Ecosystem Services Lesson, Part 3: Intrinsic and Relational Values of Nature

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Assessments of ecosystem services have long been developed through the lens of economics or monetary value (as in Lesson 1), even when enhanced personal or socio-cultural value is a desired outcome of ecosystem management. It is important, however, to consider alternative perspectives to that economic or instrumental value approach, which is based on human use of nature’s bounty. As Barnaud and Antona (2014) have argued, we should question the ideas, norms, and values that underpin that economic perspective because ecosystem services do not just exist per se but are socially constructed and thus reflect the views and desires of those producing the estimate of their value. While the ecosystem services framework provides a useful tool for raising awareness about human dependencies on the environment and for justifying protective policies, the framework represents a Western worldview, “involving specific actors, resources, and power relations” (Muradian and Gómez-Baggethun 2021). After all, how one views and interacts with nature is shaped by personal experiences, cultural values, and histories that involve skewed power relations among actors.

For many people, and for some whole societies, an alternate perspective to instrumental value is that nature has intrinsic value, meaning that ecosystems have the right to exist regardless of human needs and desires. In other words, based on a person’s attitudes and judgment, they value a part of nature on its own, for what it is—and not because it can provide a service to humans that has economic value. Because that value is based on reasoning (judgment), it is referred to as conditional intrinsic value. Others believe intrinsic value exists on its own, not because humans confer intrinsic value to something. This belief is called objective intrinsic value—nature’s value is inherent; it precedes mechanisms of human valuation; humans can discover it but not create it. Some conservationists—who worry that without value to humans, nature can be destroyed with impunity—have promoted this strong reading of inherent value.

A third perspective on nature’s value is based on human interactions with and responsibilities to nature. Relational values are not inherent in things but are derived from how one relates to and engages with nature. The most obvious example is how a farmer might view the value of soil beyond its ability to produce a crop of a given economic value. However, relational values can be recognized in many social contexts through history, including the indigenous Quechua peoples of the Andes who celebrate Sumak Kasway, which translates to “good life”and involves a living essence to nature that humans are part of. Additionally, we can find relational values  among Buddhists whose lives are interdependent with natura—an inherently moral relationship.