Three Decades of Environmental Values: Some Personal Reflections

The journal Environmental Values is thirty years old. In this retrospective, as the retiring Editor-in-Chief, I provide a set of personal reflections on the changing landscape of scholarship in the field. This historical overview traces developments from the journal's origins in debates between philosophers, sociologists, and economists in the UK to the conflicts over policy on climate change, biodiversity/non-humans and sustainability. Along the way various negative influences are mentioned, relating to how the values of Nature are considered in policy, including mainstream environmental economics, naïve environmental pragmatism, the strategic role of corporations, neoliberalism and eco-modernism/techno-optimism. At the same time core value debates around intrinsic value in Nature and instrumentalism remain relevant, along with how plural environmental values can be articulated and acted upon. Naturalness, human relations to non-humans, and Nature as other, remain central considerations. The broadening of issues covered by the journal (e.g. covering social psychology, sociology and political science), reflect the need to address both human behaviour and the structure of social and economic systems to confront ongoing social-ecological crises.

A Bolder Conservation Future for Indonesia: Conserving Biodiversity, Carbon And Unique Ecosystem In Sulawesi

As more ambitious protected area (PA) targets for the post-2020 global biodiversity framework is set beyond Aichi Target 11, new spatial prioritisation thinking is required to expand protected areas to maximise different environmental values. Our study focuses on the biodiversity and forest-rich Indonesian island of Sulawesi, which has a terrestrial PA network that covers 10% of the island. We run scenarios to identified areas outside the current PA network and their representativeness of conservation features. We use Marxan to investigate trade-offs in the design of a larger PA network with varying coverage targets (17%, 30%, and 50%) that prioritises forest area, karst ecosystem, and carbon value as conservation features. Our first scenario required PAs to be selected at all times, and it required larger areas to meet these targets than our second scenario, which did not include existing PAs. The vast Mekongga, Banggai, and Popayato-Paguat landscapes were consistently identified as high priorities for protection in the various scenarios. The final section of our analysis used a spatially explicit three-phase approach to achieve this through PA expansion, the creation of new PAs, and the creation of corridors to connect existing PAs. Our findings identified 13,039 km2 of priority areas to be included in the current PA network, potentially assisting Indonesia in meeting the post-2020 GBF target if our approach is replicated elsewhere across Indonesia as a national or sub-national analysis like this study. We discuss various land management options through OECMs and the costs to deliver this strategy.

Goian – Cerveira Footbridge over the Miño River. Spain - Portugal

<p>The Goián - Cerveira footbridge over the Miño river, result of an international competition held in 2017, will connect the Espazo Fortaleza park in Goián-Tomiño, Spain, and the Castelinho park in Vila Nova de Cerveira, Portugal.</p><p>The proposed footbridge saves a main span of 265m, and is a suspended structure, with two towers located on the riverbanks, avoiding intermediate supports on the riverbed, and only one suspension cable. The towers are located not centered with the axis of the footbridge deck, that adopts a curved layout both in plan and in elevation. The curved layout in plan fits better to the footbridge arrival in both riverbanks, and improves its structural behavior. Indeed, the eccentric location of the suspension cable within the deck generates important horizontal transverse forces, that are supported by the curved deck by behaving as an arch. This configuration is also very convenient for supporting and controlling wind loads. It is a classic bridge type -suspended bridge- but with a singular configuration due to the curved layout of the deck and its arc-like behavior.</p><p>The result is a very subtle and slender structure, a “line over the Miño river”, that highly preserves the environmental values of the river and the landscape.</p>

On human culture and the motive for protecting the environment

Since the decision of protecting nature is based on the subjective values of nature in relation to oneself, it is clear why pro-environmental values need to be incorporated into the collective mindset.

The Virus and the Elephant in the Room: Knowledge, Emotions and a Pandemic—Drivers to Reducing Flying in Academia

This chapter explores individual incentives and barriers to reducing air travel, with the focus on people who have taken a decision to reduce flying due to climate change. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, six semi-structured interviews were performed with academics—three who had already cut down on flying and three who were grounded due to the pandemic. They were compared with a set of interviews with 26 Swedish citizens, performed in 2017–2018, which had shown that internalised knowledge of climate change was an important driver to change behaviour. Awareness led to negative emotions and a personal tipping point where a decision to reduce flying was made. However, among these interviewees, even people with a strong drive to reduce flying felt trapped in practices, norms and infrastructures. The academics reported similar incentives and barriers as the broader group but also specific challenges for them as researchers. Surprisingly, the pandemic was perceived as a testbed for new travel habits, and not as a big obstacle for their scientific work. None believed that they would return to an equally aeromobile lifestyle, and two of them described it as a chance to reconcile habits with their pro-environmental values.

Living Myths in a Living World

This chapter considers fan studies in a mythological studies context and examines how green studies might use a similar approach to tap into the cultural and mythic power of modern fandoms. The first part defines the components of myth, considers existing fandom studies theories related to those components, and discusses on how fandom studies could impact the larger mythological studies debate. The second part describes the mythological roots of today's environmental crises and discusses the influence of specific fandoms on environmental activism. The chapter closes with some thoughts on how a mythological and green approach to fandom could provide further cultural impetus to positive environmental values much as feminist, ethnic, and queer perspectives on fandom have highlighted and supported a value shift in society as a whole.

Determination of Eğirdir And Its Surround in Terms of Tourism and Recreational Potantial

Eğirdir districts is rich in natural and historical environmental values and cultural traits are the important places of tourism and recreational activities. Tourism and recreational activities, which are developed in regards with the atractiveness of such places, are made of those natural and cultural environment. When events of tourism all over the world are examined, it could be observed that such activities usually take place during summer months. However, since developing residences and facilities tend to use sources more than before, they affect natural, historical and the cultural values negatively and thus corruption starts. Inspite of the fact that the district is gradually getting more intensive in terms of tourism and recreation during the four seasons, there haven’t been any serious problems yet. In the areas of these natural and cultural resources, the problems related with the use of those resources where tourism and recreational activities are concentrated can not be ignored and the purpose of this study is what can be done to prevent the spread of such problems of the district. In this study, natural and cultural traits to be developped in the district of Eğirdir have been investigated and analized in order to detect the tourism and the recreational potentials in the region.

EDUCATION OF A RESPONSIBLE PERSON BASED ON ENVIRONMENTAL VALUES

Analyzing the current state of formation of an integral personality at various levels and stages of the educational process, the author identifies four areas of environmental education and upbringing - ethnic, informal, General formal, and professional. It offers proven methods and tools for their systematization and mutual integration depending on external environmental factors and personal environmental values

Do Pro-environmental Appeals Trigger Pro-environmental Behavior in Hotel Guests?

Appeals to people’s pro-environmental values have been shown to trigger pro-environmental behavior across a range of contexts. The present study tests the potential of such interventions in a hedonic context where behavioral change does not generate utilitarian benefits (tourism). Results from a field experiment in a four-star hotel in Slovenia indicate that appeals to people’s pro-environmental values fail to significantly increase tourists’ hotel towel reuse and decrease room electricity consumption, suggesting that interventions in hedonic contexts—such as tourism—may require the use of more tangible benefits in order to change behavior.

Creating Magical Research: Writing for a Felt Reality in a More-Than-Human World

We work in the ruins of a world that has produced those ruins (Sauvé, 2017; Tsing in The mushroom at the end of the world: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton University Press, 2015), this time often referred to as the Anthropocene, science educators and researchers have been called to break with post-positivism, dualisms, and reductionism to settle on new onto-epistemological grounds (Bazzul and Kayumova,.Educational Philosophy and Theory 48:284–299, 2016; Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press.; Lather & St. Pierre in International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 26:629–633, 2013). One promising proposition lies in ontologies of process and epistemologies that expand to encompass affect with new combinations of knowing/experiencing/researching that honor the more-than-human world we need to navigate (Manning, E. (2013). Always more than one: Individuation’s dance. Duke University Press.; Muraca,.Environmental Values 20:375–396, 2011). In this chapter, I will introduce artful writing as inquiry in science education and explain the elements of magical realism that may contribute to works that reverberate with the-more-than-human world of the Anthropocene (Faris, W. (2004). Ordinary enchantments. Vanderbilt University Press.; Manning, E. (2016). The minor gesture. Duke University Press.; (Richardson & St. Pierre in The Sage handbook of qualitative research. Sage, 2005).