Relational Values Resonate Broadly and Differently Than Intrinsic or Instrumental Values, or the New Ecological Paradigm

Value orientations used to explain or justify conservation have been rooted in arguments about how much and in what context to emphasize the intrinsic versus instrumental value of nature. Equally prominent are characterizations of beliefs known as the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP), often used to help explain pro-environmental behaviour. A recent alternative to these positions has been identified as ‘relational value’—broadly, values linking people and ecosystems via tangible and intangible relationships to nature as well as the principles, virtues and notions of a good life that may accompany these. This paper examines whether relational values are distinct from other value orientation and have potential to alleviate the intrinsic-instrumental debate. To test this possibility, we sought to operationalize the construct—relational values—by developing six relational statements. We ask: 1) Do the individual statements used to characterize relational values demonstrate internal coherence as either a single or multi-dimensional construct? 2) Do relational value statements (including those strongly stated) resonate with diverse populations? 3) Do people respond to relational value statements in a consistently different way than NEP scale statements? Data for this work is drawn from an online panel of residents of northeastern US (n = 400), as well as a sample of Costa Rican farmers (n = 253) and tourists in Costa Rica (n = 260). Results indicate relational values are distinct as a construct when compared to the NEP

Social Impact Investing and the changing face of conservation finance

A consistent and significant challenge facing the conservation of natural resources is where the money will come from, and what new sources will arise as trusted sources dry up? While roughly US$30B is spent on conservation efforts globally per annum, the annual need to maintain critical ecosystem functions in the long term is estimated to be ten times higher. In an era where public support is increasingly insufficient, social impact investing is one funding strategy garnering attention in the policy sphere. Social impact investing directs capital to organizations, funds, and projects that generate both social and financial returns. Banks and investment firms, along with foundations and governments, are increasingly interested in the potential for novel financial arrangements to direct more funding toward critical social challenges, including environmental and conservation issues. Existing impact funds and initiatives demonstrate how billions can be leveraged to support projects ranging from healthcare to poverty alleviation to infrastructure, and highlight the opportunity for similar models to generate financial support for conservation objectives without undermining fundamental ecological goals. Ecological conservation has not yet been a focal point in the impact investing space, but current research and reporting suggests there is available capital as well as a substantial need for funding. While several billion dollars are currently invested as impact capital in conservation-related programs, in the next decade dramatic increases in this area are anticipated. The extent of this expansion, and the effectiveness of these funds in achieving real conservation gains, will rely upon appropriate investment vehicles being available and, importantly on the engagement of conservation community. Both will require education, coordination, and leadership on the part of conservation organizations, investors, and organizations serving intermediary roles. Not all conservation programs are appropriate for this type of financing. Here we provide an explanation of current actors in the conservation impact arena as well as critical features and requisite data to consider feasibility. Though conservation receives a relatively small percentage of philanthropic giving as compared to health and poverty related social causes, there are challenges unique to the practice of natural resources conservation that may explain in part why conservation thus far represents a small percentage of overall impact investing as compared to other sectors. These challenges include reliable risk assessment, consistent and comparable impact measurement, and (where applicable) generating competitive economic returns. To address these challenges, ... key recommendations [are proposed].Science, Faculty ofResources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES), Institute forUnreviewedGraduat

For love or money : harnessing environmental values and financial incentives to promote conservation stewardship

Despite broad agreement that large scale funding is needed to address the severe risks associated with habitat loss and ecosystem service degradation, financial and market-based interventions have brought substantial division in the conservation sector. This dissertation examines the values and attitudes associated with financial mechanisms and incentives, considering diverse groups with different relationships to natural landscapes: Costa Rican farmers, North American tourists in Costa Rica, and potential conservation donors. Despite diverse barriers and motives for participation, this dissertation investigates the opportunity for financial mechanisms to bolster and support values associated with environmental responsibility. The first study pilots methods for assessing ‘relational values’, a concept that transcends traditional instrumental/intrinsic value divisions in linking people to ecosystems. Results suggest that relational values are distinct from standard methods of measuring ecological worldview and are predictive of farmer attitudes at the landscape level. The second study assesses environmental values and attitudes of Costa Rican farmers regarding a national payment for ecosystem services program. The study investigates a set of claims regarding the negative effects of monetary incentives associated with the idea of “motivational crowding out”. Results indicate strong environmental concern across both participants and non-participants, and finds strong correlations between relational values and a series of farming attitudes associated with lifestyle and conservation. The third study quantifies tourist preferences for specific attributes of conservation programs in Costa Rica, and explores the relationship between ecotourism and environmental values with knowledge of a prominent environmental challenge in the region. Stated interest in supporting conservation and strong environmental values presents an opportunity to leverage conservation values and increase financial support for conservation. The fourth study introduces the concept of conservation impact investing, describes the unique challenges that differentiate it from other social issues, and outlines a research agenda for paths forward. I address the potential for conservation impact investing to expand the reach and constituency of support for conservation, and the risks associated with diverting funds from traditional conservation programs. The dissertation lends support for the notion that appropriately designed incentive programs could significantly unite and expand interest and participation in conservation efforts rather than divide them.Science, Faculty ofResources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES), Institute forGraduat

Social Impact Investing for Ecological Conservation

Social Impact Investing—as a range of strategies to fund organizations, programs and projects with both economic and social returns—has been looked to as a major new tool for advancing important social causes. Financial institutions face increasing demand for socially responsible investment opportunities, and yet in the environment sector such investments have generally been limited to green infrastructure and energy efficiency. Businesses have begun to understand the necessity to embed ecological considerations into their supply chains, going beyond corporate social responsibility and integrating this thinking to ensure the long term viability of their organization. Among conservationists there is a range of comfort levels with respect to engaging with the private sector, but investors in this realm represent a substantial and growing demand (to the tune of billions per annum). Such novel funding models can yield both ecological and economic gains, as demonstrated by some conservation organizations via new multi-institutional partnerships (including governments at municipal, regional, and national levels). This talk explores the opportunities and impediments for social impact investing, with particular attention to the Salish Sea, including funding models for proposed new MPAs in the region. We conclude that there is potential for innovation and new types of collaboration to connect resource use, protection, and resilience in an effort to meet national and regional conservation goals

Ocean-Positive (O+), Finance for Value Change

Conservation is generally seen as a three-part challenge—finance, implementation, and awareness raising (sometimes even value change)—where each step is pursued separately. But what if it were possible finance and implementation (via partnerships) could be designed to foster deep and widespread awareness raising and value change? In this talk, I will propose an audacious new model for integrated conservation across the value-chain that seeks to raise new sources of conservation funding while bringing together diverse groups into new partnerships, also simultaneously enabling the extension of a multi-scale sustainability ethic (not undermining others’ capacity for living well). The notion is to enable value-change by building the infrastructure that makes it possible—also simple and enjoyable—to exercise the extension of values that are already widely shared (the Golden Rule) across time, space, and ecosystem interactions. This idea is currently imagined as a badge called ‘Ocean-Positive’ (or ‘O+’), which signifies a positive/regenerative contribution to ocean ecosystems, a part of Co-Sphere (a Community of Small-Planet Heroes). In this talk, we will explain the logic by which O+ could operate, and propose a scientific and institutional basis for O+ to take shape

Payments for ecosystem services: rife with problems and potential—for transformation towards sustainability

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs are one prominent strategy to address economic externalities of resource extraction and commodity production, improving both social and ecological outcomes. But do PES and related incentive programs achieve that lofty goal? Along with considerable enthusiasm, PES has faced a wide range of substantial critiques. In this paper, we characterize seven major classes of concerns associated with common PES designs, and use these as inspiration to consider potential avenues for improvements in PES outcomes and uptake. The problems include (1) new externalities, (2) misplacement of rights and responsibilities, (3) crowding out existing motivations, (4) efficiency-equity tradeoffs, (5) monitoring costs, (6) limited applicability, and (7) top-down prescription/alienating agency. As currently practiced, many PES programs are thus of limited benefit and even potentially detrimental to sustainability. From this dire conclusion, we highlight several innovations that might be combined and extended in a novel approach to PES that may address all seven problems. Recognizing that PES necessarily articulate and even normalize values, our proposed approach entails designing these institutions intentionally to articulate rights and responsibilities conducive to sustainability—those we might collectively seek to entrench. Problems remain, and new ones may arise, but the proposed approach may offer a way to reimagine PES as a major social and economic tool for enabling sustainable relationships with nature, conserving and restoring ecosystems and their benefits for people now and in the future

Re-Imagining PES

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs are one prominent strategy to address economic externalities of resource extraction and commodity production, improving both social and ecological outcomes. But do PES and related incentive programs achieve that lofty goal? Along with considerable enthusiasm, PES has faced a wide range of substantial critiques. In this paper, we characterize seven major classes of concerns associated with common PES designs, and use these as inspiration to consider potential avenues for improvements in PES outcomes and uptake. The problems include (1) new externalities, (2) misplacement of rights and responsibilities, (3) crowding out existing motivations, (4) efficiency-equity tradeoffs, (5) monitoring costs, (6) limited applicability, and (7) top-down prescription/alienating agency. As currently practiced, many PES programs are thus of limited benefit and even potentially detrimental to sustainability. From this dire conclusion, we highlight several innovations that might be combined and extended in a novel approach to PES that may address all seven problems. Recognizing that PES necessarily articulate and even normalize values, our proposed approach entails designing these institutions intentionally to articulate rights and responsibilities conducive to sustainability—those we might collectively seek to entrench. Problems remain, and new ones may arise, but the proposed approach may offer a way to reimagine PES as a major social and economic tool for enabling sustainable relationships with nature, conserving and restoring ecosystems and their benefits for people now and in the future.Science, Faculty ofNon UBCResources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES), Institute forUnreviewedFacultyGraduat

Can Ecosystem Services Make Conservation Normal and Commonplace?

Without widespread and immediate changes in human values and activities, massive tracts of natural habitat will be degraded to the detriment of those ecosystems, ecosystem services, and many threatened taxa—in the oceans and elsewhere. Despite this, the conservation movement has yet to devote much attention to the intentional project of widespread norm change. By one logic, the ecosystem services concept offers a means of integrating meaningful conservation into decision-making by diverse government and corporate actors, potentially normalizing conservation. But normalizing conservation would require not only the uptake of ecosystem-services concepts but also widespread changes in conservation practice and stewardship values—on a scale that far exceeds what we have witnessed to date. The concept of ecosystem services has potential for assisting such a societal transformation because it effectively puts a human face on environmental change, thereby enabling the extension of responsibility and morality into environmental arenas at all scales. Furthermore, cultural ecosystem services merit particular attention because of their contribution to the formation of attachments to particular places and to identities rooted in nature and conservation, which presents an opportunity to consolidate and shape deep motivations for lasting conservation. Realizing these two opportunities in a way that is both appropriate and effective, however, will require several important innovations and new institutions, which we propose here. One key step is to enlist a broad base of consumers and corporations in the funding of actions to mitigate the environmental impacts associated with their participation in global supply chains, via funding vehicles that are conspicuous, easy, enjoyable, and not too expensive. We describe a new initiative called CoSphere that strives to create such structures. With consolidated effort and explicit attention, conservation can become normalized—to the benefit of current people, future generations, and life on Earth.Science, Faculty ofNon UBCResources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES), Institute forUnreviewedFacultyPostdoctoralGraduat

Mean and distribution of responses to relational value prompts and New Ecological Paradigm Statements.

<p>The sample includes Costa Rican farmers (n = 253), tourists in Costa Rica (n = 260) and US M-Turk workers (n = 400). *The health_rel prompt for the M-Turk population was worded “My health, the health of my family and the health of others who I care about is not necessarily dependent on the natural environment.” Scores were reversed for this population when included in the analysis.</p

Cronbach’s alpha, mean response and standard deviation of responses across value statements.

<p>Cronbach’s alpha, mean response and standard deviation of responses across value statements.</p