Environmental Values and Nature’s Contributions to People: Towards Methodological Pluralism in Evaluation of Sustainable Ecosystem Services

Significance StatementGiven the diverse ways that people value nature and the lack of an all-encompassing methodology able to capture such diversity, we call for the acceptance of plural methodologies for the comprehensive and inclusive evaluation of nature. The chapter provides a primer of five different evaluation approaches of nature: (i) economic/instrumental, (ii) ecological/biophysical, (iii) ethical/intrinsic, (iv) social/shared, and (v) relational. While leveraging the strengths and weaknesses of different evaluation methods is challenging, we suggest that defining the different normative assumptions of each approach (for example, the purposes of evaluation, how values and preferences can be expressed, and the positionality for those who recognise and give voice to different values) will provide a robust foundation for communication and learning across disciplinary and practitioner boundaries.