Revealing the diversity of values of nature and its benefits to people for a good quality of life: The IPBES approach

Nature and its benefits to people for a good quality of life is perceived and valued in starkly different and often conflicting ways, mainly due to different worldviews about the relationships between society and nature. This paper presents the rationale for an inclusive incorporation of this diversity of values in decision making, as well as approaches for doing so, as they co-exist and often compete in society. While developed within the context of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), this approach is more widely applicable to initiatives at the knowledge-policy interface, which inherently require a pluralistic approach to the multiple values of the natural world and its contribution to human societies. We argue that transformative practices aiming at sustainable futures would benefit from the recognition and orchestration of these multiple values in a wide range of policy and decision-making processes