Abstract
IPBES has replaced the term ‘ecosystem services’ with ‘nature’s contributions to people’. This make-over does little to address the semantic problems associated with ecosystem services. The ‘new’ term still characterises the relation between nature and people as one-way and the value of nature as instrumental (as a provider of benefits), masking human agency and broader values. By replacing ecosystem services with a near-synonymous term, IPBES ditches the baby (the successful term ecosystem services), whilst keeping the dirty bathwater (the problems with the term). This distracts from the otherwise much-improved comprehensiveness of its valuation framework in terms of pluralism. To be genuinely inclusive, IPBES should use an altogether different headline terminology that centres around people’s values and makes objects of value such as ecosystem services subsidiary. This allows diverse conceptions of human-nature relating and plural values of nature to genuinely stand on a par, whilst not ditching the baby. In the end, we can only integrate values in environmental governance, not services or contributions — ultimately it is the societal importance ascribed to nature that matters.
Highlights
Since the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), articulation of a new conceptual framework for ecosystem services has been a keystone activity
They note that ecosystem services are associated with a stock-flow model of nature-human relationships and bias towards western scientific and economic perspectives of nature
Many human value systems and religious practices include duties to nature and reciprocal norms (Cooper et al, 2016). This is all not reflected in the term nature’s contributions to people’ (NCP) anymore so than ecosystem services
Summary
Since the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), articulation of a new conceptual framework for ecosystem services has been a keystone activity. I will argue, IPBES should more genuinely update its headline terminology to reflect its inclusive thinking, and put peoples’ plural values of nature central instead of either services or contributions This way, ecosystem services need not be ditched, but can be subsidiary to a broader more comprehensive framing of inclusive valuation, keeping the baby whilst just draining the dirty water. I propose that IPBES should not highlight any single benefit-focused term, and not put nature as an object of value central but plural values themselves This provides a more comprehensive frame to encompass our living from, in and with nature, and the diverse ways in which we can know and conceive of this
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