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

This paper reports results from a study of the economic value of the conservation benefits of Environmentally Sensitive Areas (ESAs) in Scotland. The main novelty of the approach taken is in comparing two direct valuation methods, namely contingent valuation and choice experiments, to value these benefits. The Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) is well‐established as a technique for valuing the sorts of landscape and wildlife enhancements associated with ESAs. The CVM experiment reported here uses a dichotomous choice format, and includes a new correction for part‐whole bias. Choice experiments are much less used as an environmental valuation technique. We note several advantages of such experiments over CVM, and then report characteristic values and ‘programme values’ estimated using the method. This application brings to light some problems in applying the choice experiment method. Finally, we discuss the issue of benefits transfer in the context of these two approaches to valuation.

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Although many cities have guidelines as to the quantity of green open space that should accompany residential development, there is less guidance on the type or quality of these spaces. The study uses a choice experiment approach to determine whether green space can be valued on the basis of its constituent characteristics and, if so, what characteristics are preferred. The results indicate that preferences vary depending on whether the green space in question is a small local park or a larger regional park. However, where a base alternative of usual park destination in included in the analysis, the results are affected by collinearity and the actual availability of relevant green space attributes in these destinations. A mixed logit approach is used to tease out this effect from the underlying preference values.2

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