Rethinking Appropriateness of Actions in Environmental Decisions: Connecting Interest and Identity Negotiation with Plural Valuation

Christopher M. Raymond, Paul Hirsch, Bryan Norton, Andrew Scott and Mark S. Reed

Environmental Values, 2023, vol. 32, issue 6, 739-764

Abstract: Issues of interest, identity and values intertwine in environmental conflicts, creating challenges that cannot generally be overcome using rationalities grounded in generalised argumentation and abstraction. To address the growing need to engage interests and identities along with plural values in the conservation of biodiversity and ecological systems, we introduce the concept of ‘appropriateness of actions’ and ground it in a relational understanding of environmental ethics. A determination of appropriateness for actions comes from combining outputs from value elicitation with those of interest and identity negotiation in ways that are salient to specific people and their relationships to specific places. Drawing on the Blue Mountain Forest Partnership in the Pacific Northwest, we propose factors of success for supporting appropriate actions: 1) understanding context and identifying key stakeholders; 2) surfacing a diversity of interests and building system-level trust; 3) building empathy for different identities grounded in specific places; 4) eliciting diverse values and seeking to understand their links to worldviews and knowledge systems and; 5) seeking out appropriate actions.

Keywords: Plural valuation; relational values; negotiation; conflict resolution; relational identity; conflict management; environmental values; conservation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envval:v:32:y:2023:i:6:p:739-764

DOI: 10.3197/096327123X16759401706524

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