Linking pluriversal worldviews with land use practice: early insights from the Pluriverse Project

Worldviews can be understood as a set of assumptions that provide a way of thinking about the basic constitution of reality and of relating to the world. As such, they may shape how we value and relate to nature. Here, we present a multidimensional framework designed to understand why and how the worldviews behind cases/projects affect their engagement in land use practices with relational or pluriversal (Escobar) characteristics. Across ontological, epistemological and praxeological aspects — ways of being in, knowing, and doing in the land — the framework seeks to identify how a worldview is reflected in the relationship to the land through concrete manifestations. These manifestations serve as end points of a spectrum ranging from an anthropocentric, dualistic and mechanical “One-World World” view and world views centered around pluriversal, multispecies and relational values. Concretely, we ask: 1) How is land viewed in the case/project: as object or subject, passive or with agency, resource of medium of communing, of instrumental or intrinsic value?, 2) How is land-related knowledge viewed, structured and produced: restricted to humans or more-than-human, limited to Western epistemology or embracing epistemic pluralism, centered on abstract/rationalized knowing or bodily, multi-sensorial knowing?, and 3) How is land treated, interacted with, and shaped: as property or with multispecies claims, exploited or cared for through stewardship, homogenized or heterogenized? We then showcase early insights from the Pluriverse Project (Research Institute for Humanity and Nature) across several international case studies from a database of pluriversal land use projects inspired by Elinor Ostrom’s common pool resource and the IPBES transformative change case databases. Finally, we take inspiration from the CREATURES framework to propose an outline of the next itineration of the framework designed as a co-designed, reflexive tool empowering practitioners to explore their worldview-value-practice connections to better articulate their vision and foster collaboration across projects.