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Participative strategy development serves to integrate the interests and perspectives of multiple stakeholders involved in today's complex environmental challenges, aiming at a better‐informed strategy for tackling these challenges, increased stakeholder ownership, and more democratic decision making. Prior research has observed inherent tensions between the need for participative strategy to be open to stakeholders' input and the need for closure and guidance. We extend this reasoning using a framing perspective. Our evidence from the development of the England Peat Action Plan suggests that tensions can emerge between the necessary ambiguous initial framing of intended change and the persistence of stakeholders' different framings of this change as well as perceptions of lacking knowledge, guidance, and control. We argue that strategy openness can thereby impede stakeholders' willingness and ability to change and counteract the strategy's aim for major transformation. Interactive spaces help mitigate the tensions and facilitate stakeholders' willingness and ability for change. Related Articles: Brant, Hanna K., Nathan Myers, and Katherine L. Runge. 2017. "Promotion, Protection, and Entrepreneurship: Stakeholder Participation and Policy Change in the 21st Century Cures Initiative." Politics & Policy 45(3): 372–404. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12201. Bryson, John R., Michael Taylor, and Peter W. Daniels. 2008. "Commercializing 'Creative' Expertise: Business and Professional Services and Regional Economic Development in the West Midlands, United Kingdom." Politics & Policy 36(2): 306–28. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2008.00107.x. Falkenström, Erica, and Stefan Svallfors. 2022. "The Knowledge–Management Complex: From Quality Registries to National Knowledge‐Driven Management in Swedish Health Care Governance." Politics & Policy 50(5): 1053–66. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12497. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social valuation of ecosystem services and public policy alternatives is one of the greatest challenges facing ecological economists today. Frameworks for valuing nature increasingly include shared/social values as a distinct category of values. However, the nature of shared/social values, as well as their relationship to other values, has not yet been clearly established and empirical evidence about the importance of shared/social values for valuation of ecosystem services is lacking. To help address these theoretical and empirical limitations, this paper outlines a framework of shared/social values across five dimensions: value concept, provider, intention, scale, and elicitation process. Along these dimensions we identify seven main, non-mutually exclusive types of shared values: transcendental, cultural/societal, communal, group, deliberated and other-regarding values, and value to society. Using a case study of a recent controversial policy on forest ownership in England, we conceptualise the dynamic interplay between shared/social and individual values. The way in which social value is assessed in neoclassical economics is discussed and critiqued, followed by consideration of the relation between shared/social values and Total Economic Value, and a review of deliberative and non-monetary methods for assessing shared/social values. We conclude with a discussion of the importance of shared/social values for decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite rapid advancements in the development of non-monetary techniques for the assessment of social values for ecosystem services, little research attention has been devoted to the evaluation of their underpinning paradigms. This study evaluates two contrasting paradigms for the assessment of social values in non-monetary terms: an instrumental paradigm involving an objective assessment of the distribution, type and/or intensity of values that individuals assign to the current state of ecosystems and a deliberative paradigm involving the exploration of desired end states through group discussion. We present and then justify through case examples two approaches for assessing social values for ecosystem services using the instrumental paradigm and two approaches using the deliberative paradigm. Each approach makes different assumptions about: the underlying rationale for values assessment; the process through which values are elicited; the type of representativeness sought, and; the degree of involvement of decision-makers. However, case examples demonstrate that the boundaries between instrumental and deliberative paradigms are often not concrete. To accommodate this fluidity, we offer a third, pragmatic paradigm that integrates some of the qualities of both. This paradigm has implications for engaging multiple community groups and decision-makers in the articulation and mapping of social values for cultural ecosystem services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental discourse frequently understands the values of nature as being instrumental, intrinsic, or relational and measured in biophysical, sociocultural, or monetary terms. Yet these specific values and value indicators are underpinned by worldviews, knowledge systems, and broad values that orient people towards nature in different ways and can be shared (or diverge) across spatiotemporal and social scales. The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Values Assessment emphasized the need for decision-making to embrace a plural-values approach that encompasses these diverse meanings of value to catalyze outcomes based on sustainability-aligned broad values like care, unity, reciprocity, and justice. Navigating these diverse values also highlights the salience of religion and its complexity in real-world scenarios as a force that shapes how people conceive the values of nature. For example, proposed modes of plural-value deliberation to reform institutions and shift social norms toward justice and sustainability need to be able to bridge sacred-secular policy divides. This article evaluates how religion interacts with nature's values by building upon reviews conducted for the IPBES Values Assessment. We present different conceptualizations of religion and explore how these relate to various understandings of social-ecological change. Further, we delineate how religion interacts with values based on three interrelated forms of agency: personal, social, and more-than-human processes. Upon this foundation, we discuss how to better engage religion in environmental policy and research, considering four modes of mobilizing sustainability-aligned values: (1) enabling, (2) including, (3) reflecting, and (4) shifting values and two analytical axes regarding religion's (1) social scale (individual versus collective) and (2) dynamic continuum (religion as stable versus changeable). Our assessment provides conceptual and practical tools to help consider religion in the processes and practices that shape, reinforce, or impede sustainability-aligned values for more inclusive and effective conservation decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the cultural contributions of ecosystems is essential for recognising how environmental policy impacts on human well-being. We developed an integrated cultural ecosystem services (CES) valuation approach involving non-monetary valuation through a eudaemonic well-being questionnaire and monetary valuation through hedonic pricing. This approach was applied to assess CES values on the west coast of Scotland. The impact of scenic area and marine protected area (MPA) designations on CES values and potential trade-offs with aquaculture, an increasingly important provisioning ecosystem service in the region, were investigated. Results confirmed a eudaemonic well-being value structure of seven factors: engagement and interaction with nature , place identity , therapeutic value , spiritual value , social bonds , memory/transformative value , and challenge and skill. Visibility of, but not proximity to aquaculture negatively influenced housing prices. In contrast, proximity to MPAs and visibility of scenic areas increased property values. All eudaemonic well-being value factors were positively and significantly associated with scenic areas and a subset of these with MPAs. The integration of the two methods can provide decision-makers with a more comprehensive picture of CES values, their relation to conservation policies and interactions and trade-offs with other activities and services. • Integrated valuation of marine/coastal cultural ecosystem services (CES). • Mixed methods including revealed preferences and psychometric approach. • Presence of aquaculture negatively influences housing prices. • Conservation designations associated with higher property values. • Eudaemonic well-being is strongly felt and clearly affected by different marine activities interacting with CES. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conservation science often addresses highly complex issues; creative approaches can help develop new ways of doing so. We describe constraint-based brainstorming, a 10-minute creativity-inducing exercise inspired by design thinking. Although we applied the method with the goal of developing creative environmental valuation methods, it is applicable to almost any complex, interdisciplinary environmental research problem. We tried the approach at two academic workshops, in Japan and in Germany. We generated, in each short activity, scores of unique ideas for the target question. We present this engaging activity as a way to simultaneously achieve multiple outcomes that can support innovative conservation science: quickly generate many seeds of ideas to address a challenge or goal, offer insight into nuances of and shared convictions related to the topic at hand, set a tone of creativity and breaking outside of established thought structures, and build community around a willingness to take risks and freely share ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Biodiversity supports a range of ecosystems services that are of fundamental importance to people in poor countries. Economic valuation of biodiversity is important for the development of policies that protect biodiversity and alleviate poverty. This paper provides an evaluation of monetary and non-monetary techniques for assessing the value of biodiversity to people in least developed countries (LDCs). Specifically, research questions include: [1)] To what extent have monetary and non-monetary techniques been used to assess the value of biodiversity and ecosystem services in LDCs? [2)] What are the key methodological, practical, epistemological and policy challenges to assessing the value of biodiversity and ecosystem services in LDCs? [3)] How can valuation methods be improved to allow more accurate valuation in LDCs? [Copyright &y& Elsevier]