How legal actions can help reimagine relationships with nature

Humans hold diverse values for nature – a broad range of deeply held values that shape our relationships to species, places and natural systems. We increasingly appreciate that, although these values are often intangible, they are key to our sense of self and wellbeing, and thus also mediate our relationships to nature and to sustainability. Better recognising these diverse values in our policy- and decision-making is thus also key to “reimagining relationships” with nature and pursuing more sustainable trajectories. 

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has worked hard to challenge these established norms, and encourage policy makers to engage with and recognise plural values for nature. However, integrating diverse values into mainstream policy processes remains challenging; the orthodoxy of instrumentalist values and economic valuation continues to dominate public policy across contexts.

In our article, we argue that strategic legal action could help to accelerate and strengthen the mainstreaming of diverse values of nature, challenging the status-quo and helping to “reimagine relationships”. We explain why and how this is possible and needed. And we provide different examples of legal actions, with selected examples from around the world, to illustrate their potential to help shape not individually case outcomes, but also help to gradually reshape how we recognise the diverse values people hold for nature.

Interested in the full article? Check out the next issue of Policy Matters, coming October 2025.