The impact of seaweed cultivation on ecosystem services - a case study from the west coast of Sweden

Highlights: • Seaweed farming has positive effects on many ecosystem services. • Space conflicts and aesthetics may lead to negative effects on cultural services. • Positive impacts are on a large geographical scale while negative impacts are local. • To gain acceptance, considering ES impacts in marine policy is vital. - Abstract: Seaweed cultivation attracts growing interest and sustainability assessments from various perspectives are needed. The paper presents a holistic qualitative assessment of ecosystem services affected by seaweed cultivation on the Swedish west coast. Results suggest that supporting, regulating and provisioning services are mainly positively or non-affected while some of the cultural services are likely negatively affected. The analysis opens for a discussion on the framing of seaweed cultivation – is it a way of supplying ecosystem services and/or a way of generating valuable biomass? Exploring these framings further in local contexts may be valuable for identifying trade-offs and designing appropriate policies and development strategies. Many of the found impacts are likely generalizable in their character across sites and scales of cultivation, but for some services, including most of the supporting services, the character of impacts is likely to be site-specific and not generalizable.