People and nature: The emerging signature of a relational journal

Self Cite

Voluntary land conservation, including privately protected areas (PPAs), is a key component of enabling the future of biodiversity on Earth. Accordingly, the question of motivations has preoccupied conservation social science. True motivations are difficult to ascertain, however, even for ourselves. Accordingly, we explore a novel narrative elicitation approach to ask: what features of the land and landowners' relationships with the land encourage and sustain their commitment to voluntary conservation? What value framings are conveyed by landowners when sharing their origin stories and the reasons for sustaining such efforts? We conducted semi‐structured interviews with 32 landowners of PPAs across Peru. Interviews were designed to elicit landowners' origin stories and ongoing relationships with the land, as well as the values they hold about those relationships. This paper challenges the current perception that PPAs are driven by wealthy and foreign landowners in the Peruvian context. Instead, this paper showcases PPAs as the manifestation of local visions for conservation that align with the landowners' longstanding relationships with the land. Here we identified 15 different relational values that landowners have with nature, non‐human and human beings that underlie their voluntary conservation efforts. The paper highlights the importance of taking a relational perspective (recognizing that our existence is enabled and shaped by the relationships we have with others and with nature) when studying land conservation, emphasizing how PPAs are the reflection of landowners' intention to maintain, protect and restore the multiple relationships embedded in the land they strive to conserve. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Exploring the Value-laden Dimensions Of Voluntary Land Conse...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Not in it for the money: Meaningful relationships sustain voluntary land conservation initiatives in Peru

López de la Lama,

Bennett,

Bulkan

et al. 2024

Self Cite

“…SES science also provides useful examples and even templates for how to move beyond the interactionalism currently dominating the study of people-nature interactions to the more relational end of this spectrum. As Fish et al (2022) make clear, a focus on relationships and relational approaches goes beyond the dominant scientific tendency to focus on the parts of a system, and subsequently, on their interactions (referred to as interactionalism). The difference is subtle, but important: interactions take place between entities that pre-exist those interactions; relational thinking involves 'recognising a deeper set of entanglements' in which 'entities do not exist before they are in relationship; rather their separate existence at any point in time is a snapshot of a deep and dynamic set of relations with other entities over space and time' (Fish et al, 2022).…”

Section: Beyond Interactionalism To a Focus On Inseparable Relationshipsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As Fish et al (2022) make clear, a focus on relationships and relational approaches goes beyond the dominant scientific tendency to focus on the parts of a system, and subsequently, on their interactions (referred to as interactionalism). The difference is subtle, but important: interactions take place between entities that pre-exist those interactions; relational thinking involves 'recognising a deeper set of entanglements' in which 'entities do not exist before they are in relationship; rather their separate existence at any point in time is a snapshot of a deep and dynamic set of relations with other entities over space and time' (Fish et al, 2022). Such relational approaches, long prevalent in global south scholarship, as well as in both Indigenous and local knowledge systems, are a fundamentally different way to approach sustainability science and practice that moves away from some historic and problematic reductionist tendencies inherent in sustainability science, policy and practice (Chilisa, 2017;Fish et al, 2022;Muller et al, 2019;Ogar et al, 2020;West et al, 2020).…”

Section: Beyond Interactionalism To a Focus On Inseparable Relationshipsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disentangling the complexity of human–nature interactions

Bennett,

Reyers

2024

Human–nature interactions have been identified as an important leverage point for achieving sustainability. Processes to recognize, protect, improve and reimagine human–nature interactions will be central to shift the world to more sustainable and equitable pathways and futures. In the context of the interconnected and rapidly changing Anthropocene, work on human–nature interactions must move beyond dominant linear assumptions of a relatively simple and easily and predictably manipulated world to acknowledge and engage with the complex, dynamic, asymmetrical and unequal nature of the interactions connecting people and nature. Based on three key features highlighted by the study of complex social–ecological systems (SES)—that these systems are relational, open and dynamic—we propose three new directions for the study and management of human–nature interactions that can help to acknowledge and disentangle the globally intertwined and dynamic nature of these interactions. These features suggest new directions and foci for sustainability science: the inseparable and relational qualities of the interactions between people and nature; the cross‐scale nature of these relationships; and the continuously evolving and changing form of these relationships. To bridge the gap between the theory of complex, inseparable and unequal human–nature interactions and the reductionist tendencies in research and practice, SES research raises opportunities to connect local action and global learning; to mobilize and develop new cross‐scale and relational capacities to encourage synergies and avoid trade‐offs; and to explore, experiment and learn our way forward onto more sustainable and equitable pathways. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

“…Chan et al., 2018; Walsh et al., 2021; West et al., 2018) and evidence has been built to demonstrate how relational perspectives can lead to practical shifts in policy (e.g. Chan et al., 2016), more work is required to understand what this paradigm looks like in empirical examples (Eyster et al., 2023); critically discuss its pragmatics, politics and challenges (Raymond et al., 2021); and test how relational values and epistemology might influence the practice of sustainability research (Eyster et al., 2023; Fish et al., 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A learning journey into contemporary bioregionalism

Wearne,

Hubbard,

Jónás

et al. 2023

Bioregioning is a new wave of bioregional discourse that appears to be attracting interest among sustainability researchers and practitioners. Through interviews with contemporary leaders and a reflexive research process, we explored bioregioning experiences across seven countries. Our paper outlines the motivations, practices and narratives that we encountered and positions these observations against prior expressions of bioregional thought and broader themes in sustainability research. We found that in bioregioning, the concept of a bioregion remains important and seems to attract people to the discourse in three ways: It inspires visions of the future that encompass more‐than‐human thriving, it creates a conceptual container that enables a strategic narrative for change that connects places to larger scales, and it justifies the importance of everyday people exercising their right to ‘do’ something. The combination of these motivators shows bioregioning's relationship with earlier expressions of bioregional thought: Like early bioregional thinkers, regional scales carry cognitive and strategic appeal, and like critical bioregionalism, power and justice are foregrounded to ensure the process of change is ethical. We suggest that in the shift to bioregioning, the bioregion serves as a boundary device, justifying (for some) a focus on regional scale action which has made bioregional discourse unique, and for others, rationalising participatory or emotional priorities. This lets bioregioning enact a dialogic approach to change and enables practitioners to consider questions of scale in open dialogue with emotive place‐based dynamics, bringing nature re‐connection and social–ecological systems research into consideration and overlap with the practice of bioregioning. We observed parallels between our research process and the central features in bioregioning; both respond to ambitions and calls within sustainability to enact relational values and surface contextualised knowledge while also valuing generalisations and abstraction. Our study, we suggest, provides one example of how research into human–nature relationships in Western sustainability might be pursued in line with these ambitions. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.