Authors: Stålhammar, Sanna;

The efforts to measure people’s current preferences and values of ecosystem services raise questions about the link to sustainability transformations. The importance of taking social and cultural values of nature into account is increasingly recognised within ecosystem services research and policy. This notion is informing the development of social valuation methods that seek to assess non-material social and cultural benefits of ecosystems in non-monetary terms. Here, ‘values’ refer to the products of descriptive scientific assessments of the links between human well-being and ecosystems. This use of the values term can be contrasted with normative modes of understanding values, as underlying beliefs and moral principles about what is good and right. While both perspectives on values are important for the biodiversity and ecosystem services agenda, values have mainly been understood in relation to assessments and descriptive modes. Failing to acknowledge the distinction between these modes bypasses the mismatch between people’s current values and sustainability transformations. Refining methodologies to accurately describe social values risks simply giving us a more detailed account of what we already know—people in general do not value nature enough. Values studies should explore why or how peoples’ mindsets might converge with sustainability goals, to incorporate change and transformation.