Valuing plurality: Environmental humanities approaches to ecosystem services and Nature's Contributions to People

Ecosystem services and Nature’s Contributions to People frameworks allow policymakers and other stakeholders to understand and value the different benefits received by society from processes in the natural environment. However, they face challenges when assessing cultural and/or non-quantifiable services and contributions, and their linked benefits. They can also fall short when incorporating plural conceptions of value and their knowledge frameworks, including those of Indigenous People and/or local communities. Finally, with regard to future ecosystem management, they tend to rely on linear rather than speculative, idealistic assessments of future human-ecosystem interactions. In this Perspective article, we show how these challenges can be met by developing a cross-disciplinary dialogue with the field of environmental humanities. We demonstrate that incorporating environmental humanities principles and methods can improve ecosystem services and Nature’s Contributions to People frameworks by making cultural and intangible services/contributions and their benefits amenable to more inclusive assessment, based on a relational, ecocentric (re-)evaluation of human-nature relationships. The environmental humanities encourage the use of both Indigenous Knowledges and grassroots knowledges and offer non-linear ways of thinking about future ecosystem management, for example using speculative imaginaries. In exchange, dialogue with ecosystem services and Nature’s Contributions to People frameworks offers a further pathway to impact for the environmental humanities. We conclude by recommending multiple instruments that put the dialogue between ecosystem services, Nature’s Contributions to People, and the environmental humanities into practice. • Ecosystem services (ES) and Nature’s Contributions to People (NCP) frameworks face challenges when valuing plurality. • ES and NCP assessment benefit from dialogue with the environmental humanities (EH) by adopting a relational perspective. • The dialogue helps ES and NCP engage with cultural services, local and Indigenous Knowledges, and speculative imaginaries. • The EH benefits from the dialogue by developing a further pathway to policy impact. • Recommended instruments to put the dialogue into practice include participatory mapping and scenario development.