What is the role of relational values at science-policy interface?

Bridging the gap for nature: empowering professional responsibilities through personal values

I conceptualized and facilitated a workshop within the Nature Dialogue project, aimed at broadening the concept of nature to advocate for policy support towards a nature-inclusive society in collaboration with Wageningen University and Research, Stockholm resilience center and The Nature And Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU).

Role: Conceptualised, organised and facilitated the workshop

Methods: Stakeholder engagement, participatory design, value mapping

Overview

The Challenge

More people now see that rebuilding the bond between people and nature is important if we want to center environmental issues especially in developed countries, due to their unequal impact on nature and habitats.

Spotlighting human-nature relationships can urge changes in social norms and beliefs leading to responsible actions that encourages them to imagine a better future. Imagining futures in which society changes for the better can help prevent biodiversity loss and create more positive outcomes. Including diverse people's values and views about nature in decsion making processes can ensure everyone shares the benefits and responsibilities fairly. The Nature Futures Framework (NFF) is one such tool that presents a new way for the development of nature and people-positive, diverse, values-integrated, and multiscale scenarios through mainly three value perspectives on nature – Nature for Nature, Nature for Society, and Nature as Culture.

Integrating relational values of nature in tools used to support decision making can strengthen efforts towards biodiversity, nature’s contributions to people, and quality of life. In order to explore this at PBL, we created the Nature Dialogue project.

The Nature Dialogue project focused on understanding the diverse value perspective of stakeholders that are involved with nature in any capacties such as NGOs, non-profit organizations, and local communities.

I initiated and organised the Nature Dialogue workshop: Bridging the gap for nature: empowering professional responsibilities through personal values.

Source: Pereira et al., 2020

Research question

I was primarily motivated to explore:

1. How can we incorporate relational values of nature within the PBL's working framework?

2. What are the relational values that are currently existing within PBL? Are there conflicts between these values?

Methods

I conceptualised the idea of collaborating with experts in relational values. I organised and coordinated with the nature dialogue team to bring together experts, narrowing down the location and arranging other logistics. On the day of, I facilitated the workshop and ensured smooth coordination between participants and facilitators.

The workshop was held at Fort bij Rijnauwen, to have an immersive experience in nature. The workshop focused on the essence of nature and its profound impact on both personal and professional realms. We explored these through exercises and discussions such as photo elicitation and sensory engagement with nature.

Key Findings

There is a diversity of personal relational values towards nature within our community.
Methodological tools like the multi-evidence approach can aid in bridging knowledge across various knowledge systems.
Most policy and decision-making rely on the conventional tools such as hard statistics, contextualizing data with insights from diverse knowledge systems can have broader reach and bolster our efforts towards a nature-inclusive society.
Transdisciplinary approaches at the intersection of social and natural sciences can drive meaningful change and foster a harmonious relationship between humanity and nature.

Reflections

I felt energised as this project began to take shape. I grew up valuing nature in a way that felt intuitive and almost self-evident; it was fascinating to realise how differently others relate to it.

Diverse perspectives enriched the collective understanding. Each team member and participant brought insights that expanded how I think about human–nature relationships.
Organising collaborative events requires patience. The back-and-forth coordination with experts and team members was both challenging and deeply instructive.
I loved learning from diverse perspectives! As I had conversations around different relationships with nature, I was able to hold space for plural values.