Many cultural benefits of ecosystems are difficult to capture in standard ecosystem services (ES) assessments. Scholars and practitioners often respond to this gap by seeking to develop new scientific methods to capture and integrate the plural values associated with diverse cultural benefits categories. This increasing emphasis on value pluralism represents an essential step toward recognitional justice within ES theory and practice. However, current approaches continue to rest on the assumption that ES-knowledge is only made available to decision-makers through scientific documentation. As a result, scholars and decision-makers fail to account for the role of knowledge pluralism as a core element of recognitional justice, and a key enabling factor for meaningful consideration of the plural values linked to cultural benefits of ES. In this paper, we contribute to a pluralist theory of cultural-benefits-knowledge, and ES-knowledge more broadly. Using a Critical Interpretive Synthesis of environmental management literature, we conceptualize a wider range of knowledge forms that convey cultural benefits, based on the knowledge-as-practice concept in addition to the knowledge-as-product concept more familiar to Western actors. As part of the synthesis, we explore when and how diverse forms of cultural-benefits-knowledge intersect with decision-making processes, and the value aspects and categories of cultural benefits most frequently conveyed by each form of knowledge. Our synthesizing argument offers a critique of the concept of “ES-knowledge-use,” proposing a shift in focus toward “learning opportunities” that exist across phases of decision-making. We demonstrate that attention to a greater diversity of knowledge forms (knowledge pluralism), and a fuller spectrum of opportunities to integrate them (learning opportunities) can support more meaningful consideration of the plural values associated with cultural benefits of ecosystem services (value pluralism). In combination, attention to knowledge pluralism and value pluralism can help bring the ES approach into alignment with environmental justice through the recognition and legitimization of multiple identities, well-beings, and human-nature relationships, as reflected in meaningful consideration of the diverse cultural benefits of ES.

Improved consideration of the cultural benefits of ecosystem services (ES) requires attention to knowledge pluralism in addition to value pluralism. Theorists have increasingly argued that meaningful inclusion of cultural benefits of ES requires attention to plural values, beyond the individual, instrumental values associated with ecosystems. However, there has been little engagement around the role of knowledge pluralism as a foundational enabling factor for meaningful consideration of plural values. This paper contributes to a conceptual toolkit for implementation of knowledge pluralism in ES theory and application by (re)conceptualizing ES-knowledge as a knowledge system. This can support personal and collective reflexivity around the role of worldviews embedded in our institutions, and illuminate what is at stake when assumptions about human-nature relationship and well-being remain hidden. Further, by locating benefits-knowledge as a core element of the ES-knowledge-system, we can imagine a greater range of possible cultural-benefits-knowledge-forms and improve our ability to comprehend and convey the plural values of cultural benefits of ES, as they arise across cultural contexts.

The cultural benefits of ecosystem services (ES) make foundational contributions to human well-being, and yet they are consistently underrepresented in research products intended to inform decision-making. In particular, the relational or holistic values of cultural benefits linked to continuous, place-based, and reciprocal human-nature relationships – such as cultural identity, maintenance of knowledge systems, and the opportunity to live in right relationship with ecosystems – are inadequately conveyed through existing instrumental approaches to ES assessment and ecosystem valuation. In this paper, we outline a decision-support framework to systematically identify opportunities for improved integration of a wider suite of cultural benefits, and their associated plural values and human-nature relationships. The framework supports expanded thinking about the diversity of forms in which cultural-benefits-knowledge can be conveyed, and the spectrum of available opportunities to learn from these knowledge forms. We demonstrate retrospective application of the framework using a case study of Elwha River dam removal and ecosystem restoration. In interviews, several groups of cultural-benefits-knowledge-holders linked to the Elwha River ecosystem articulated relationally or holistically valuable cultural benefits. Analysis of interviews and historical documents reveal examples of how these groups made their cultural-benefits-knowledge available to decision-makers in multiple forms, including knowledge practices and knowledge products. The case study further highlights that opportunities for integration of cultural-benefits-knowledge vary across phases of decision-making.