The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services and the challenge of integrating social sciences and humanities

For the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), established in 2012, under the auspices of four United Nations entities (FAO, UNDP, UNEP and UNESCO), there is an urgent need to engage scholars in social sciences and humanities in assessing the state of the planet's biodiversity. This article addresses the fundaments for involving scientists from these fields of science in IPBES, and reflects on the existing barriers. It builds on previous research on IPBES from various perspectives, as well as on the author's insights from work in the organization. A fundamental condition recognized is that there needs to be a qualified understanding of what it means to integrate natural sciences and social sciences/humanities, and also that the latter have to be accepted on their own terms. Other barriers are related to the contextualisation of biodiversity issues and the more politically sensitive character of research carried out in social sciences and humanities. In the conclusions it is emphasized that the deliverables of the first round of IPBES assessments have to be solid enough from the perspectives of social sciences and humanities, in order to attract more of these scholars to work for the platform in the future.

Editorial: Nature’s Contributions to People: On the Relation Between Valuations and Actions

Editorial on the Research Topic. Nature’s Contributions to People: On the Relation Between Valuations and Actions

Valuing nature’s contributions to people: the IPBES approach

Nature is perceived and valued in starkly different and often conflicting ways. This paper presents the rationale for the inclusive valuation of nature’s contributions to people (NCP) in decision making, as well as broad methodological steps for doing so. 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 require a pluralistic approach to recognizing the diversity of values. We argue that transformative practices aiming at sustainable futures would benefit from embracing such diversity, which require recognizing and addressing power relationships across stakeholder groups that hold different values on human nature-relations and NCP

Bonden och landskapet : Ägares och brukares relationer till markerna och förutsättningarna för en uthållig markanvändning

Farmers and Landscape. Owners and farmers relations to their land, and the prospects for sustainable land use. In a transition towards sustainability, rural land use is of certain interest, owing to the environmental impact of modern farming and forestry, and also to its potential role in a recycling society. The prospects for sustainable land use depend on the farmers. Their conception of sustainability and perspective on the environmental discourse are crucial for how it will be worked out in practice. If methods are to be transformed, attitudes and values among farmers, those who actually make the decisions about how to use the land, are important. This dissertation is concerned with farmers relations to the landscape and prospects of sustainable land use, striving for a grass roots perspective. Reasons for land use change during the post-war period have been discovered through case studies among ordinary farmers in Southern Sweden. Regional variations and differences between certain categories of farmers have also been investigated. The spatial dimension of sustainability is considered by examining the farmers as actors in a local rural system. The results indicate a hidden potential in the attitudes of many farmers, remains of the traditional way of thinking and relating to nature and neighbours. By considering the place context, a potential in existing relations between man and environment is revealed. A place perspective also contributes to further development of the ideas concerning decentralization and increased local responsibility within the environmental paradigm

Rural-Urban Blurring and the Subjectivity Within

Realizing that a changing society is in constant need of redefinition, the rural-urban distinction is especially important to look systematically into. One reason is that although the outdatedness of the rural-urban dichotomy is widely acknowledged, it is still largely sustained, not least in ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ development endeavors, which are often conducted separately. Such practice may seem questionable in the face of the progressive blurring of these concepts, which makes them increasingly subjective. Acknowledging the continued need for categorization on the one hand and admitting to its flawed nature on the other, we submit there is a pressing need to capture the changing logic of rural-urban subjectivity in order to better handle it in practice. By combining humanistic and materiality-based perspectives, we discuss the concepts of ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ with emphasis on perception and experiential space as one possible way forward. In that vein, we also tentatively explore the potential of the concept of ‘landscape’ to serve as a bridge between physical and subject-centered tenets of rural-urban awareness. We argue it could become a useful conceptual tool for creating context from the divergent theoretical currents in regard to how rural-urban should be understood today

Humanvetenskapen står för djup och förståelse

Kvalitativ humanvetenskaplig forskning är en oumbärlig del i integrerad forskning kring hållbar utveckling och klimatförändringar för att förstå normer och praktik, motsägelser och paradoxer i människors miljörelationer. Då miljöforskning fokuserar på kulturella aspekter tillförs djup och nya perspektiv öppnas som breddar lösningshorisonten. Kvalitativ humanvetenskaplig forskning är en grundläggande förutsättning för att förstå relationen människa – miljö och ett forskningsfält som måste värderas på sina egna villkor

Ekosystemtjänster och naturnyttor

Vi människor är biologiska varelser och därför sammanvävda med övrigt liv på jorden. Det betyder att vi både för vår överlevnad och för vår vällevnad är helt beroende, inte bara av att det finns en rikedom av liv på planeten, utan också av ett otal ekologiska funktioner som genereras av levande organismer, av enskilda arter eller av flera arter i samspel. Det handlar om direkt livsuppehållande funktioner som fotosyntesen – produktionen av syre så att vi kan andas, få mat, virke och läkemedel. Men också annat som är av betydelse för att vi ska kunna leva hälsosamma, trygga och goda liv, som rening av luft, reglering av vattenflöden, upplevelser, identitet och inspiration