News release

From: Springer Nature

Sustainability: Nature needs to be valued for a sustainable future (N&V)

Improving how people value nature and how these values are integrated into policymaking is essential to aid the transformative changes needed to achieve more sustainable futures, research in Nature suggests. The study involves the analysis of more than 50,000 scientific publications, policy documents and Indigenous and local knowledge sources to better understand the diverse benefits of nature and how they are valued.

There is a wide range of perceived values of nature from which people benefit, be it economically (such as using natural resources to sustain livelihoods), recreationally, in a life-supporting capacity (such as maintaining biodiversity and stabilizing the climate) and even spiritually. Unai Pascual and colleagues present an assessment of how people value nature and how this is reflected in policy making. This report builds on the July 2022 Values Assessment from the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

The market-related benefits of nature tend to be the main considerations used in policy. Undervaluing the broader range of benefits of nature underpins the crises of biodiversity loss and climate change, the authors suggest. They also note that better assessment of the views and values of Indigenous people and local communities, and the integration of such into policymaking, is needed to promote more just (treating people and nature fairly) and balanced decisions.

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