and Justice in Ecosystem Services Research and Practice, BioScience , Volume 70, Issue 12, December 2020, Pages 1093–1107, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biaa112

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Cultural ecosystem services (CES) are associated with diverse and profound values, such as spiritual fulfillment, cultural heritage, and identity-related phenomena. Early ecosystem services research often omitted these deep meanings, but they are increasingly explored in recent studies through a range of disciplinary and epistemological perspectives. In the present article, we distill emerging frontiers of CES research. These frontiers help to characterize varied sources of meaning that are central to the CES ethos. They represent both advances in and opportunities for CES research, especially as related to justice and equity. The frontiers are: broadening definitions and conceptualizations of CES; addressing collective aspects of CES and attending to process; acknowledging that CES are reciprocal, relational, and dynamic; embracing narrative; and better connecting CES to biophysical attributes. We focus on the implications of these frontiers for equity and justice and suggest future research that can help ecosystem services work better address both legacies and current manifestations of injustice.

For millennia, people have recognized that spiritual, identity-based, and culturally rich connections to ecosystems are crucially important. Through these nonmaterial connections (which are often deeply intertwined with material connections), ecosystems enrich human well-being in diverse ways. However, in general, much decision-making has not fully honored these relationships. In response, recent scholarly and policy work strives to create mechanisms to better include such connections. One approach, part of the increasing use of the ecosystem services (ES) concept in decision-making at multiple scales, is to label the nonmaterial aspects of these connections as nature's nonmaterial contributions to people, or cultural ecosystem services (CES; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005 , IPBES 2019 ). Many CES link intimately—but not always obviously—to multiple dimensions of equity in diverse contexts. In urban areas, for example, who has access to the benefits of green space? In rural regions, whose values are considered when decisions about mining are made? Such issues of justice profoundly and systemically intertwine with environmental research and must be addressed across every subfield and in many ways (Schell et al. 2020 ). We suggest that CES can provide an important workspace to address equity-related challenges as they manifest in the environmental field generally and the ES field specifically. We therefore argue that well-designed and implemented CES research has the potential to represent diverse viewpoints so that they can be better included in decision-making that supports thriving socioecological systems.

In the present article, we synthesize emerging frontiers in the developing interdisciplinary body of research on CES and related concepts. We focus on how emerging CES research addresses issues of equity and justice because we see these normative goals as central and crucial. The frontiers we identify suggest a fundamental role CES research can play: It can provide a framework to bring diverse worldviews and values to bear on land-use decisions in transparent ways (Hirons et al. 2016 ). This role responds to an oversight of or a problem with decision-making frameworks: When values are implicit, decisions will, by default, reflect the worldviews and values of those with power (Ernstson 2013 , Berbés-Blázquez et al. 2016 ). Because they can make diverse values explicit, CES have the potential—if they are implemented with many caveats (e.g., in ways that align with the frontiers below, such as expanding beyond purely instrumental forms of value; James 2016 )—to counteract injustices in the way environmental management actions proceed.

The present article and its origins

We describe five intertwined frontiers we identify as in-progress developments in the CES field. We emphasize the frontiers’ potential to advance justice and equity in ES research and practice (table  1 ) and suggest future research that they inspire (table  2 ). In the process, we address many critiques of CES and offer ways that CES research is responding (and can further respond) to them.

Relationships between the frontiers we describe and equity and justice.

Suggested future research questions at the frontiers of CES research.

Before presenting our content, we briefly describe this article's origins. We generated the idea for this article following a session on CES at the 2018 Natural Capital Project symposium, in which all of the present authors participated. Our varied backgrounds (which include combinations of research, consultancy, and work with communities) encompass ongoing and varied experiences that engage CES and led us to the frontiers we present. During these experiences, we detected gaps in ES research and practice, especially as related to equity and justice. Because we see not only equity-related gaps but also some progress toward filling them, we wished to crystallize our thoughts on existing and future work that addresses these gaps. We categorize the results of that crystallization—that is, promising directions in the field—as frontiers. We discuss a subset of CES research: a selection of CES research that which in some way contributes to the role of CES in increasing equity, justice, and inclusion.

Background: CES as a contested concept

We immediately acknowledge two closely related challenges to this article's conceptual foundation: First, critiques of the CES concept and, next, recent suggestions that the concept of nature's contributions to people (NCP) should replace ES (and, by extension, CES). We discuss critiques of the CES concept in this section, then address NCP in our description of the first frontier because we see the NCP concept as intertwined with the trend to broaden and deepen definitions of CES.

We divide critiques of the CES concept into two categories: problems with ES in general and problems with CES specifically. First, some critiques of ES in general may be especially applicable to CES. One such critique is that ES approaches often ignore or exacerbate uneven power relations; this is more likely when data are seen as subjective and soft, as is often the case with CES (Berbés-Blázquez et al. 2016 ). Second, some scholars have argued that ES valuation encourages neoliberal approaches to environmental management that result in commodification of ecosystems, which is especially problematic for many CES (Büscher et al. 2012 , Dempsey and Robertson 2012 ). Third, others have suggested that ES language and concepts do not match how people truly value ecosystems, particularly the nonmaterial relationships that CES aim to represent (Bull et al. 2016 , De Vreese et al. 2019 ). Finally, some argue that ES, because they focus on instrumental value, detract from biodiversity conservation efforts (Miller et al. 2014 ), or cannot adequately capture the many noninstrumental reasons that people value ecosystems (James 2016 ). This final critique interacts with CES in complex ways because CES often imperfectly fit the definition of instrumental value and also encompass relational values (Chan et al. 2018 ).

A second set of challenges address CES specifically in the context of research that embraces ES perspectives, but finds CES challenging to incorporate. A central difficulty lies in quantifying CES and integrating them into broader ES analyses of synergies and trade-offs (Hirons et al. 2016 ). Two underlying issues that make CES challenging to integrate into ES analyses are the problematic one-way service metaphor, which inadequately represents many human–nature reciprocal relationships (Raymond et al. 2013 , Comberti et al. 2015 ), and the deep incommensurability of many CES (Satz et al. 2013 ).

These and other often related incompatibilities, such as the inappropriateness of the ecosystem concept's focus on functional systems rather than aesthetic, symbolic phenomena, have led some scholars to argue that we should abandon the CES concept altogether (Kirchhoff 2019a , 2019b ).

We agree that these myriad challenges and incompatiblities are important. But we think they are surmountable and worth overcoming for intertwined intellectual, practical, and ethical reasons. The intellectual reasons include that decades (if not centuries) of research demonstrate the profound importance of nonmaterial aspects of human–nature connections for human fulfillment and well-being (Russell et al. 2013 , Hirons et al. 2016 ). The practical reasons include that decision-making increasingly employs ES frameworks (Guerry et al. 2015 ), which creates a clear need for some permutation of the concepts that underlie CES. The ethical reasons include that without any way to represent CES, decision-making processes that use ES approaches (and many others) will continue to omit nonmaterial values, with sometimes dramatic justice-related consequences.

CES is one of many possible lenses to interpret and express human–environment relationships—but one that, because of the popularity of the ES concept, currently has potential to influence policy and planning decisions. Although critiques of ES (such as those listed above) are important, it seems that, in practice, the concept can be a larger container for understanding why the nonhuman world matters to people; as the concept continues to evolve, the use of ES may not always fit a strict instrumental, service-provider definition. Indeed, scholars have been working to develop ES to bring about what may be its ultimate goal: to better incorporate into decision-making the diverse ways in which nature matters to people. The frontiers below represent some of—and can perhaps guide future permutations of—this collective work.

Here we describe the five frontiers of CES research that we have identified.

Broadening and deepening definitions and conceptualizations of CES

Most CES research that enters ES assessments has focused on recreation and aesthetic values (Hermes et al. 2018 ), which are easier to quantify (and therefore more readily integrate into ES models) than many other CES. These values are important to many people, but the breadth and depth of CES expand well beyond them. Recent scholarship has shown that widely used typologies of CES (e.g., that of the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment) may not capture the full array of concepts that could be considered CES. Most notably, Indigenous and local knowledge often play an essential role in CES, but Millennium Ecosystem Assessment–based categories do not capture many nuances of these perspectives. To describe this frontier, we first address recent work to reframe ES as NCP, then discuss two reasons that this frontier is important.

Scholars have recently suggested that the NCP concept replace ES (and by extension CES), partly in response to critiques raised above (e.g., a primary goal of the move to NCP is to address limitations of the transactional and economics-derived essence of the language involving services ; Díaz et al. 2018 ). This proposed lexicon change is probably the most well-defined example of the trend to broaden and deepen conceptualizations of CES. For this reason and also because the NCP versus ES discussion is of current interest, we will elaborate on the suggested transition to NCP.

Like many others, we do not see the distinction between NCP and ES as conceptually consequential (de Groot et al. 2018 , Kenter 2018 ). The NCP framing addresses issues that, although not a focus of the first iteration of ES, were not total blind spots (de Groot et al. 2018 ), as the examples in this article demonstrate. An issue more substantial than which term we use is the unidirectionality implicit in both terms: They both focus on how ecosystems affect people, not the reverse (Comberti et al. 2015 ). In presenting our next frontier, we describe emerging evidence that researchers within ES or NCP communities are working to address this problem.

Our understanding of CES is highly consistent with published descriptions of both nonmaterial NCP and CES. Díaz and colleagues ( 2018 : 271) defined nonmaterial NCP as “nature's effects on subjective or psychological aspects underpinning people's quality of life, both individually and collectively.” One distinction between NCP and ES, they noted, is that culture permeates the NCP categories (­material, nonmaterial, and regulating), rather than, in their perception, being isolated to one category in the ES framework. But this very idea of culture permeating ES categories and the separate category having nonmateriality at its core has been part of the published CES conversation for nearly a decade. Chan and colleagues ( 2011 : 206) defined CES as “ecosystems’ contribution to the nonmaterial benefits (e.g., experiences, capabilities) that people derive from human–ecological relations.” Another group led by Chan (Chan et al. 2012a : 745) discussed how CES are “everywhere” in ES: “Most ES, cultural and otherwise, have nonmaterial or intangible dimensions.” This understanding of CES is quite consistent with the ethos of nonmaterial NCP. The primary distinction is between nature's effects (NCP) and its benefits (CES)—that is, how nature's negative impacts are treated. The term effects includes negative impacts; benefits does not. We do not see this distinction as central to the conversation for two main reasons: because the classification of impacts as negative or positive can be contextually dependent and also because scholarly work on ecosystem disservices addresses negative impacts (e.g., von Döhren and Haase 2015 , Shackelton et al. 2016 ).

The prior two paragraphs demonstrate that the thinking underlying NCP and CES is quite similar. We do not have a strong preference for either term. More importantly, we advocate for the richness inherent in the understanding evident in much CES work and detailed in the present article (Schaubroeck 2019 ). We use CES because it is more parsimonious and currently more established than nonmaterial NCP. As we embrace the concept's richness, however, we should also address the following question: If we wish to broaden and deepen definitions of CES, where does the concept end? We therefore accompany our call for expanded definitions of CES with a suggestion of where the concept might locate its outer bounds. We suggest that CES research must include three core concepts: how nonmaterial aspects of human-nature relationships influence human well-being . If the question does not address nonmateriality, human–nature relationships and human well-being, it is not CES.

Engagement with broader and deeper definitions of CES may entail substantial deviations from typical ES research, and the remainder of our discussion of this frontier focuses on innovations related to these divergences. We focus on two fundamental differences between research on ES ­generally and on broadly defined CES, and on responses to these differences. The first difference is that many CES are based on people's interactions and experiences with particular ecosystems and are therefore locally nuanced and place based (Pascua et al. 2017 ). Much ES research, conversely, seeks to generalize across larger geographic regions. The second difference is that understanding rich experiences of CES can require epistemological and methodological approaches distinct from those that ES research typically employs (Adamowicz et al. 1998 , Winthrop 2014 , van Riper et al. 2017 ). In the present article, we discuss two overarching ways that CES scholars have embraced these differences: place-based research and expanded types of valuation.

Place-based research is a clear response to the place-specific nature of many CES. The process of identifying particular CES concepts relevant to a given place, especially when conducted in close coordination with Indigenous peoples and local communities, may not only provide the most accurate understanding but may also deepen existing perspectives and reveal new ideas of what CES can be. Once identified, these concepts might resonate with other communities, even in distinct contexts. As one example, a community-based process in Hawai´i identified the CES concept of “opportunities to learn place-based practices by actually doing them” (Pascua et al. 2017 : 471). This may manifest in some places (e.g., Hawai´i) as reviving double-hulled canoe celestial navigation practices and in others (e.g., Japan) as embracing responsibilities that come with being a third-generation ama diver (a freediving fisherwoman). This suggests that there are roles both to allow local language and cultural concepts to inform place-based CES frameworks and categorical groupings and to find commonalities between places.

Expanding conceptualizations of CES also requires that we address challenges and opportunities with valuation, broadly construed. The shortcomings of monetary valuation, including deep epistemological and methodological concerns, are particularly salient for CES (Satz et al. 2013 , Hirons et al. 2016 ). Classical economic valuation methods account poorly for linked and overlapping values (Lo and Spash 2013 ) and values held by communities or groups (Kenter et al. 2015 , and see next section). The place-based and relational nature of CES may also conflict with the hypothetical, often abstract situations typical of stated-preference methods (Kenter et al. 2016a ; e.g., survey questions about individuals’ willingness to pay to support a hypothetical new park).

These challenges mean that CES must engage with diverse forms of valuation or value elicitation; that is, they must broaden and deepen approaches to valuation. CES researchers have explored multiple options; we cite two examples. The first is deliberative democratic monetary valuation, which maintains economic valuation as a goal but also attends to power dynamics and representation through, as the name suggests, deliberative and democratic participatory processes (Orchard-Webb et al. 2016 ). A second example, this from the field of biocultural approaches, is to first identify specific attributes that connect culture and the environment and then, as appropriate, to use economic valuation tools (e.g., choice experiments) to compare those attributes (Baulcomb et al. 2015 ). One application of a biocultural approach relates to the 2013 large-scale oil spill on Otaiti Reef (Aotearoa, New Zealand). After the spill, tribal authorities used an Indigenous-person–led and culturally grounded decision-making tool to assess the impacts of the spill on the cultural, social, and environmental well-being of their communities using the customary concept of mauri (life force or life-sustaining capacity) as the unit of measurement (Morgan and Fa´aui 2018 ).

Why is it important to broaden and deepen interpretations of CES? One vitally important reason is that expanded interpretations (and operationalizations) of CES may increase the visibility of perspectives, categories, and conceptualizations that are particularly important in contexts less heavily influenced by Western European thought. The role of nature as a valued teacher (Comberti et al. 2015 , Gould and Lincoln 2017 , Pascua et al. 2017 , Ching 2018 ) provides an example. A broader example—one that integrates profound issues related to Indigenous perspectives, cosmovisions (i.e., how a person understands their place in the world), and priorities—is found in Berta Cáceres's work (figure  1 ). These examples, chosen from among thousands, make clear that in order to access the richness and depth of the CES concept, research must engage with definitions beyond recreation and aesthetics.

Tribute to Berta Cácares. The description illuminates relationships between Cácares work, Indigenous world views, and the types of values that CES research strives to represent to the extent possible. Photograph: Goldman Environmental Prize.

This section demonstrates that many scholars are converging on a concept of CES (or nonmaterial NCP) that broadens from how CES were frequently operationalized in the early years of ES research but still limits CES work to address human–nature relationships, human well-being, and nonmaterial phenomena. This expanded but still bounded conception includes deep engagement with place-based values and diverse ways to understand and represent value. This is an important step in advancing equity and environmental justice, especially in places in which some CES values have long been undermined. One primary reason is that an important dimension of social equity is recognition: an acknowledgement of and respect for local knowledge, ­values, and norms (McDermott et al. 2013 , Pascual et al. 2014 ). In both theory and practice, broad meanings of CES will allow CES research to help make manifest the diverse values of underrepresented communities.

Addressing collective aspects of CES and attending to process

In many cases, CES are experienced as shared cultural phenomena that are best expressed and characterized collectively (Kenter et al. 2015 , 2016a , 2016b ). Of course, individual and collective experiences and values are in “dynamic interplay” (Kenter et al. 2015 : 97); individuals absorb shared and cultural values from their surroundings but interpret them through individual experience (Bachika and Schulz 2011 ). A basic tenet of welfare economics is that aggregating individual preferences adequately represents overall value to society. Although this tenet may be relevant for certain types of values (e.g., economic use values), it may not apply in the case of values that are more often experienced and, therefore, more accurately described at community levels (Parks and Gowdy 2013 ). Research ­suggests that concepts of collective or shared experiences and values, although they are certainly important in communities of many types, may be particularly important in communities whose perspectives and worldviews differ from dominant Western ones—for instance, among Indigenous peoples (Adamowicz et al. 1998 , Pascua et al. 2017 ).

There are fundamental theoretical reasons why collective valuation techniques make sense in ES-related processes (Wilson and Howarth 2002 ); these reasons are likely even more applicable to highly socially defined CES. Primary among them is that ES are, in economic terms, public goods (i.e., they are “collectively consumed and indivisible among individuals”; Wilson and Howarth 2002 : 441). Individual valuations of such public goods are unlikely to represent collective well-being, and they are unlikely to address social equity in meaningful ways (Wilson and Howarth 2002 ). Another reason relates to the fact that many ecosystem-related values are not pre-formed but emerge through discussion and consideration (Kenter et al. 2016 c). Scholars recognize permutations of this phenomenon in many fields—for instance, in social learning (Wals 2007 , Reed et al. 2010 , Kenter et al. 2011 ), education (Dewey 2007 ), and economics (constructed preferences; Simon et al. 2008 ). Finally, research on ecosystem valuation demonstrates that outcomes—for example, the mix and relative weight of various ES—differ when individual versus collective methods are used (Kaplowitz and Hoehn 2001 ).

Research on how best to elicit collective values—at least as they relate to the environment—has blossomed in recent decades. Much of this work has been focused on participatory and deliberative processes (e.g., Raymond et al. 2014 ). It has used diverse methods: in-depth discussions of various types, citizens’ juries, deliberative opinion polls, deliberative monetary valuation, and deliberative multicriteria analysis (Fish 2011 , Kenter et al. 2015 ). Creative methods also expand from more conventional or established forms of deliberation and include participatory geographic information system (Brown and Fagerholm 2015 ), film- and arts-based approaches (Edwards et al. 2016 , Ranger et al. 2016 ), participatory workshops (Pascua et al. 2017 ), and the use of ethnographic methods during community workdays (Ching 2018 ). Research also suggests that it is often helpful to offer diverse routes to convey values, because various modes can appeal to different social groups (Ernstson 2013 ).

CES research has acknowledged the collective, constructed nature of values in many contexts. Collective methods of characterizing CES can create fruitful spaces of interaction—for example, among managers and participants in watershed management programs (Wilburn 2017 ) or among people interested in more opportunities for collective reflection among busy lives (Ching 2018 ).

Methods that rely on collective engagement have limitations that are important to consider. Most notably, collective methods are especially sensitive to considerations of power (Bickerstaff and Walker 2005 ). The impacts of power differentials include peer pressure, dominance of certain opinions, and avoidance of controversy. These influences can make it difficult to validate results with an entire community and to figure out what entire community means in a given context. Skilled facilitators and local collaborators can help minimize these impacts and work toward more inclusive valuation.

It is worthwhile to address these limitations because acknowledging collective aspects may be crucial to the ability of CES to affect issues of equity and justice. Individual, independent perspectives tend to align with white, Western (especially American), and male identities (Markus and Connor 2014 ); collective approaches to and representations of CES may better represent how many communities think about meaning and importance. Future work could address the limitations above while allowing for collective approaches by focusing on research that inspires, listens, and contributes (University of Hawai´i 2018 ). When performed with place-appropriate and socially aware methods, characterizing CES collectively may lead to more accurate and rich understandings of these services in diverse contexts. In some cases, this type of work can even empower participants and catalyze action—both of which are important components of equity.

Acknowledging that CES are reciprocal, relational, and dynamic

Research described in the previous sections has been linked closely to conceptions of CES as reciprocal, relational, and dynamic. Empirical work on CES has repeatedly revealed that the unidirectional, producer–consumer, and instrumental metaphor of services is often inadequate. In Madagascar, for example, ancestral spiritually imbued relationships with land dictate management practices, which in turn provide ES (von Heland and Folke 2014 ). In both British Columbia and Hawai´i (contexts that differ in many ways), the importance of kinship—a relationship but not exactly a service, benefit, or impact—arose repeatedly in semistructured interviews about CES (Gould et al. 2015 ). In an Indigenous-scholar-led study in Hawai'i, Pascua and colleagues ( 2017 ) framed CES research from the beginning as concerning reciprocal relationships, which resulted in meaningful community engagement with the framework and approach.

The concept of reciprocal relationships incorporates the reality that people all over the world steward, manage, or otherwise care for ecosystems that provide various services (Diver et al. 2019 ). Therefore, for many communities, services that people provide to ecosystems are just as relevant as those that ecosystems provide to people; the concept of reciprocity is more relevant than that of services (Comberti et al. 2015 , Kimmerer 2013 ). To recognize that ideas of reciprocity and relationships with nature are central to the ontologies and operation of many communities has important equity implications, especially among Indigenous peoples, local communities, and other groups with profound ties to ecosystems. The Native Hawaiian expression I ola ´ oe, i ola mākou nei (“When you thrive, so too do we,” said between people and their natural environment), exemplifies the idea that care for the environment, which encompasses living and nonliving elements in the natural system, will, in turn, lead to care for all occupants of that system, whether they be human or nonhuman (McGregor 2007 ). Relational thinking is also central to the Indigenous Andean concept of sumak kawsay , which roughly translates to “ buen vivir ” and “the good life.” Sumak kawsay encompasses ideas of what good living means, and it addresses the important role that nature–society interactions play in that good living. Because the Indigenous ontology that underlies it is inherently relational, the concept (unlike the ES framework) does not involve clear distinctions between nature and human society; it therefore also does not foreground either nature or humans (Villalba 2013 ). This means that sumak kawsay encompasses many of the concepts that CES addresses, such as living in harmony with nature, but without using a services metaphor. The same pattern exists in numerous other cultures (Diver et al. 2019 ). Recognition that the services framing is problematic is widespread, and scholars have suggested multiple alternatives (e.g., metaphors of a closed-loop system, stewardship, or a web of life; Raymond et al. 2013 ).

Closely connected to the idea that CES are reciprocal and relational is that they are often intertwined with long-term human–nature connections. In other words, many CES do not exist at a point in time but, instead, extend over periods or cycles. Therefore, to measure CES at one temporal point often does not capture their full meaning. Many CES, especially those associated with values other than recreation and aesthetics, often involve engagement of some duration. Long-term relationships can take multiple forms, and the CES concept allows for relationships that span the temporal spectrum (figure  2 ).

Spectrum of types of long-term engagement that people may have with place.

The importance of relationships and reciprocity in experiences of CES-related concepts has led to recent conversations in the sustainability literature about relational values (Muraca 2016 , Chan et al. 2018 , Himes and Muraca 2018 ). Instrumental framings of ES can clash with some concepts under the CES umbrella, because those concepts are not exactly and not always benefits that ecosystems provide to people (or, in NCP framings, impacts that ecosystems have on people). Spirituality, which is included in most typologies of CES, provides an example. Spirituality is a phenomenon that can be tightly intertwined with ecosystems, and it represents a crucial component of well-being for many people. However, it is rarely considered a benefit or contribution that nature provides to humans. This may be because phenomena such as spirituality, for many people, are “inherently relational: [They] are valued in the context of desired and actual relationships” (Chan et al. 2016 : 1464). The relational values concept creates conceptual space for values that are grounded in relationships and that are important to human well-being but that are not exactly benefits or contributions. It is important to note is that values that could be called relational values have been addressed in a variety of fields for decades and, in some cases, for centuries (Saxena et al. 2018 ). Burgeoning empirical and theoretical work under the relational values umbrella attempts to provide a meeting space and policy-relevant language for those ideas (see Chan et al. 2018 and the special issue it introduces).

To allow that CES are relational and involve reciprocity links naturally to acknowledgement of their dynamism. Studies on how CES may change in the absence of ecosystem change (e.g., through education or experience) are just emerging. Constructs closely related to CES and relational values (but not labeled as such) can change in a relatively short time (days to months) following educational initiatives (Britto dos Santos and Gould 2018 , Gould et al. 2018 ). Change in CES also occurs over historical and generational timescales. This often involves complex interactions of biophysical and social change; examples include changes in benefits from forests in the Mediterranean basin (Holmgren and Scheffer 2017 ) or from mangroves in Singapore (Thiagarajah et al. 2015 ). Longer-term dynamism is important to consider for at least two reasons: first, to better understand a context and its current state and, next, because changes in some CES may affect long-term goals of ecosystem management.

Complications arise when we recognize that CES may not always fit the service or benefit framing and can change independently of ecosystem change. Both characteristics pose additional challenges to inclusion of CES within ES analyses. Ways forward that acknowledge the complex realities inherent in CES can simultaneously honor these complexities and address issues of equity. One possibility would be to include more thorough consideration of the reciprocal relationships that underpin resource management in many places. To ignore such relationships risks imposition of outside ways of conceptualizing conservation. Another approach would be to better consider the nonecological factors that affect CES (e.g., timescales, extent of engagement, education). Increased attention to nonecological factors may enable more direct connections to decision-making by shedding light on how societal changes (e.g., a global pandemic) interact with CES, and particularly on equity-related concerns (e.g., how do CES support people during a pandemic, and how does that support vary?).

Embracing narrative

The methods used to elicit and characterize values influence what is shared (Chan et al. 2012b , Jax et al. 2013 ); the choice of method can obscure or make visible entire value systems (Turner et al. 2008 ). ES researchers, at least in the field's early stages, designed many findings to fit cost–benefit frameworks. The conclusions were therefore quantitative and sometimes monetary (e.g., Fisher et al. 2009 ). This can be problematic for CES, which are often difficult to describe and even more difficult to quantify. Quantitative, monetary values can be particularly inadequate to represent the perspectives of communities for which the language of ES may not resonate (Ernstson 2013 ). In Tarituba, Brazil, for example, local communities express value in ways that align poorly with ES language and categories (de Oliveira and Berkes 2014 ). To speak of fish or fishing-based lifestyles as a benefit does not make much sense; instead, people narrate the actions or occupations that allow them to access fish. Through stories, people express how fish are intimately connected with identity, cultural practices, and occupation. This example illuminates how elicitation methods that permit people to convey their relationships with nature in diverse ways may be necessary to capture diverse CES. Narrative-based approaches offer one such method; they allow participants to define and describe their experiences in their own terms. They also offer a way to connect CES to the rich theoretical foundations of diverse social science fields that are often obscured by economic, quantitative frameworks (Winthrop 2014 ).

Narrative can be central to how people understand and share nonmaterial relationships with ecosystems and, in particular, may help to understand the reciprocal, relational, and dynamic aspects of CES. The concept of narrative has hundreds of definitions, but most are similar to storytelling: “someone telling someone else that something has happened” (Smith 1981 : 232). Although scholars have not extensively explored the potential of narrative in the CES sphere, research in other fields suggests that it may serve as an effective method of expressing values. Below, we summarize this work from multiple fields and note its relevance to CES. We then present a few examples of CES research based on narrative.

An important reason to embrace narrative in CES research is that it can be central to fields that have justice as a guiding principle. Conflict resolution studies use narrative as a tool and suggest that narrative is powerful because it requires listening, is accessible, mobilizes new voices, and democratizes conversations (Senehi 2002 ). Critical feminist ethnographic methods from political science demonstrate how narrative can lead to more empathetic decision-making (Wiebe 2016 ). In critical race theory, narrative is a central tool for comprehending historical trauma and “opening a window onto ignored or alternative realities” (Delgado and Stefancic 2017 : 46). Narrative can be a particularly powerful and effective means to express deeply complex concepts such as identity and cultural heritage (Winthrop 2014 ). For these types of value especially, narrative can offer unique and crucial insight because it can convey profound meaning that is otherwise difficult to share. Peace and reconciliation commissions, as developed in South Africa and later widely implemented elsewhere, provide a prominent global example. These commissions foreground the importance of listening to stories of past trauma and have confronted injustice in many places. The relevance of this diverse past work to CES is obvious when one considers the ways that CES intertwine with historical trauma—notably colonialism and postcolonialism (which often cleave people–place relationships; Gould et al. 2014 )­—and with nuanced concepts such as identity that is inseparable from place (Pascua et al. 2017 ).

The ES field has also employed narrative in multiple contexts, and at least one framework for CES analysis suggests the use of narrative (Chan et al. 2012b ). Three examples illustrate ways that CES research can employ narrative. The participants in watershed ES initiatives in the Cauca Valley, Colombia, use stories to explain why they participate in these programs. Their stories, which are deeply infused with CES such as identity and sense of place, suggest that these services strongly influence sustained participation (Meza Prado et al. 2018 ). A second example, from the United Kingdom, used storytelling to elicit personal stories of important experiences at marine sites; the participants’ shared stories then formed the basis of deliberative discussion about the meaning and value of marine protected areas (Kenter et al. 2016a ). A third example, from Germany, involves analysis of stories submitted to a contest about a natural reserve. The stories collectively reveal rich evidence of multiple CES, and also demonstrate that many CES “are explicitly connected to specific biophysical features” (Bieling 2014: 207).

People collect and share narratives in myriad ways. Many standard semistructured interview formats leave space for stories to emerge; other methods specifically target stories. Methods that target stories include StoryMaps, an ESRI platform that links maps, images, and text; creative writing; theater performances; and community storytelling events. These narrative-focused methods can aid both data collection and sharing of findings.

Narrative has many benefits but also has limitations. The most obvious one is that interpreting and analyzing narrative to distill values may require substantial time and specialized training. In addition, although the researchers’ identities affect the research process in many types of CES research, those impacts may be even more pronounced in studies that rely on narrative.

It is worthwhile to address these challenges because narrative approaches are an important way to address equity and justice concerns through CES research and practice. Earlier, we described the prominent role that narrative plays in multiple fields that foreground justice concerns. CES research, being highly interdisciplinary, can take cues from this justice-forward work to understand why narrative may contribute to advancing equity and how to engage with ­narrative in productive, enriching ways.

Better connecting to biophysical attributes

Connecting ecosystem functions and processes with human well-being is a central—yet still largely unrealized (Chan and Satterfield 2020 ; Mandle et al. 2020 )—goal of ES research. Indeed, one of the reasons ES analyses can be so powerful is that they are able to pinpoint biophysical elements and characterize how and by how much those elements relate to human well-being. One way researchers make these links is through the concept of ES providers—that is, “the component populations, species, functional groups (guilds), food webs or habitat types that collectively produce” ES (Kremen 2005 : 469). As this definition of ES providers indicates, connections between ES and biophysical attributes can be studied in many ways, from species specific to landscape encompassing. CES are no different in this regard, and therefore, we use the concept of ES providers to organize a subset of CES research that engages with biophysical attributes. We hope that this structure may help to reveal gaps and ways forward.

Despite the similar applicability of ES providers, CES obviously differ in many ways from other ES; their nonmateriality often necessitates distinct methods. One result of these different methods is that CES work often engages with specific biophysical attributes far less than most other ES research.

Although this biophysically specific CES research is rare, it is on the rise; researchers have recently related many types and scales of ES providers to CES. Figure  3 summarizes a selection of CES studies as they relate to various categories of providers. We describe a few of those studies, starting from the left side of the figure. Research in Hawai´i has documented how CES are intertwined with the presence and recognition of ´ aumākua , familial ancestor guardians who assume the physical form of individual nonhuman organisms (e.g., a particular shark, a specific owl; Pascua et al. 2017 ). Some studies have focused on the CES associated with particular species or taxa (Amberson et al. 2016 , Cortés-Avizanda et al. 2018 , Echeverri et al. 2019 ). In a few studies, ecological traits or attributes have been examined: One showed that species evenness and color diversity, but not species richness, predict the aesthetic appeal of wildflower displays (Graves et al. 2017 ), and another indicated that avian functional traits (e.g., diet, plumage color) can predict CES (Echeverri et al. 2019 ). One study showed a positive association between CES and biodiversity in grassland landscapes (King et al. 2017 ). Another described how socioecological landscape characteristics (views, accessibility, historical sites, woodland size) influence the delivery of CES (Ridding et al. 2018 ). Larger temporal and geographic scales were explored in other studies; they demonstrate how seasonal and landscape dynamics influence CES (Graves et al. 2017 , 2019 ) or how dryland systems, including their abiotic components such as geodiversity, provide CES (Teff-Seker and Orenstein 2019 ).

Types of ecosystem service providers addressed in CES research, with examples. The examples are associated with the following publications: 1Pascua et al. 2017 ; 2Amberson et al. 2016 ; 3Cortés-Avizanda et al. 2018 ; 4Graves et al. 2017 ; 5Echeverri et al. 2019 ; 6King et al. 2017 ; 7Graves et al. 2019 , 2017b; 8Plieninger et al. 2013 ; 9Keeler et al. 2015 ; 10Willis et al. 2018 ; 11Baulcomb et al. 2015 .

There may be multiple reasons why a specific biophysical focus is pertinent to a study context; sometimes authors make this explicit, and sometimes they do not. Interests in species-specific explorations, for instance, may be driven by ecological classifications (e.g., threatened and endangered species) or by local and cultural connections to a particular species (e.g., cultural keystone species, Garibaldi and Turner 2004 ). Many CES studies focus on larger-scale areas (e.g., a specific forest area or park); these may or may not constitute ES providers. The tendency to generalize on the ecological side is one distinction between research on CES and ES more generally: In CES research, ecological granularity is often much more coarse.

A small segment of researchers have explored how CES may change on the basis of a specific type of biophysical detail: the condition of the ES provider (as affected by, e.g., pollution or habitat modification). This work can span the range of ES providers, from specific organisms to landscapes. It asks the following question: How do different ecosystem conditions affect CES? As two examples, research demonstrates that harmful algal blooms in marine ecosystems decrease a suite of multiple CES (Willis et al. 2018 ) and that lakes with clearer water receive more visitors (Keeler et al. 2015 ). This work can add to research on how ecosystem condition affects ES generally (e.g., McLaughlin and Cohen 2013 ).

Another permutation of this frontier—that is, an approach that better links biophysical attributes but with a focus different than that of ES providers—relates to an improved connection between CES and material ES (because the latter tend to be more commonly and obviously connected to specific biophysical attributes). This work takes two forms. The first is inclusion of CES in broader ES assessments (Raudsepp-Hearne et al. 2010 , Bremer et al. 2018a , 2018b ). This inclusion brings CES into larger conversations about ES; it brings CES to the table alongside other ES. The second avenue to better connect CES with material ES goes a step further: Beyond presenting the two alongside one another, it explores potential causal relationships between material ES and CES. In some ways, this second avenue can be considered a meta-approach, because a material ES may itself be analogous to an ES provider. As one example, communities participating in the Ecuadorian Andes’ Socio Bosque conservation incentive program recognize the páramo (alpine tundra) as the source of water essential to their livelihoods. They also describe how these grasslands are deeply connected to community identity and culture, which demonstrates the links between material and nonmaterial values (Farley and Bremer 2017 ). It seems likely that some of the CES associated with the páramo draw power and importance from the crucial role played by that specific ecosystem in material livelihoods; that is, the provider of the CES is the material ES of water provision. Future research could explore this type of connection between particular material ES and particular CES (e.g., how might water-flow regulation relate to spirituality?).

A primary challenge of efforts to link biophysical attributes and CES is that these efforts must address two highly complex arenas: social preferences and values and ecosystems’ biophysical properties. To date, much CES-related research explores detail in only one of the two. Much research focused on CES has described and parsed nuance on the social side of that relationship but has minimally treated ecological attributes. Much current CES research that engages with ecological nuance, however, does the reverse: It uses holistically important or novel measures of ES providers but relatively simple or superficial measures for CES. For the most part, the work we present in this section aligns more closely with the second group: It engages with ecological nuance but less so with social nuance.

We perceive a need to develop approaches that capture increased nuance in both cultural and ecological attributes; indeed, doing so may open possibilities for CES research to address equity in novel ways. The reason that increased attention to biophysical attributes may address equity issues stems from the fact that different beneficiaries—that is, groups or individuals who perceive or experience CES in a particular way—may value biophysical attributes in different ways and to different degrees. To offer two extreme examples: A jogger may experience the same CES while exercising in a highly diverse native forest or a forest filled with invasive species, whereas a forager may experience dramatically different CES as a result of changes in spatial or temporal abundance of valued species. The forager's case is one of many possibilities: Biophysical attributes can affect a broad range of CES (e.g., those related to spirituality, ceremony, identity) in crucial ways. These impacts may be particularly important for communities that are highly aware of nuanced ecological condition (e.g., hunters, foragers, cultural practitioners). Specific biophysical attributes may also be especially relevant in and among Indigenous peoples and local communities who place high value on both human and nonhuman kinship bonds (Salmón 2000 ); in some such contexts, humanity and nature are less (or not) distinct, and biophysical features, conditions, and attributes may be just as important as human ones. The challenge is how to carefully and respectfully identify then monitor these connections. One approach is in emerging research on biocultural indicators, which capture aspects of linked biological and cultural systems (Sterling et al. 2017 ). Other potential pathways will likely include drawing on diverse methods, working closely with place-connected communities, and honoring Indigenous and local knowledge and worldviews.

Building on the promising work we describe in this section, we argue that scholars continue to improve the ability of CES to achieve that central goal of ES research: to understand how particular biophysical elements benefit human well-being. We also emphasize that this work should acknowledge its potential blind spots and complications and should strongly consider whether and how different knowledge systems and worldviews approach biophysical attributes (e.g., that those attributes may be inseparable from each other or social systems). To advance in this way may simultaneously achieve two goals: that CES research become more management-relevant and better able to address equity issues rooted in deep connections to ES providers, whether or not that particular term is used. This kind of increased attention to connections between biophysical attributes and CES may bring equity issues to the forefront in management and planning related to ethically complex issues—for example, important debates such as those around novel ecosystems (Burnett et al. 2019 ), or restoration strategies that are focused on biocultural goals rather than solely on native species (Winter et al. 2020 ).

To describe and value CES is complicated. However, without explicit attention to CES, the ideas they represent may be ignored in some decision-making circles. This omission can have important justice-related consequences (Maru et al. 2012 ). In this article, we emphasize how recent advances in CES research can address past deficiencies in the ES conceptual framework—particularly those that have failed to address or even have exacerbated structural inequalities and injustice.

An important question in many CES analyses is how they relate to decision-making. Links to decision-making are still nascent in many cases (Gould et al. 2019 ), and strengthening them will require intentionality from both researchers and decision-makers (Chan and Satterfield 2020 , Mandle et al. 2020 ). Researchers, to achieve that strengthening, must think creatively about how to work with decision-makers at various stages of the research process. One aspect of that collaboration—albeit one much less involved than sustained transdisciplinary collaboration—is to share findings in various formats and for various audiences. Flexibility is important because not all decision-making contexts function the same way, nor do they use the same forms of evidence. To spur ideas related to this aspect of collaboration with decision-makers, table  3 presents multiple examples of ways to share findings related to CES. Notably, many underscore the importance of sharing findings with participants as a precursor to broader dissemination. Just as researchers must make this conscious effort, decision-makers may need to reconsider the types of information they use. They also likely need to pay special attention, in the case of complex CES and their justice implications, to whose voices are included in value- or CES-elicitation processes and to the ways values are characterized.

Examples of ways to more broadly share findings from CES and CES-related research.

Note: The examples primarily encompass approaches and outputs that stem from collaborative, community-based research projects codesigned with community members.

The issues that CES address are weighty and call for transdisciplinary problem-solving. We hope that CES research can provide flexible, powerful avenues to address equity-related concerns that often accompany these issues. We suggest that in order to reach its full potential, CES work should continue and deepen work aligned with the five frontiers described above. These frontiers suggest that CES research, if it maintains its connections with diverse methodologies and epistemologies, may help to strengthen ES approaches, both in general and as they relate to issues of justice and equity (table  1 ). In table  2 , we offer future research questions for each of the frontiers. We suggest and hope that CES work that builds on these frontiers, by answering the questions in table  2 and many others, can include diverse views and voices. By continuing to develop along these frontiers, CES work may begin to address social power relations, representational justice, and other equity concerns that surround and infuse ES research and practice (Berbés-Blázquez et al. 2016 ).

We are grateful for the many people and places that have shared time and ideas with us and with the hundreds of other people conducting CES-related research. We also thank the Natural Capital Project Symposium for hosting the session that inspired this paper.

Author Biographical

Rachelle Gould ( [email protected] ) is an assistant professor in the Sustainability and Global Equity Cluster at the University of Vermont, in Burlington; she is a faculty member of the Rubenstein School of Environment and Resources and the Environmental Program and is a fellow of the Gund Institute for the Environment, also in Burlington, Vermont. Leah Bremer is an environmental science and policy specialist at the University of Hawai´i Economic Research Organization and Water Resources Research Center, in Honolulu, Hawai'i; she is also a cooperating faculty member with the Department of Geography and Environment, the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management, and the Biocultural Initiative of the Pacific and is an affiliate of the Gund Institute for the Environment, at the University of Vermont, in Burlington, and a research associate with Fundación Cordillera Tropical in Ecuador, in Cuenca. Pua´ala Pascua is a biodiversity scientist and a biocultural specialist at the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation of the American Museum of Natural History, in New York, New York. Kelly Meza Prado is a public health student at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, at the University of London, in London, England, and was previously a researcher at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis, and with the Natural Capital Project, at Stanford University, in Stanford, California.

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Resilient Geographies: An Atlas of Cultural Ecosystem Services in the Land of Spirit Waters.

This thesis explores the relationship between and the impact of cultural ecosystem services on resilience planning by examining public spaces in San Antonio, Texas. Existing studies have recognized that evaluating cultural ecosystem services is challenging, but continued research as well as the development and testing of new methods are necessary to enhance our understanding. To support this aim, this thesis utilized participant observation and an inductive research approach to examine how cultural ecosystem services – the intangible benefits that communities gain from their natural environments – influence levels of social interaction and social cohesion. Three public urban green spaces in San Antonio were selected for observation because they function as spaces for cultural engagement and social resilience in the city. The findings of this study indicate that cultural ecosystem services are invaluable to fostering social cohesion and greater levels of social interaction in public spaces. Further, mapping observations of use and behavior from each of the three selected public green spaces coupled with historical research reveal the extent to which planning, and design interventions can influence cultural ecosystem services, the number of people engaging with them, and the who those people are in a general sense. Although it was not possible for this thesis, future studies should employ post-observation interviews with individuals making use of public green spaces to enrich and contextualize the observational data.

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The University of Chicago The Law School

Innovation clinic—significant achievements for 2023-24.

The Innovation Clinic continued its track record of success during the 2023-2024 school year, facing unprecedented demand for our pro bono services as our reputation for providing high caliber transactional and regulatory representation spread. The overwhelming number of assistance requests we received from the University of Chicago, City of Chicago, and even national startup and venture capital communities enabled our students to cherry-pick the most interesting, pedagogically valuable assignments offered to them. Our focus on serving startups, rather than all small- to medium-sized businesses, and our specialization in the needs and considerations that these companies have, which differ substantially from the needs of more traditional small businesses, has proven to be a strong differentiator for the program both in terms of business development and prospective and current student interest, as has our further focus on tackling idiosyncratic, complex regulatory challenges for first-of-their kind startups. We are also beginning to enjoy more long-term relationships with clients who repeatedly engage us for multiple projects over the course of a year or more as their legal needs develop.

This year’s twelve students completed over twenty projects and represented clients in a very broad range of industries: mental health and wellbeing, content creation, medical education, biotech and drug discovery, chemistry, food and beverage, art, personal finance, renewable energy, fintech, consumer products and services, artificial intelligence (“AI”), and others. The matters that the students handled gave them an unparalleled view into the emerging companies and venture capital space, at a level of complexity and agency that most junior lawyers will not experience until several years into their careers.

Representative Engagements

While the Innovation Clinic’s engagements are highly confidential and cannot be described in detail, a high-level description of a representative sample of projects undertaken by the Innovation Clinic this year includes:

Transactional/Commercial Work

• A previous client developing a symptom-tracking wellness app for chronic disease sufferers engaged the Innovation Clinic again, this time to restructure its cap table by moving one founder’s interest in the company to a foreign holding company and subjecting the holding company to appropriate protections in favor of the startup.
• Another client with whom the Innovation Clinic had already worked several times engaged us for several new projects, including (1) restructuring their cap table and issuing equity to an additional, new founder, (2) drafting several different forms of license agreements that the company could use when generating content for the platform, covering situations in which the company would license existing content from other providers, jointly develop new content together with contractors or specialists that would then be jointly owned by all creators, or commission contractors to make content solely owned by the company, (3) drafting simple agreements for future equity (“Safes”) for the company to use in its seed stage fundraising round, and (4) drafting terms of service and a privacy policy for the platform.
• Yet another repeat client, an internet platform that supports independent artists by creating short films featuring the artists to promote their work and facilitates sales of the artists’ art through its platform, retained us this year to draft a form of independent contractor agreement that could be used when the company hires artists to be featured in content that the company’s Fortune 500 brand partners commission from the company, and to create capsule art collections that could be sold by these Fortune 500 brand partners in conjunction with the content promotion.
• We worked with a platform using AI to accelerate the Investigational New Drug (IND) approval and application process to draft a form of license agreement for use with its customers and an NDA for prospective investors.
• A novel personal finance platform for young, high-earning individuals engaged the Innovation Clinic to form an entity for the platform, including helping the founders to negotiate a deal among them with respect to roles and equity, terms that the equity would be subject to, and other post-incorporation matters, as well as to draft terms of service and a privacy policy for the platform.
• Students also formed an entity for a biotech therapeutics company founded by University of Chicago faculty members and an AI-powered legal billing management platform founded by University of Chicago students.
• A founder the Innovation Clinic had represented in connection with one venture engaged us on behalf of his other venture team to draft an equity incentive plan for the company as well as other required implementing documentation. His venture with which we previously worked also engaged us this year to draft Safes to be used with over twenty investors in a seed financing round.

More information regarding other types of transactional projects that we typically take on can be found here .

Regulatory Research and Advice

• A team of Innovation Clinic students invested a substantial portion of our regulatory time this year performing highly detailed and complicated research into public utilities laws of several states to advise a groundbreaking renewable energy technology company as to how its product might be regulated in these states and its clearest path to market. This project involved a review of not only the relevant state statutes but also an analysis of the interplay between state and federal statutes as it relates to public utilities law, the administrative codes of the relevant state executive branch agencies, and binding and non-binding administrative orders, decisions and guidance from such agencies in other contexts that could shed light on how such states would regulate this never-before-seen product that their laws clearly never contemplated could exist. The highly varied approach to utilities regulation in all states examined led to a nuanced set of analysis and recommendations for the client.
• In another significant research project, a separate team of Innovation Clinic students undertook a comprehensive review of all settlement orders and court decisions related to actions brought by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for violations of the prohibition on unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts and practices under the Consumer Financial Protection Act, as well as selected relevant settlement orders, court decisions, and other formal and informal guidance documents related to actions brought by the Federal Trade Commission for violations of the prohibition on unfair or deceptive acts or practices under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, to assemble a playbook for a fintech company regarding compliance. This playbook, which distilled very complicated, voluminous legal decisions and concepts into a series of bullet points with clear, easy-to-follow rules and best practices, designed to be distributed to non-lawyers in many different facets of this business, covered all aspects of operations that could subject a company like this one to liability under the laws examined, including with respect to asset purchase transactions, marketing and consumer onboarding, usage of certain terms of art in advertising, disclosure requirements, fee structures, communications with customers, legal documentation requirements, customer service and support, debt collection practices, arrangements with third parties who act on the company’s behalf, and more.

Miscellaneous

• Last year’s students built upon the Innovation Clinic’s progress in shaping the rules promulgated by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) pursuant to the Corporate Transparency Act to create a client alert summarizing the final rule, its impact on startups, and what startups need to know in order to comply. When FinCEN issued additional guidance with respect to that final rule and changed portions of the final rule including timelines for compliance, this year’s students updated the alert, then distributed it to current and former clients to notify them of the need to comply. The final bulletin is available here .
• In furtherance of that work, additional Innovation Clinic students this year analyzed the impact of the final rule not just on the Innovation Clinic’s clients but also its impact on the Innovation Clinic, and how the Innovation Clinic should change its practices to ensure compliance and minimize risk to the Innovation Clinic. This also involved putting together a comprehensive filing guide for companies that are ready to file their certificates of incorporation to show them procedurally how to do so and explain the choices they must make during the filing process, so that the Innovation Clinic would not be involved in directing or controlling the filings and thus would not be considered a “company applicant” on any client’s Corporate Transparency Act filings with FinCEN.
• The Innovation Clinic also began producing thought leadership pieces regarding AI, leveraging our distinct and uniquely University of Chicago expertise in structuring early-stage companies and analyzing complex regulatory issues with a law and economics lens to add our voice to those speaking on this important topic. One student wrote about whether non-profits are really the most desirable form of entity for mitigating risks associated with AI development, and another team of students prepared an analysis of the EU’s AI Act, comparing it to the Executive Order on AI from President Biden, and recommended a path forward for an AI regulatory environment in the United States. Both pieces can be found here , with more to come!

Innovation Trek

Thanks to another generous gift from Douglas Clark, ’89, and managing partner of Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, we were able to operationalize the second Innovation Trek over Spring Break 2024. The Innovation Trek provides University of Chicago Law School students with a rare opportunity to explore the innovation and venture capital ecosystem in its epicenter, Silicon Valley. The program enables participating students to learn from business and legal experts in a variety of different industries and roles within the ecosystem to see how the law and economics principles that students learn about in the classroom play out in the real world, and facilitates meaningful connections between alumni, students, and other speakers who are leaders in their fields. This year, we took twenty-three students (as opposed to twelve during the first Trek) and expanded the offering to include not just Innovation Clinic students but also interested students from our JD/MBA Program and Doctoroff Business Leadership Program. We also enjoyed four jam-packed days in Silicon Valley, expanding the trip from the two and a half days that we spent in the Bay Area during our 2022 Trek.

The substantive sessions of the Trek were varied and impactful, and enabled in no small part thanks to substantial contributions from numerous alumni of the Law School. Students were fortunate to visit Coinbase’s Mountain View headquarters to learn from legal leaders at the company on all things Coinbase, crypto, and in-house, Plug & Play Tech Center’s Sunnyvale location to learn more about its investment thesis and accelerator programming, and Google’s Moonshot Factory, X, where we heard from lawyers at a number of different Alphabet companies about their lives as in-house counsel and the varied roles that in-house lawyers can have. We were also hosted by Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati and Fenwick & West LLP where we held sessions featuring lawyers from those firms, alumni from within and outside of those firms, and non-lawyer industry experts on topics such as artificial intelligence, climate tech and renewables, intellectual property, biotech, investing in Silicon Valley, and growth stage companies, and general advice on career trajectories and strategies. We further held a young alumni roundtable, where our students got to speak with alumni who graduated in the past five years for intimate, candid discussions about life as junior associates. In total, our students heard from more than forty speakers, including over twenty University of Chicago alumni from various divisions.

The Trek didn’t stop with education, though. Throughout the week students also had the opportunity to network with speakers to learn more from them outside the confines of panel presentations and to grow their networks. We had a networking dinner with Kirkland & Ellis, a closing dinner with all Trek participants, and for the first time hosted an event for admitted students, Trek participants, and alumni to come together to share experiences and recruit the next generation of Law School students. Several speakers and students stayed in touch following the Trek, and this resulted not just in meaningful relationships but also in employment for some students who attended.

More information on the purposes of the Trek is available here , the full itinerary is available here , and one student participant’s story describing her reflections on and descriptions of her experience on the Trek is available here .

The Innovation Clinic is grateful to all of its clients for continuing to provide its students with challenging, high-quality legal work, and to the many alumni who engage with us for providing an irreplaceable client pipeline and for sharing their time and energy with our students. Our clients are breaking the mold and bringing innovations to market that will improve the lives of people around the world in numerous ways. We are glad to aid in their success in any way that we can. We look forward to another productive year in 2024-2025!