Environment & Society – Literatuur
Connecting nature and people in IPBES – Diaz et al
Introduction
IPBES = the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.
Goal: strengthening the science-policy interface for biodiversity and ecosystem services for the
conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, long-term human well-being and sustainable development.
IPBES was designed to proactively develop assessments matched to policy needs, and to support capacity
building across scales and topics. To achieve this objective, IPBES has four interconnected functions:
1. To catalyze the generation of new knowledge
2. To produce assessments of existing knowledge
3. To support policy formulation and implementation
4. To build capacities relevant to achieving its goal
Conceptual frameworks, in the context of IPBES, might be described as ‘a concise summary in words or
pictures of relationships between people and nature’. In other words, conceptual frameworks depict key
social and ecological components, and the relationships between these components.
The IPBES Conceptual Framework (CF) is a highly simplified model of the complex interactions between
the natural world and human societies that are most relevant to IPBES’s goal.
The work of IPBES is innovative in two respects:
1. It has been constructed in a transparent, inclusive and participatory manner, through
multidisciplinary workshops and open review by a broad range of countries and stakeholders over
more than two years.
2. It explicitly embraces different scientific disciplines, as well as diverse stakeholders, and their
different knowledge systems.
Key features of the IPBES Conceptual Framework
Key elements: nature, the benefits that people derive from nature
and a good quality of life.
CF also highlights the central role that institutions, governance and
decision-making play on the link among these elements. Most
importantly, CF explicitly includes multiple knowledge systems.
Headlines: indicate the broad, highly inclusive categories. Green
and blue fonts indicate the more specific categories that Western
science and other knowledge systems often use to refer to them.
Debate: their use here is intended to be broad and indicative.
Similarly, we acknowledge that western science and other
knowledge systems are not necessarily mutually exclusive in
character, content and history.
Six main elements to link people and nature
The CF includes six primary interlinked elements (or components) representing the natural and social
systems that operate at various scales in time and space.
1. Nature in the context of IPBES refers to the natural world with an emphasis on the diversity of
living organisms and their interactions among themselves and with their environment.
Non-living natural resources which may benefit people and therefore contribute to a good quality
of life are considered as part of nature, but their direct benefits are not the focus of IPBES.
Nature has its own intrinsic values, independent from any human considerations of its worth or
importance, and also contributes to societies through the provision of benefits to people, which
have anthropocentric instrumental and relational values.
2. Anthropogenic assets refer to built infrastructure, health facilities, knowledge, technology and
financial assets, among others. They emphasize that a good life is achieved by a co-production of
benefits between nature and various assets built by people. But they’re also important to include in
, the CF because the value of many of nature’s benefits to people vary depending on the availability
and preferences for alternative sources of those benefits.
3. Nature’s benefits to people refers to all the benefits that humanity obtains from nature.
The CF is inclusive of all of the different value definitions and encourages broad consideration of
the full suite of values in any assessment.
Some of nature’s benefits to people require no intervention (or minimal intervention) of society to
be produced. Most of the benefits, however, depend for their provision on the joint contribution of
nature and anthropogenic assets.
What is beneficial, detrimental or value-neutral depends on the perspective and context of different
societies, groups and even individuals. The notion of nature’s benefits to people includes
detrimental as well as beneficial effects of nature on the achievement of a good quality of life by
different people and in different contexts.
4. ‘Institutions and governance systems and other indirect drivers’ are the ways in which people and
societies organize themselves and their interactions with nature at different scales.
They’re considered indirect drivers because in the vast majority of cases they do not affect nature
directly, but rather through their effects on direct anthropogenic drivers.
Institutions and governance systems determine, to various degrees, the access to and the control,
allocation and distribution of components of nature and anthropogenic assets and their benefits to
people.
5. ‘Direct drivers’, both natural and anthropogenic, affect nature directly. ‘Natural direct drivers’ are
those that are not the result of human activities and whose occurrence is beyond human control.
‘Anthropogenic direct drivers’ are those that are the result of human decisions and actions, namely,
of institutions and governance systems and other indirect drivers.
6. ‘Good quality of life’ is the achievement of a fulfilled human life. Although what it entails varies
considerably within and among different societies and cultures, everybody wants to be free from
poverty and disease, have a long and fulfilling life, and access to freedoms and rights. It’s a highly
value-based and context dependent state comprising multiple factors. From virtually all
standpoints, a good quality of life is multidimensional, having material, as well as non-material
components.
It’s evident that there are wide overlaps as well as differences in the perspectives on a good quality
of life across various knowledge systems, cultures and societies. Thus, efforts are needed to
develop a common ground to understanding how to achieve the various visions of a good quality
of life while pursuing the conservation and sustainable use of nature and its benefits to people at
different scales.
Linkages among the elements
A society’s achievement of good quality of life and the vision of what this entails directly
influence institutions and governance systems and other indirect drivers and, through them, they
influence the other elements of CF. Views of what constitutes a good quality of life also indirectly
shape, via institutions, the ways in which individuals and groups relate to nature.
Institutions and governance systems and other indirect drivers affect all elements and are the root
causes of the direct anthropogenic drivers that affect nature.
Institutions and governance systems and other indirect drivers also affect the interaction and
balance between nature and anthropogenic assets in the coproduction of nature’s benefits to
people. This element also modulates the link between nature’s benefits to people and the
achievement of a good quality of life (arrow 8). The links between nature and anthropogenic
asserts are sometimes negative.
Direct drivers of change are the immediate cause of changes in nature (arrow 3) and, as a
consequence, affect the supply of nature’s benefits to people (arrow 4). Natural drivers affect
nature directly. Direct drivers also affect anthropogenic assets directly (arrow not shown). Direct
drivers can also have direct impacts on the quality of life (arrow 9).
In addition to their effect through arrow 6 and 7, anthropogenic assets directly affect the possibility
of achieving a good quality of life through the provision of and access to material wealth, shelter,
health, etc.
,Application across scales
The processes described in the previous sections occur and interact at different scales and management
levels. Causal links between nature and benefits to people are strongly scale-dependent and also straddle
over several scales.
Validation in the context of the IPBES Conceptual Framework
Mutual recognition and enrichment among different disciplines and knowledge systems is an essential goal
of IPBES interface between science and policy. All these knowledge systems can work in
complementary and mutually enriching ways. This poses a challenge for validation due to the different
principles and criteria that operate across knowledge systems and across disciplines within western science.
Each knowledge system has its own process of validity.
The meaningful engagement of different knowledge systems will undoubtedly increase the richness and
usefulness of the IPBES assessments and at the same time adds to the complexity of the task at hand.
Values and valuation of nature and its benefits to people
The inclusive nature of the CF, in terms of benefits, stakeholders, knowledge systems and worldviews,
necessarily requires the consideration of multiple value systems. Value systems vary among individuals
within groups, and across groups at various temporal and spatial scales.
A necessary first step is to distinguish between different uses of the term ‘value’. This can refer to the
‘importance, worth or usefulness’ as well as to ‘held values, principles or moral duties’.
A major distinction adopted in the CF is between intrinsic values and anthropocentric values, including
instrumental and relational values.
Whatever the approach chosen, valuation approaches and techniques need to fit with the value system of all
stakeholders involved to make sure that their preferences, interests, perceptions of nature and ideas of what
would be the legacy to future generations are considered.
In summary, multiple valuations may help identify a set of decisions, embedded within an institutional
context. This can lead to a good quality of life by supporting the flow of nature’s benefits to people.
, Introduction to Environment and Society – Pretty et al.
Perspectives on sustainability
Sustainable development was defined as ‘meeting the needs of the present without comprising the ability of
future generations to meet their own needs’ (limits to growth, idea of different patterns of growth, as well
as introducing questions of intergenerational justice).
Over time the concept of sustainability has grown from an initial focus on environmental aspects to include
first economic and then broader social and political dimensions.
Social perspective on environment and society
Social organization constrains humans’ relationships with nature, but social organizations are also shaped
by nature.
Dominant worldview: human domination of nature was unproblematic from a practical standpoint and was
morally justified as well. But this point of view came to be challenged. Practical standpoint: environmental
deterioration became visible to the untrained eye.
rise of environmental movement.
Environmental sociologists initially criticized existing social theories for their hubris in assuming that
humans through science and technology could dominate nature without significant impacts on the natural
world or society. This paradigm was labelled ‘human exemptionalism’ any sociology of the
environment would need to focus on the relationship between that natural environment and society.
Some would argue that the capitalist economy is fundamentally destructive of the environment and for this
reason is unsustainable in the long run.
Ecological modernization: environmental destruction reflects a lack of investment tin modern technologies,
and this deficit can be remedied with state policies that prohibit production practices wasteful or destructive
of the environment.
Human behavior is not inherent or given, but molded by the social structures in place at any time in history.
Environmental assets and externalities
Many economic sectors directly affect may of the very assets on which they rely for success. Economic
systems at all levels rely on the value of services flowing from the total stock of assets that they influence
and control, and five types of asset, natural, social, human, physical and financial capital, are now
recognized as being important.
1. Natural capital: produces environmental goods and services, and is the source of food, wood and
fiber, etc.
2. Social capital: yields a flow of mutually beneficial collective action, contributing to the
cohesiveness of people in their societies
3. Human capital: is the total capability residing in individuals, based on their stock of knowledge,
skills, health and nutrition
4. Physical capital: is the story of human-made material resources
5. Financial capital: is more of an accounting concept, as it serves in a facilitating role rather than as a
source of productivity in and or itself.
As economic systems shape the very assets on which they rely for inputs, there are feedback loops from
outcomes to inputs.
Any activities that lead to improvements in these renewable capital assets thus make a contribution towards
sustainability. However, the idea of sustainability does not suggest that all assets are improved at the same
time. One system that contributes more to these capital assets than another can be said to be more
sustainable, but there may still be trade-offs with one asset increasing as another falls, though some
environmental assets are essentially irreplaceable and vital, so they cannot be substituted.
Valuing the environment
Why value the environment (economic monetary value)?
1. Without such valuations, society has done a poor job in managing its stewardship of environmental
resources.
2. Since the 1960s and 1970s the environmental impacts of economic development and human
interventions in the landscape have been central to policy debates as society has increasingly been
concerned with both the direct effects and opportunity costs of those interventions.
