Worldviews and values of key societal actors influencing decision-making around nature: The case of wild pollinator conservation in Europe

Biodiversity is vital for life on earth but faces many anthropogenic pressures. Mitigating these pressures and improving biodiversity status requires understanding the worldviews and values of actors involved in conservation or responsible for creating pressures on biodiversity. This paper contributes to the theoretical understanding of the interplay between worldviews and values and their potential influence on effective policy or practice actions. We investigated the worldviews and values of key European actors influencing a specific component of biodiversity conservation: wild pollinators and pollination. We collected qualitative and quantitative data through in-depth interviews with 27 individuals from business, policymaking, NGOs and research. Bio-ecocentric worldviews prevailed in our sample of interviews, with a consensus over the intrinsic value of all living beings, that human activities are negatively impacting nature, the existence of biophysical limits to economic growth and the need for environmental regulation. Furthermore, anthropocentric and relationship-centred perspectives emerged on the use of pesticides, modes of economic growth (conventional vs. sustainable), the ability of human ingenuity and technological innovation to solve ecological problems and the fundamental resilience of nature to rapid change. Irrespective of overall worldviews on human-nature relationships, all stakeholder groups in our sample agreed on the irreplaceability of pollinators and their many benefits, their decline and that their conservation is a priority for which all sectors of society are responsible and should contribute. Interviewees agreed that in addition to the widely recognised ecological, nutritional, economic and cultural values that pollinators provide, there also exist relational values and moral responsibility to conserve pollinators. Non-use values (e.g. ecological role) were highlighted by all stakeholder groups as being at least as important as use values (e.g. supporting human diets). Cultural use values (e.g. aesthetic) of pollinators were typically regarded as being less important relative to their non-use relationship-centred and moral values (e.g. responsibility to future generations). Policy implications. The diverse values of biodiversity create a complex conservation challenge amid competing societal priorities. The efficacy of public policy instruments critical to facilitate conservation actions can be improved by further integrating ecological, economic, social and moral-ethical levers to achieve the long-term sustainable management of biodiversity.Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.