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Values play a significant role in decision-making, especially regarding nature. Decisions impact people and nature in complex ways and understanding which values are prioritised, and which are left out is an important task for improving the equity and effectiveness of decision-making. Based on work done for the IPBES Values Assessment, this paper develops a framework to support analyses of how decision-making influences nature as well as whose values get prioritised. The framework is used to analyse key areas of environmental policy: a) the present model for nature protection in market economies, b) the role of valuation in bringing nature values into decisions, and c) values embedded in environmental policy instruments, exemplified by protected areas for nature conservation and payments for ecosystem services. The analyses show that environmental policies have been established as mere additions to decision-making structures that foster economic expansion, which undermines a wide range of nature's values. Moreover, environmental policies themselves are also focused on a limited set of nature's diverse values.

As countries consider new area-based conservation targets under the Convention on Biological Diversity, protected areas (PAs) and their impacts on people and nature are coming under increasing scrutiny. We review the evidence base on PA impacts, combining the findings from existing rigorous impact evaluations with local case studies developed for this study. We identify characteristics of PA establishment and management that improve the sustainability of biodiversity conservation and justice for local communities. We find that recognizing and respecting local values and knowledge about natural resource stewardship, colearning, and comanagement are key to achieving positive impacts for nature and people. Transforming PA governance toward more inclusive conservation depends upon the ability of PAs to be designed and implemented around the values and needs of local people. © 2023 Elsevier B.V.

In this article, we present results from a literature review of intrinsic, instrumental, and relational values of nature conducted for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, as part of the Methodological Assessment of the Diverse Values and Valuations of Nature. We identify the most frequently recurring meanings in the heterogeneous use of different value types and their association with worldviews and other key concepts. From frequent uses, we determine a core meaning for each value type, which is sufficiently inclusive to serve as an umbrella over different understandings in the literature and specific enough to help highlight its difference from the other types of values. Finally, we discuss convergences, overlapping areas, and fuzzy boundaries between different value types to facilitate dialogue, reduce misunderstandings, and improve the methods for valuation of nature's contributions to people, including ecosystem services, to inform policy and direct future research. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Institute of Biological Sciences.

We analyze a multi-level ad-hoc emergency fund (MAEF) – the European NextGenerationEU program – as an opportunity to advance ambitious municipal climate action. Presently, MAEF follow a vertical complex governance structure, including strict timelines, evaluations, and competencies spread across policy scales, which condition local aspirations for transformative governance in terms of participation, inclusion, and equity. Drawing on qualitative data (interviews with key actors, participant observations, and primary policy and planning documents), we examine the implementation of NextGenerationEU-funded naturalization projects in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, 2012 European Green Capital. We offer an empirical analysis of how MAEF requirements challenge locally formulated values of governance meant to advance civic participation, inclusion, and equity. Findings indicate that the municipal dependence on multi-level financing schemes represents a trade-off with local democratic governance, whereby the need for slow-er and finance-detached civic engagement processes clashes with EU requirements for rapid project execution. Here, civic contestation against the projects’ processes reveals some of the core emergency funds governance weaknesses: a) a bricolage approach at the expenses of democratic governance, to ensure successful applications for climate finance projects and b) a fuzzy process without transparent communication of project selection and implementation. However, findings also reveal that the municipality failed to build up participation, inclusion, and consideration of social equity goals upstream, before and outside the context of MAEF. This reality calls for local decision-makers to develop more transparent governance models that help build up civic support when projects are in their early conception stage. © 2024 The Authors

One of the main debates surrounding payments for ecosystem services (PES) is to what extent should PES design focus on social equity concerns. While much of the debate is centered around theoretical arguments, here we focus empirically on the question of whether there are trade-offs between social-environmental effectiveness and social equity in PES design and implementation. Towards this end, we use a survey targeted at 61 PES practitioners in 12 Latin American countries, where equity is treated in a multidimensional way, not only including distributional concerns but also elements of recognition and procedure, reflected across a set of 15 indicators. Results suggest that PES which practitioners describe as being more equitable are also perceived to be more successful in jointly achieving the social-environmental goals of the PES program they are involved with. This suggests that from a practitioner perspective a concern for social equity may be advocated for not only from a normative stance ( because it is the right thing to do ), but also for instrumental reasons ( because it may contribute to PES success ). © 2020 Elsevier B.V.

Plural valuation is about eliciting the diverse values of nature articulated by different stakeholders in order to inform decision making and thus achieve more equitable and sustainable outcomes. We explore what approaches align with plural valuation on the ground, as well as how different social-ecological contexts play a role in translating plural valuation into decisions and outcomes. Based on a co-constructed analytical approach relying on empirical information from ten cases from the Global South, we find that plural valuation contributes to equitable and sustainable outcomes if the valuation process: 1) is based on participatory value elicitation approaches; 2) is framed with a clear action-oriented purpose; 3) provides space for marginalized stakeholders to articulate their values in ways that can be included in decisions; 4) is used as a tool to identify and help reconcile different cognitive models about human-nature relations; and 5) fosters open communication and collaboration among stakeholders. We also find that power asymmetries can hinder plural valuation. As interest and support for undertaking plural valuation grows, a deeper understanding is needed regarding how it can be adapted to different purposes, approaches, and social-ecological contexts in order to contribute to social equity and sustainability. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

The convergence of the biodiversity and climate crises, widening of wealth inequality, and most recently the COVID-19 pandemic underscore the urgent need to mobilize change to secure sustainable futures. Centres of tropical biodiversity are a major focus of conservation efforts, delivered in predominantly site-level interventions often incorporating alternative-livelihood provision or poverty-alleviation components. Yet, a focus on site-level intervention is ill-equipped to address the disproportionate role of (often distant) wealth in biodiversity collapse. Further these approaches often attempt to ‘resolve’ local economic poverty in order to safeguard biodiversity in a seemingly virtuous act, potentially overlooking local communities as the living locus of solutions to the biodiversity crisis. We offer Connected Conservation: a dual-branched conservation model that commands novel actions to tackle distant wealth-related drivers of biodiversity decline, while enhancing site-level conservation to empower biodiversity stewards. We synthesize diverse literatures to outline the need for this shift in conservation practice. We identify three dominant negative flows arising in centres of wealth that disproportionately undermine biodiversity, and highlight the three key positive, though marginalized, flows that enhance biodiversity and exist within biocultural centres. Connected Conservation works to amplify the positive flows, and diminish the negative flows, and thereby orientates towards desired states with justice at the centre. We identify connected conservation actions that can be applied and replicated to address the telecoupled, wealth-related reality of biodiversity collapse while empowering contemporary biodiversity stewards. The approach calls for conservation to extend its collaborations across sectors in order to deliver to transformative change.

Aiming at just and sustainable futures for biodiversity conservation requires clarity concerning how justice relates to the diverse values of nature. By drawing upon and expanding on the recent Values Assessment of Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, this article discusses the implications of the diverse values of nature for different dimensions of justice. It also addresses how achieving transformative change that protects biodiversity requires the inclusion of diverse values of nature into valuation and decision-making processes, and how this imperative is interconnected with different dimensions of justice.

As countries consider new area-based conservation targets under the Convention on Biological Diversity, protected areas (PAs) and their impacts on people and nature are coming under increasing scrutiny. We review the evidence base on PA impacts, combining the findings from existing rigorous impact evaluations with local case studies developed for this study. We identify characteristics of PA establishment and management that improve the sustainability of biodiversity conservation and justice for local communities. We find that recognizing and respecting local values and knowledge about natural resource stewardship, colearning, and comanagement are key to achieving positive impacts for nature and people. Transforming PA governance toward more inclusive conservation depends upon the ability of PAs to be designed and implemented around the values and needs of local people.

Recent research into the plural values about nature is focusing on relational values as a concept through which to better understand the breadth and importance of situated human–nature relations. However, potential relevance of language as a mediating factor in relational values has not been sufficiently examined. To investigate the links between language and values, we explore the influence of the ancient non-Indo-European Basque language (‘Euskara’) upon people's relationships with mountain forests in the Western Pyrenees of the Basque Country. Results based on triangulation of data from Q-methodology, focus groups and a socio-demographic survey indicate that while relational values are highly rated in all principal viewpoints about local forests, there is an emergent perspective that emphasises Euskara's key role in relations with the forest via cultural identity and place attachment. We conclude that positive relational values linked to Euskara may be seen as key levers for local sustainability transitions. The fact that positive rapports with language can have a meaningful role in human–nature relations points to the need for further research into the consequential links between biological and linguistic diversity. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article. © 2021 The Authors. People and Nature published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society

Sustaining the organisms, ecosystems and processes that underpin human wellbeing is necessary to achieve sustainable development. Here we define critical natural assets as the natural and semi-natural ecosystems that provide 90% of the total current magnitude of 14 types of nature’s contributions to people (NCP), and we map the global locations of these critical natural assets at 2 km resolution. Critical natural assets for maintaining local-scale NCP (12 of the 14 NCP) account for 30% of total global land area and 24% of national territorial waters, while 44% of land area is required to also maintain two global-scale NCP (carbon storage and moisture recycling). These areas overlap substantially with cultural diversity (areas containing 96% of global languages) and biodiversity (covering area requirements for 73% of birds and 66% of mammals). At least 87% of the world’s population live in the areas benefitting from critical natural assets for local-scale NCP, while only 16% live on the lands containing these assets. Many of the NCP mapped here are left out of international agreements focused on conserving species or mitigating climate change, yet this analysis shows that explicitly prioritizing critical natural assets and the NCP they provide could simultaneously advance development, climate and conservation goals.

The need for a pluralistic approach to biodiversity conservation science and policy is increasingly being recognized. We argue that plural perspectives require multilingualism in the sources and processes. Unless the linguistic bias and the related issues in terms of legitimacy and validity, resistance to inclusion, and knowledge coproduction are meaningfully addressed, biodiversity science and its positive effects for conservation policy and practices will necessarily be limited. We propose a series of options to address the linguistic biases in biodiversity conservation science and policy, including extending and tightening collaboration with environmental humanities scholars from diverse traditions as well as researchers from diverse linguistic contexts. We conclude by showing how multilingualism is especially relevant for cross-scale and global biodiversity governance. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Twenty-five years since foundational publications on valuing ecosystem services for human well-being, addressing the global biodiversity crisis still implies confronting barriers to incorporating nature’s diverse values into decision-making. These barriers include powerful interests supported by current norms and legal rules such as property rights, which determine whose values and which values of nature are acted on. A better understanding of how and why nature is (under)valued is more urgent than ever. Notwithstanding agreements to incorporate nature’s values into actions, including the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, predominant environmental and development policies still prioritize a subset of values, particularly those linked to markets, and ignore other ways people relate to and benefit from nature. Arguably, a ‘values crisis’ underpins the intertwined crises of biodiversity loss and climate change, pandemic emergence and socio-environmental injustices. On the basis of more than 50,000 scientific publications, policy documents and Indigenous and local knowledge sources, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) assessed knowledge on nature’s diverse values and valuation methods to gain insights into their role in policymaking and fuller integration into decisions. Applying this evidence, combinations of values-centred approaches are proposed to improve valuation and address barriers to uptake, ultimately leveraging transformative changes towards more just (that is, fair treatment of people and nature, including inter- and intragenerational equity) and sustainable futures.

Earth’s biodiversity and human societies face pollution, overconsumption of natural resources, urbanization, demographic shifts, social and economic inequalities, and habitat loss, many of which are exacerbated by climate change. Here, we review links among climate, biodiversity, and society and develop a roadmap toward sustainability. These include limiting warming to 1.5°C and effectively conserving and restoring functional ecosystems on 30 to 50% of land, freshwater, and ocean “scapes.” We envision a mosaic of interconnected protected and shared spaces, including intensively used spaces, to strengthen self-sustaining biodiversity, the capacity of people and nature to adapt to and mitigate climate change, and nature’s contributions to people. Fostering interlinked human, ecosystem, and planetary health for a livable future urgently requires bold implementation of transformative policy interventions through interconnected institutions, governance, and social systems from local to global levels.

Cities have pushed forward re-naturing initiatives in local planning agendas. Discourses and rationales for such interventions tend to follow instrumental framings often narrowed down to the economic, health and ecological benefits of nature's contributions to people (NCP). Yet, diverse urban residents often connect to other socio-nature framings that are associated with a plurality of values held for nature, including relational, intrinsic, and instrumental values. Focusing mostly on urban NCP, we used Q-methodology to explore the perspectives and expressions of urban residents' diversity of values for urban greenery and broader human-nature relationships. We explore the role of both instrumental and relational values, as well as certain potential disvalues of urban NCP. In light of the recent IPBES values assessment (IPBES, 2022) we follow a call for empirical studies and methodologies to explore, elicit and visibilize plural values about nature. We base our study in the Basque city of Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain (2012 European Green Capital) where we identify four distinct perspectives, all of which relate to a diversity of values about urban nature. Urban residents mostly perceive positive values for NCP as directly connected to their wellbeing. Yet, NCP that impact social bonds within their social community, expressed for instance through community-related values, are perceived differently across the four perspectives. We conclude that planners and decision-makers should pay scrutiny to include the four, partly differing, perspectives about the plural values of (urban) NCP in policymaking processes to assure just and inclusive outcomes. Here, intersectional and participatory approaches are needed beyond dominating framings of NCPs and related values, especially those that can take into account the needs and preferences of marginalized social groups. Special emphasis should be put on integrating relational values as nourishing such values through planning can play an

Globally, land and seascapes across the bioculturally diverse tropics are in transition. Impacted by the demands of distant consumers, the processes of global environmental change and numerous interventions seeking climate, conservation and development goals, these transitions have the potential to impact the relationships and plurality of values held between people and place. This paper is a Synthesis of seven empirical studies within the Special Feature (SF): ‘What is lost in transition? Capturing the impacts of conservation and development interventions on relational values and human wellbeing in the tropics’. Through two Open Forum workshops, and critical review, contributing authors explored emergent properties across the papers of the SF. Six core themes were identified and are subsumed within broad categories of: (i) the problem of reconciling scale and complexity, (ii) key challenges to be overcome for more plural understanding of social dimensions of landscape change and (iii) ways forward: the potential of an environmental justice framework, and a practical overview of methods available to do so. The Synthesis interprets disparate fields and complex academic work on relational values, human well-being and de-colonial approaches in impact appraisal. It offers a practical and actionable catalogue of methods for plural valuation in the field, and reflects on their combinations, strengths and weaknesses. The research contribution is policy relevant because it builds the case for why a more plural approach in intervention design and evaluation is essential for achieving more just and sustainable futures, and highlights some of the key actions points deemed necessary to achieve such a transition to conventional practice. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. © 2023 The Authors.

A fundamental challenge is to understand and navigate trade-offs between ecosystem services (ES) in dynamic landscapes and to account for interactions between local people and broad-scale drivers, such as agricultural intensification. Many analyses of ES trade-offs rely on static mapping and biophysical indicators while disregarding the multiple uses, values, and desires for ES (UVD-ES) that local people associate with their changing landscapes. Here, a participatory UVD-ES framework was applied to assess differences in the use, values, and desire of ES between three zones with different land-use intensities (with pre-frontier, frontier, and post-frontier landscapes) in West Kalimantan (Indonesia). The analysis revealed that (1) almost the full suite of ES uses has become destabilized as a result of agricultural intensification; (2) ES more closely associated with agricultural intensification were largely desired by local people yet they still valued a diversity of traditional ES, such as those derived from the provision of non-timber forest products, fish, and other ES associated with non-material aspects including those tied to traditional culture; (3) the mismatch in used ES versus valued ES increased with agricultural intensification due to a decrease in the flow of non-timber forest products, aquatic, regulating, and non-material (cultural) ES. Together, exploring UVD-ES patterns in a participatory way helped to reveal locally relevant social-ecological drivers of ES and a multidimensional perspective of ES trade-offs. Our UVD-ES framework offers an opportunity to foster participation as a way to reconnect global environmental research agendas with local and regional landscape contexts. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.

Socio-economic and historical drivers shape urban nature distribution and characteristics, as luxury (wealth-related) and legacy (historical management) effects. Using remote sensing and census data on biodiversity and socio-economic indicators, we examined these effects on urban biodiversity and vegetation cover in Vitoria-Gasteiz (Basque Country). We also tested the luxury and legacy hypotheses on regulating ecosystem services (ES) and explored predictor interactions. Higher educational attainment positively correlated with urban biodiversity, confirming the luxury effect, but had no effect on vegetation cover or ES. Older areas had higher vegetation cover and ES evidencing a legacy effect with an inverse response on biodiversity, attributable to more recent management strategies promoting biodiversity in green spaces. Habitat quality amplified the luxury effect, while population density strengthened the legacy effect. Our results suggest that urban biodiversity is mainly driven by socio-economic factors, while vegetation cover and ES are influenced by management legacies in interaction with population density. © 2023, The Author(s).

Achieving the intertwined goals of justice and sustainability requires transformative changes to meaningfully engage diverse perspectives. Therefore, scholars and policymakers need new ways of recognising and addressing nature's multiple values across cultures, disciplines and other knowledge traditions. By reviewing academic publications, policy documents and Indigenous and local community sources, we developed an inclusive typology of nature's values to clarify value concepts and guide their consideration in decisions. Through case studies, we illustrate how navigating ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ interactions within and across this typology can help confront plural-value challenges, such as enhancing inclusive participation in environmental research and practice, and effective management of socio-environmental conflicts. We conclude by exploring how this typology of values can further leverage transformative change in other decision-making contexts. © 2023 The Author(s)

The paper proposes a probabilistic approach to the assessment of the impacts of multipurpose dams. It is framed around the notion of Nature's Contributions to People (NCP) in the setting of the Water-Energy-Food nexus. The socio-ecological context of the Tana River Basin in Kenya and the construction of two multipurpose dams are used to highlight co-produced positive and negative NCP under alternative river regimes. These regimes produce both damaging floods that ought to be controlled and beneficial floods that ought to be allowed. But the river regime that results from hydropower generation and flood risk reduction may not be the one that is most conducive to food and feed-based NCP. The approach relates the economic value of river-based NCP co-production to the probability of flooding to derive the expected annual value of NCP and a NCP value-probability curve. The relation between NCP flows and flood characteristics is tested and estimated based on regression analyses with historical data. Results indicate that the net economic value of key NCP associated with multipurpose dams for local people and associated social equity effects largely depend on the frequency of flood events and on the way impacts are distributed across communities, economic sectors and time. © 2023 Elsevier B.V.

With increasing attention on green(ing) cities, urban nature is used to increase liveability, to create new sectors such as tourism, and to boost international investment. What counts as desirable green intervention generally follows internationally accepted practices as cities aim for international recognition. Here, we examine the historic production of a green identity and the ways in which urban leaders have navigated local politics to enact greening. We focus on the mid-sized city Vitoria-Gasteiz (Basque Country, Spain), the 2012 European Green Capital. Based on a critical discourse analysis of archival data and in-depth interviews, we explore the production of a green city-identity over a period of forty years and determine four key processes: (i) early good leadership with a social city being core objective of urban planning, (ii) the need for building shared goals in a context of a violent political conflict in the Basque Country, (iii) policy mobilities and thriving for becoming a green pioneer internationally, and (iv) de-politization of green and sustainability discourses. We argue that the initially perceived social green amenity - an outcome of early progressive urban democratic experimentation - that served as a unifying project across polarized political fractions turned into an economic cultural asset for economic growth, shifting from a political to a sustainability fix. © 2022 The Author(s)

Urban green and blue spaces (UGBS) are key for biodiversity conservation. Many studies focus on UGBS benefits for well-being, but how UGBS ecological and quality influence urban biodiversity is still poorly understood. We analysed the predictive accuracy of urban wildness (UW) and habitat quality (HQ) spatial patterns to biodiversity in the city of Vitoria-Gasteiz, Basque Country. Using GIS techniques, we mapped relative UW as a landscape quality, considering remoteness, challenging terrain, and perceived naturalness. We further evaluated HQ using the InVEST habitat quality module, including data on habitat sensitivity to threats (e.g. population density, light and noise pollution, accessibility) and suitability for biodiversity support, based on a parametrization by expert consultation. We compared UW and HQ to observed species richness obtained from crowd-sourced databases as a biodiversity proxy. UW and HQ models predicted general biodiversity urban patterns, being particularly adequate in UGBS. Peripheral UGBS were associated with higher UW and HQ and positively correlated to biodiversity, as opposed to the smaller-sized centrally located UGBS, more exposed to threats. Both predictors significantly explained biodiversity, and HQ better accounted for threat susceptibility in UGBS. Our findings suggest that small-sized UGBS, such as parks and squares, fail to effectively support urban biodiversity, due to their high exposure and vulnerability to threats, particularly in centric areas. Emphasizing efforts in larger centric UGBS with rewilding strategies (e.g. lowering management frequency) and reducing exposure to threats is essential to increase the habitat quality of UGBS and thus support urban biodiversity. © 2022 The Authors

Nature is perceived and valued in many different ways. Often, the types of values that are the most important to people depend on how they cognitively frame desirable human–nature relations. For instance, the value of nature can be seen through a utilitarian lens, for example, as providing ecosystem services for humans. Alternatively, it can also be considered valuable for non-instrumental reasons, for example, for its sacred or spiritual significance. In this paper, we use a framed field experiment to test how people belonging to three distinct communities in Colombia (Indigenous, Afro-Colombian and Campesino) respond to different ways of framing payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes, so as to assess potential motivational crowding effects of pro-social/intrinsic motivations for forest conservation. The experimental results indicate that crowding-in of intrinsic motivations for forest conservation occurred in participants from the Indigenous community when the PES scheme was framed in a way that highlighted the relational values of the forest. By contrast, motivational crowding-in took place for participants in the framed field experiment from the Campesino community when the PES scheme was introduced in a way that highlighted instrumental values instead. Participants from the Afro-Colombian community did not show the evidence of motivational crowding under either framing. Together, these results suggest that PES schemes that are framed in a way that harmonizes with locally salient human–nature relational models and associated values are more likely to cause motivational crowding-in, and thus encourage the higher rates of environmental conservation, even after payments are discontinued. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article. © 2021 The Authors. People and Nature published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society.

The social-ecological effects of agricultural intensification are complex. We explore farmers perceptions about the impacts of their land management and the impact of social information flows on their management through a case study in a farming community in Navarra, Spain, that is undergoing agricultural intensification due to adoption of large scale irrigation. We found that modern technology adopters are aware that their management practices often have negative social-ecological implications; by contrast, more traditional farmers tend to recognize their positive impacts on non-material benefits such as those linked with traditions and traditional knowledge, and climate regulation. We found that farmers awareness about nature contributions to people co-production and their land management decisions determine, in part, the structure of the social networks among the farming community. Since modern farmers are at the core of the social network, they are better able to control the information flow within the community. This has important implications, such as the fact that the traditional farmers, who are more aware of their impacts on the environment, rely on information controlled by more intensive modern farmers, potentially jeopardizing sustainable practices in this region. We suggest that this might be counteracted by helping traditional farmers obtain information tailored to their practices from outside the social network. © 2021 Albizua et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

The lack of progress in reversing the declining global trend in biodiversity is partly due to a mismatch between how living nature is conceived and valued by the conservation movement on the one hand, and by many different people, including marginalized communities, on the other. Addressing this problem calls for a pluralistic perspective on biodiversity. This requires consideration of the use of the concept of biodiversity, willingness to expand its ambit, and engagement with the multiple and multi-level drivers of change. We propose ways for conservation science, policy and practice to deliver more effective and socially just conservation outcomes. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.

One of the main debates surrounding payments for ecosystem services (PES) is to what extent should PES design focus on social equity concerns. While much of the debate is centered around theoretical arguments, here we focus empirically on the question of whether there are trade-offs between social-environmental effectiveness and social equity in PES design and implementation. Towards this end, we use a survey targeted at 61 PES practitioners in 12 Latin American countries, where equity is treated in a multidimensional way, not only including distributional concerns but also elements of recognition and procedure, reflected across a set of 15 indicators. Results suggest that PES which practitioners describe as being more equitable are also perceived to be more successful in jointly achieving the social-environmental goals of the PES program they are involved with. This suggests that from a practitioner perspective a concern for social equity may be advocated for not only from a normative stance ( because it is the right thing to do ), but also for instrumental reasons ( because it may contribute to PES success ). © 2020 Elsevier B.V.

The Scientific Outcome was produced by participants in the first-ever IPCC-IPBES co-sponsored workshop which took place in December 2020.  This workshop is placed in the context of recent international agreements including the Paris Agreement, the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and ongoing preparation for the post-2020 global biodiversity framework, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that converge on solving the dual crises of climate change and biodiversity loss as essential to support human well-being.The Scientific Outcome further develops and substantiates the conclusions of the Synopsis, summarizes the emerging state of knowledge involving climate change and biodiversity with the objective to inform decision making and highlight options for action, and to identify knowledge gaps to be filled by scientific research. The Scientific Outcome includes seven sections, the references outlining the evidence reviewed within those sections and the report glossary.

Global sustainability targets demand transformative changes. Nature-based solutions (NbS) are gaining traction in science and policy, but their potential for transformative change remains unexplored. We provide a framework to evaluate how NbS contribute to transformative change and apply it to 93 NbS from mountain social-ecological systems (SES). The framework serves to assess what elements may catalyze transformative change, how transformative change occurs, and what its outcomes are. Our results show that NbS are as much people based as nature based. Most NbS are based on four elements with transformation potential: nature's values, knowledge types, community engagement, and nature management practices. Our results confirm the potential of NbS for transformative change, observed through changes in non-sustainable trajectories of SES. We illustrate the components of our framework through a novel classification of NbS. The framework provides key components for assessing the effectiveness of NbS and allows tracking long-term transformative change processes. © 2021 Elsevier Inc.

In this article, we explore why conservation schemes that have positive outcomes through the participation of local communities cannot necessarily be deemed as just. We observe that recognition (understood as inclusion and respect) of local communities value-systems, a key factor towards environmental justice, is not often achieved in conservation governance. We build our argument on the authors extensive research on four Mexican forest areas and contrast our insights with the literature on environmental justice and conservation. All four cases are characterised by positive conservation outcomes as well as the inclusion of local communities in conservation governance, and as such are typically considered best-practice conservation initiatives in Mexico. Yet, in all cases, our engagement with local community members leads us to believe that their value-systems fail to be recognised in conservation governance. Three main factors appear to hinder recognition: (a) the dominant knowledge-system underpinning conservation action prevails in legal frameworks; (b) financial resources heavily determine power relations in decision-making, and (c) a lack of sensitiveness to local cultural norms affects local stakeholders capacity to communicate with external actors that design and implement conservation action. We conclude that achieving meaningful recognition of local communities value-systems requires: (a) developing awareness of the structural political and economic factors impacting on decision-making in conservation, and (b) an epistemological transformation, permeating conservation governance, in which local communities value-systems are considered one of various legitimate knowledge-systems. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article. © 2021 The Authors. People and Nature published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society

Crop choice, including the conservation of traditional crops and the uptake of novel ones, is a central issue in agricultural development. This paper examines differences between male and female farmers motivations for growing diverse crop portfolios in Papua New Guinea, a highly agro-biodiverse context facing rapid social change. Q methodology, a mixed qualitative-quantitative approach, is used to examine how alignment with different viewpoints related to crop diversity differs across male and female farmers. We show that, of five distinct types of farmers identified with regards to crop diversity choices, all include both men and women, and three of five groups show no significant gender-related differences. However, there are also some significant gender differences. A large proportion of women farmers associate with being highly motivated by crop marketing, whereas male farmers are more likely to favor agricultural diversity due to tradition or status motivations. Overall, strict gendering of crops does not appear highly salient. The results confirm earlier work in the region on women's roles in marketing but contrast to those on crop gendering. Altogether, they underline the complexity of gender and identity in agricultural choices. The results also have implications for the targeting and implementation of crop conservation and promotion policies and programs, including those aiming for improved nutrition or agricultural development. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

The social-ecological effects of agricultural intensification are complex. We explore farmers perceptions about the impacts of their land management and the impact of social information flows on their management through a case study in a farming community in Navarra, Spain, that is undergoing agricultural intensification due to adoption of large scale irrigation. We found that modern technology adopters are aware that their management practices often have negative social-ecological implications; by contrast, more traditional farmers tend to recognize their positive impacts on non-material benefits such as those linked with traditions and traditional knowledge, and climate regulation. We found that farmers awareness about nature contributions to people co-production and their land management decisions determine, in part, the structure of the social networks among the farming community. Since modern farmers are at the core of the social network, they are better able to control the information flow within the community. This has important implications, such as the fact that the traditional farmers, who are more aware of their impacts on the environment, rely on information controlled by more intensive modern farmers, potentially jeopardizing sustainable practices in this region. We suggest that this might be counteracted by helping traditional farmers obtain information tailored to their practices from outside the social network. © 2021 Albizua et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

The lack of urgent action to reverse biodiversity loss is partly due to the complex nature of biodiversity as a feature of our planet. Subsequently, policymakers receive an often-confusing variety of narratives on why biodiversity matters, which makes it difficult to link biodiversity loss and risks to the attainment of sustainable development. Making this link clearer calls for a multidimensional perspective on biodiversity to reassess what we value, facilitate mainstreaming and support national decision-making. We propose a co-produced Multidimensional Biodiversity Index to connect biodiversity science to the political agenda that accounts for the diversity of values underpinning nature–human relationships. © 2021, Springer Nature Limited.

Social networks influence decision-making in agricultural landscapes by affecting how farmers access knowledge and resources. However, researchers ignore the disparate structures built to access different kinds of knowledge and resources and the social mechanisms that take place on such farmers advice networks. We explored the role of social networks in decision-making among farmers in Navarre (Spain) to understand how and why some practices spread among farming communities. Social network analysis allows us to understand how farmers in this region share both knowledge and resources, and the potential implications of this sharing for the landscape. We find that large-scale farmers undertaking intensive land management are at the core of the network in this region, controlling the flow of knowledge and resources related to farm management, policy, technology, and finance. The central position of these farmers in the social network, and their reputation, is key to the spread of intensive farming practices in the region, which ultimately may lead to homogenization of local agricultural landscapes. Understanding farmer network structures in a context of agricultural intensification can help tease out the social mechanisms, such as farmers joining each other in cooperatives, behind the spread of agricultural practices. © 2020, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.