Contributions of ecosystem services to human well‐being in Puerto Rico

Abstract

Ecosystem services, including availability of greenspace, clean air, and clean water, can have benefits to human well‐being, but their relative importance compared to economic or social services is often overlooked. In Puerto Rico, for example, improving community well‐being, including economic and cultural opportunities, human health, and safety, are often overarching goals of environmental management decisions, but the degree to which improvements in ecological condition and provision of ecosystem services could impact local communities is complicated by wide variation in social and economic conditions. This study quantifies and maps neighborhood-scale indicators of human well‐being and ecosystem services for Puerto Rico to better understand the degree to which ecosystem services provisioning, alongside co‐occurring social and economic services, explains variability in a number of indicators of human well‐being. In Puerto Rico, variability in indicators of human well‐being were predominately explained by economic services related to accumulating income and personal savings, and social services, including availability of family services, healthcare services, and access to communication technology. Despite the large explanatory power of economic and social services, however, the analysis detected that substantial portions of well‐being, in particular education and human health, could be explained by variability in ecosystem services over space and time, especially availability of greenspace. Linking ecosystem services to multivariate elements of human well‐being can serve to complement more traditional community planning or environmental management efforts by helping identify potential unintended consequences or overlooked benefits of decisions.