Non-material Nature’s Contributions to People (NCPs) play a crucial role in shaping how societies value and interact with biodiversity. Yet these contributions are often difficult to assess and underrepresented in science-policy and decision-making contexts.
This session brings together researchers from the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research, United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security, the Leibniz Peace Research Institute Frankfurt and the Institute for Social-Ecological Research, who are engaged in collaborative efforts to better integrate non-material NCPs into biodiversity science, policy and practice.
Building on a recent cross-institutional dialogue, the session will explore stakeholder values, trade-offs, conflicts, and scale-related challenges in assessing non-material NCPs and their implications for policy making. Participants will share approaches and identify synergies across disciplines and institutions, with the goal of informing more inclusive and policy-relevant biodiversity research.
The session is open to researchers, practitioners and societal actors working at the science-policy interface on NCPs, ecosystem services, biodiversity governance and transformative change, including representatives of science-policy platforms, MEAs, Indigenous and local knowledge holders and biodiversity decision-makers. Contributors will share conceptual insights and applied approaches, highlighting synergies between different disciplines and institutions. The emphasis will be on how these contributions can inform more inclusive, value-sensitive and policy-relevant biodiversity planning and decision-making. The aim is to contribute to bridging the gap between conceptual work and actionable insights for addressing biodiversity challenges.