Constitutive Values and Norm Circles: Rethinking the Social Foundations of Biodiversity Governance

Achieving transformative change in biodiversity governance requires understanding how the values that shape human–nature relations are formed, sustained, and transformed. While the IPBES Values Assessment and related research have broadened recognition of plural and relational values, less attention has been paid to how such values endure or evolve through time and social interaction. Addressing this gap is essential for understanding how meaningful connections with nature persist in the face of ecological, economic, and cultural change.
This paper explores an approach that connects the philosophical notion of constitutive value—which emphasises how certain relationships with nature are integral to people’s identities and ways of life—with the sociological idea of norm circles, which describe how shared norms are reinforced, adapted, or challenged through mutual recognition and everyday practice. Taken together, these concepts help to illuminate the lived and collective processes through which environmental values take shape and change. Rather than treating values as fixed beliefs or preferences, we view them as ongoing moral and practical commitments embedded in relationships, livelihoods, and community life.
We illustrate this approach through the case of small-scale spiny-lobster fisheries in Wagu, Japan. Here, cooperative pooling institutions and peer deliberation sustain ethics of care, restraint, and stewardship that are central to fishers’ livelihoods and sense of belonging. These practices demonstrate how local norms and collective responsibilities evolve through lived experience, shaping how people relate both to one another and to the sea.
By linking constitutive values with the social dynamics that sustain them through the notion of norm circles, the paper offers an empirically grounded perspective on how environmental values endure and evolve. It contributes to ongoing efforts to reimagine biodiversity governance through relational and constitutive values, highlighting that transformative change depends not only on policy tools or valuation methods but also on the everyday relationships, practices, and shared commitments that make caring for nature part of collective life.