Should We Care About the Needs of Non‐humans? Needs Assessment: A Tool for Environmental Conflict Resolution and Sustainable Organization of Living Beings

Abstract

This article extends the Human-scale Development methodology to include non-humans. We found this wider approach to be helpful in analysing the conflict of interest between fish farming and otter protection in the Natural Reserve of the Sado River estuary in Portugal. Our analysis of this environmental conflict goes beyond the anthropocentric view restricted to human needs to include all stakeholder needs, i.e. both human and non-human 'actants'. The needs-based analysis aims to ensure that local development strategies are more sustainable, improving interactions between all living beings, not just humans.

An Ontology for Strongly Sustainable Business Models

“…Actors include individual humans, collections of humans (firms, nongovernmental organizations [NGOs], governments, etc. ), and nonhumans (Jolibert, Max-Neef, Rauschmayer, & Paavola, 2011; Starik, 1995). Processes of legitimation are then determined by the relative power of actors and stakeholders via governance arrangements…”

“…Actors include individual humans, collections of humans (firms, nongovernmental organizations [NGOs], governments, etc. ), and nonhumans (Jolibert, Max-Neef, Rauschmayer, & Paavola, 2011;Starik, 1995). Processes of legitimation are then determined by the relative power of actors and stakeholders via governance arrangements • • Actors who are acknowledged as playing one or more legitimate stakeholder roles, and which subset of each actor's needs are satisfied (or left unsatisfied) by organizations' (positive and negative) value propositions • • The steps by which environmental, social, and economic positive value ("revenues") and negative value ("costs") are determined (a "valuation method") • • The relevant portions of the business models of all firms in its value network so as to include all ultimate stakeholder's needs and all connections to the ultimate sources and sinks of all biophysical materials • • The geographic location and locality of any and all biophysical components of a business model (including actors who take on roles of an organization's stakeholders).…”

Stakeholder mapping for the governance of biosecurity: a literature review

“…In addition to this, it may be possible to argue that the plants, animals and insects that are affected by disease should themselves be considered as stakeholders, although representing their interests directly may be challenging (Starik 1995;Jolibert et al 2011). Billgren and Holmen (2008) conclude that nature and/or the environment influences all stakeholders and therefore does not need its own voice as it could effectively be heard or…”

Modelling sustainability performance to achieve absolute reductions in socio-ecological systems

“…We use the notion of 'need' to model essentiality as a variable vital to the achievement of sustainable development. This is aligned with 'Hierarchy of Needs' (Maslow, 1943) and scales to understand human (Max-Neef et al, 1992) and non-human needs (Jolibert et al, 2011)..…”