Recognising these social and historical dynamics helps identify leverage points for change and engage with Indigenous and local knowledge systems—not only as sources of alternative values, but as reflections of distinct ontologies and governance logics. By foregrounding culturally embedded and historically situated modes of valuation, constitutive values illuminate context-sensitive, power-aware pathways for reconnecting people and nature.
The session invites presentations that explore: (1) how relational and constitutive values are produced, reproduced, or contested; (2) how tensions among values are negotiated in governance; (3) how socio-ecological change affects their durability or transformation; and (4) conceptual and methodological innovations for making these values actionable. Together, we aim to advance understanding of how culturally embedded values shape governance and to explore transformative pathways for navigating value pluralism.
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.
How to cite: Ishihara, H. and Luque-Lora, R.: Constitutive Values and Norm Circles: Rethinking the Social Foundations of Biodiversity Governance, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-77, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-77, 2026.
Building on actor–network theory (ANT)—a framework that examines how humans, species, technologies, and institutions form networks through which agency and meaning emerge—this study explores how heterogeneous actors collectively shape and stabilize coastal biodiversity through practices of food and taste. In coastal Japan, what counts as an “authentic local taste” is not an inherent quality but an emergent property of these networks, where ecological processes, livelihood practices, and global food infrastructures intersect. Authenticity, in this sense, is not possessed but performed: it is enacted through everyday encounters that mediate ecology, history, and labor.
Fieldwork traces three contrasting ecological assemblages with distinct configurations of actors. The first comprises long-established marine species such as abalone, sea urchins, and seaweeds, which have historically structured local ecosystems and cuisines. The second involves newly arrived warm-water species associated with ocean warming and shifts in the Kuroshio current, whose appearance unsettles existing ecological and culinary boundaries. The third focuses on farmed salmon introduced through commercial aquaculture, representing the technological and institutional reorganization of marine life for global markets. Observations and interviews reveal how performances of authenticity are enacted within and through the interactions of these three assemblages, and how they come to be perceived as “authentic local tastes.”
Taste, in this perspective, functions as a sensory interface through which people attune to biodiversity and perceive ecological change. It synchronizes embodied habits, emotional attachments, and environmental processes—moments when local actors experience the sea as a living partner in sustaining livelihoods. Authenticity thus becomes an effect of relational durability: the ongoing negotiation that allows specific ecologies and ways of life to persist as meaningful amid environmental and economic transformation.
By examining authenticity as a constitutive practice through which relational values are enacted and renewed, this study contributes to debates on biodiversity governance, value pluralism, and transformative change. It highlights that sustaining biodiversity requires not only conserving species but also maintaining the relational settings and sensory practices through which biodiversity is sensed, valued, and kept alive.
How to cite: Fukunaga, M.: Keep Biodiversity Alive: Constructive Values of Authentic Local Tastes, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-102, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-102, 2026.
The rapid loss of global biodiversity has been dubbed the sixth mass extinction event (Lewis & Maslin, 2015). Biodiversity governance is already difficult due to contextual factors at local, global, and regional scales (Rockström et al., 2023; Gupta et al., 2023). The interests of local, Indigenous, and other stakeholders can clash with different extrinsic, intrinsic, and relational value sets with biodiversity that can bring forth debates on morality (Armstrong, 2024; Petersson & Stoett, 2022; Biermann & Kim, 2020; Oksanen, 1997). For example, biodiversity conservation can harm relational values that Indigenous and other local people have with nature by designating certain biodiversity areas as restricted areas, all while protecting the intrinsic value of biodiversity (Armstrong, 2024; Gupta et al., 2023). And while biodiversity offsetting can harm both intrinsic and relational values, there can be benefits with increased stakeholder engagement and overall decision-making that can benefit both people and nature (Armstrong, 2024; Armstrong, 2025; Oksanen, 1997; Sebo, 2022; Kallhoff, 2014; Rockström et al., 2023; IUCN, 2015). However, biodiversity offsetting is often met with heavy criticism from environmental ethicists and Indigenous scholars (Karlsson & Björnberg, 2021; Whyte, 2018; Armstrong, 2025). Political theorists also debate the morality of biodiversity offsetting due to these intrinsic values (Armstrong, 2025). Indigenous scholars argue that the relational values Indigenous peoples have with biodiversity are also disrupted with biodiversity offsetting (Armstrong, 2025; Whyte, 2018). Despite this criticism, biodiversity offsetting is becoming an increasingly prominent method of response to biodiversity loss (Armstrong, 2024). Furthermore, it is clear that there are a multitude of different perspectives on the ethics of biodiversity offsetting. Thus, the research question I ask is: how can decision-making on biodiversity offsetting be more inclusive of relational values with other interests and value sets? I argue that these decisions can be made by defining legitimate expectations within the context of biodiversity loss, with the starting point grounded in the exploration of whose voices are being included with stakeholder engagement in decision-making for biodiversity offsetting.
How to cite: Delarosa, A.: Biodiversity Offsetting and Relational Values: Addressing inclusion and legitimate expectations , World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-766, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-766, 2026.
The context and impact of urban nature experiences are receiving merited research and design attention. Yet, a paucity remains in research on nature relations and well-being in Africa. Western traditions have strongly influenced urban nature spaces, their design, governance and use. Engaging with Indigenous and local knowledge systems can reveal sources of alternative values that provide for reflections on distinct ontologies with implications for design practices and governance logics. Through such distinctive understandings, nature spaces can be more meaningful and reciprocal to all life. The research investigates existing nature connections in a peri-urban area of Tshwane, South Africa, and inquires into the factors that encourage or deter these connections and the implications for design and management practices. Qualitative, semi-structured, and photo-eliciting interviews were conducted with 51 residents. The findings show three interdependent inner nature relations connecting to self, to life and to divinity (relational and intrinsic values), which are maintained by external sensory experiences (eudemonistic) and functional practices (instrumental values) that bring about internal health and spiritual well-being (eudemonistic values). Current socio-ecological change affects the durability and transformation of these values. The findings show that these nature connections are strengthened through access to and learning experiences in nature, which are hindered by adverse external conditions connected to socio-economic constraints, including marginal conditions that exacerbate dumping and safety concerns, urbanization, and westernization. Conceptual and methodological approaches to design and management are needed to make diminishing cultural values more detectable and actionable, and shape alternative forms of nature governance. The connection of internal and external value domains has potential for transformative sustainability. To enable such an approach and methodology, we propose that designers and policymakers support the co-creation and co-management of spaces for nature experiences that retain place identity by linking culturally specific internal and external nature connections, as identified in our study. We further advocate for creating platforms that facilitate the exchange of knowledge about nature, allowing for the sharing of cultural practices, their livelihood values, and meanings.
How to cite: Breed, C.: Relational nature values in Southern African local knowledge systems and their implications for the design and management of nature spaces, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-284, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-284, 2026.
This study examines how relational and constitutive values—the ways people find meaning, belonging, and identity through relationships with nature and community—are formed and transformed over the life course. Relational values express the qualities of care, responsibility, and reciprocity that connect people to the natural world, while constitutive values highlight how these relationships shape who people are. Focusing on Minamisanriku, a coastal town in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, the research explores how disasters and climate change have reconfigured people’s lived relations with nature and the practices that sustain them.
Interviews were conducted with residents in two contrasting districts, the urban area of Shizugawa and the fishing community of Togura. During childhood, participants developed familiarity and affection for the local environment through collective play, such as swimming in the sea and catching shellfish and fish. In adolescence, these connections temporarily weakened as attention shifted to school activities and social relationships. Later in life, relational ties to nature were renewed through engagement in fisheries, community events, and family activities, or indirectly through media and social networks.
However, the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami brought profound environmental and social changes. The relocation of residential areas to higher ground, large-scale land reclamation, and the construction of seawalls and embankments increased the physical and symbolic distance between people and the sea. These infrastructural changes, compounded by climate-driven shifts in fish species and catch volumes, disrupted the everyday interactions that had long constituted people’s sense of place, livelihood, and belonging. As opportunities for direct engagement with the sea decline, people’s relationships with nature—and the cultural meanings and identities they form—are also being reshaped.
The findings suggest that relational values are sustained through embodied and social practices that connect people with the sea, while constitutive values emerge as these relationships become integral to people’s sense of identity and culture. When those practices are altered by disaster recovery or climate change, they not only weaken the relational bonds that link people to nature but also transform the constitutive dimension of value, reshaping how communities understand themselves and the meanings they attach to the sea.
How to cite: Ochiai, C.: The Impact of Disasters and Climate Change on People’s Relational Values, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-32, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-32, 2026.
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.
How to cite: Rupprecht, C., Ingaruca Moreno, M., Yamashita, M., Honda, Y., Wang, Y., Nakayama, M., Droz, L., Battani, A., McGreevy, S., Ota, K., and Tamura, N.: Linking pluriversal worldviews with land use practice: early insights from the Pluriverse Project, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-578, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-578, 2026.
This contribution seeks to analyse the development of values within two artistic and civic initiatives dedicated to the stewardship of neglected urban wastelands. These initiatives aim to promote biodiversity or agroecological planting practices that support biodiversity, and they rely on two modes of highly local, inclusive governance carried out with local residents.
The talk examines how agroecological and civic values and forms of knowledge are generated or shared, and how they are connected to transformative action. It hypothesises that these initiatives could be relatively easily disseminated across Western cities in order to foster new relational ontologies and ethics that encourage change beyond the initiatives themselves.
The first dispositive is Democracy of Organisms, developed by the group Club Real in Berlin (Germany). It proposes a method for collectively governing an urban wasteland by inviting anyone who wishes, to represent a group of organisms. These representatives put forth actions to be voted on, with the aim of supporting the life of one or several creatures. The artistic group acts as the executive body tasked with carrying out the actions approved through voting.
The second initiative, Cross Fruit, is proposed by the collective Least in Geneva (Switzerland). Over the course of three years, it establishes an orchard with local residents on an abandoned plot of land. The project unfolds in multiple stages designed in collaboration with the arborist artist Thierry Boutonnier, who introduces residents —through various approaches— to tree planting and orchard care.
Both projects foster forms of biological learning that cultivate respect for all forms of life, their interdependencies, and their needs, while also encouraging more human-oriented values such as inclusion, knowledge-sharing, debate and collaborative governance skills. They combine theoretical discussions about plants and agroecological or civic know-how with gestures carried out collectively and with the implementation of the practices tested or the measures adopted. As a result, they generate embodied forms of knowledge —both agroecological and civic.
Beyond the collective experience, long-term implementation (over several years, potentially indefinitely) helps anchor these values and fosters attachment to initiatives that become para-institutions within the city.
How to cite: Beaufils, E.: Governing agroecological dispositives together., World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-495, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-495, 2026.
