The value of nature’s contributions to people: the IPBES approach

A new paper published in the journal Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, and led by Unai Pascual (Ikerbasque Research Professor at BC3) and member of the Multidisciplinary Expert Panel of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) synthesizes the vision by IPBES about the values of nature’s contributions to people (NCP) for a good quality of life.

Over several decades the nature of such values have been greatly contested across scientific disciplines. The values of nature are also often perceived in starkly different and often conflicting ways by different stakeholder groups. In practice, the interplay of different values associated with NCP produces equally diverse perspectives on aspects pertaining to for instance nature conservation, equity, resilience and ways of achieving sustainable development goals.

In this article IPBES provides the rationale for an inclusive incorporation of the diversity of values of NCP in decision making, as well as a (non-prescriptive) set of methodological steps for doing so. While developed within the context of the IPBES, this approach is more widely applicable to initiatives at the knowledge-policy interface that require a pluralistic approach to the diversity of values underpinning nature-human relationships.

Pascual, U., Balvanera, P., Díaz, S., Pataki, G., Roth, E., Stenseke, M., Watson, R.T., Dessane, B.E., Islar, M., Kelemen, E., Maris, V., Quaas, M., Subramanian, S.M., Wittmer, H., Adlan, A.,Ahn, S., Y.S., Al-Hafedh, Amankwah, E., Asah, S.T., Berry, P., Bilgin^, A., Breslow, S.J., Bullock, C, Daniel, C., Daly-Hassen, H., Figueroa, E., Golden, C.D, Gómez-Baggethun, E., González-Jiménez, D., Houdet, J., Keune, H., Kumar, R., Ma, K., May, P.H., Mead, A., O’Farrell, P., Pandit, R., Pengue, W.,  Pichis-Madruga, R., Popa, F., Preston, S., Pacheco-Balanza, D., Saarikoski, H., Strassburg, B.B., van den Belt, M., Verma, M., Wickson, F., Yagi, N.  (2017). The value of nature’s contributions to people: the IPBES approach. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 26-27: 7-16. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877343517300040