Abstract
Ecosystem services conceptualise the diverse values that ecosystems provide to humanity. This was recognised in the United Kingdom's National Ecosystem Assessment, which noted that appreciation of the full value of ecosystem services requires recognition of values that are shared. By operationalising the shared values concept, it is argued that the contribution of ecosystem services to human well-being can be represented more holistically. This paper considers current understanding of shared values and develops a new metanarrative of shared values beyond the aggregated utilities of individuals. This metanarrative seeks to conceptualise how values can be held both individually and communally, and what this means for identifying their scale and means of enumeration. The paper poses a new reading of the idea of shared values that reconciles the elicitation of pre-formed individual values with the formation and expression of shared social values. The implication is that shared values need to be conceived as normative constructs that are derived through social processes of value formation and expression. Shared values thus do not necessarily exist a priori; they can be deliberated through formal and informal processes through which individuals can separate their own preferences from a broader metanarrative about what values ought to be shared.
Highlights
Ecosystem services (ES) constitute a systemic framework conceptualising the diversity of interconnected values that ecosystems provide to humanity, many of which may be degraded or lost through solely utilitarian exploitation (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005)
This apparent mismatch – between the atomised individual and the complexity of ecosystems – was acknowledged in the United Kingdom's National Ecosystem Assessment (UK NEA, 2011) and the UK NEA Follow-on (UK NEAFO, 2014) which highlighted the potential of shared values to reflect the contribution of ES to human well-being (Fish et al, 2011) and by subsequent work to develop and operationalise the shared values concept (Kenter et al, 2014b)
We wish to expand the concept of social value to include both individual utility and the broader shared meanings and significance attributed to natural environments that are potentially missing from conventional economic approaches
Summary
Ecosystem services (ES) constitute a systemic framework conceptualising the diversity of interconnected values that ecosystems provide to humanity, many of which may be degraded or lost through solely utilitarian exploitation (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). Farley recognised that the economic valuation of ES had largely been conceptualised in neoclassical economic terms, assuming that aggregation of individual preferences can reflect societal-level valuation (see Brown, 2013; Kenter et al, 2015; Ravenscroft, 2010) This apparent mismatch – between the atomised individual and the complexity of ecosystems – was acknowledged in the United Kingdom's National Ecosystem Assessment (UK NEA, 2011) and the UK NEA Follow-on (UK NEAFO, 2014) which highlighted the potential of shared values to reflect the contribution of ES to human well-being (Fish et al, 2011) and by subsequent work to develop and operationalise the shared values concept (Kenter et al, 2014b). From this foundation we develop and characterise a potential new reading of the idea of shared values and how they might be operationalised to provide new evidence-based insights into environmental and other policy arenas
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