Julia Martin-Ortega

Valuing water is gaining popularity among policymakers and academics as a new water management paradigm. However, there is a lack of clarity about how to translate this paradigm into practice. We propose a multifaceted approach to valuing water that considers not just the values that people assign to water, such as its uses and benefits, but also broader personal guiding principles (e.g., security) and governance-related values (e.g., social justice) that underpin decision-making about water. Using an interdisciplinary conceptual framework and data from a global survey among water professionals (N = 293), we provide the first empirical evidence showing how preferences among three archetypical perspectives on water management – (1) controlling water flows through engineering solutions; (2) managing water through market-based mechanisms; (3) working with natural water ecosystems – can be explained …

As the urgency to adapt to climate change intensifies, nature-based solutions (NBS) are receiving increasing attention. To mainstream NBS, a fundamental shift in environmental management is required. This study evaluates the role that Communities of Practice (CoP) can play as platforms to foster social learning to drive such a paradigm shift. A Natural Flood Management (NFM) CoP in Yorkshire, UK, was used as a case study. A unique research design combined opportunistic data collected prior to the inception of the CoP and purposive data collected during and after its formation. Opportunistic data captured information from stakeholders regarding NFM engagement and challenges around its instalment and delivery. Purposive data was used to examine the ability of a CoP to foster social learning, overcome the challenges identified prior to its establishment and evaluate the extent to which a CoP contributes to …

We show how the dire state of the Earth's rivers entangles intimately with ‘thingifying’ processes at the heart of colonial modernity. Known in many precolonial and Indigenous contexts as person‐like kin, we describe how rivers the world over have been re‐done primarily as thing—amoral, controllable, a potential commodity like anything else. We develop and work with a provisory concept of kin as those constituents of environments that reciprocally nurture, and contribute to the substance of, one another's life and wellbeing. We show how kinship with rivers figures centrally in primarily Indigenous‐led struggles in various regions of the globe for the recognition and enforcement of river personhood and rights. This is partly because people are motivated to fight passionately for their kin. With some careful caveats, we argue that associating river kinship exclusively with Indigenous worlds undermines its potential for …

Academics, funders and publishers need to support interdisciplinary research processes in which social sciences are placed on an equal footing with the natural sciences and engineering.

Securing the provision of environmental public goods from agriculture is central to addressing the critical challenge of ensuring global food security while halting ecosystem degradation. Agri-environment schemes (AES) are considered to have a key role to play in supporting the transition to more sustainable ways of producing food. Existing evidence suggests that farmers are generally willing to enrol in AES for the delivery of environmental features, but robust policy support requires further exploration of land managers’ preferences and how these interplay with contract features to achieve higher environmental targets. We undertook a discrete choice experiment with land managers in post-Brexit UK, with what can be considered a ‘benchmark’ sample of younger AES-inclined land managers. This provides a window into the future of the UK farming landscape, but also, given the revision of the European Union’s …

This review paper presents a critical perspective on the transformation of phosphorus governance in the European Union to support food and environmental security, which are subject to systemic shocks. It presents three major limitations that act as constraints to this process: (1) the predominance of technical studies, which produce isolated meanings that fail to address the socio-political aspect of phosphorus management and cannot be translated into policy foresight; (2) approaches to change dominated by the linear resource efficiency paradigm narrowly confined within sectoral responses to system shocks; and (3) the constrained policy understanding of the circular economy, which hampers system change as phosphorus reuse is seen primarily as part of the biological cycle of the circular economy and does not advance critical perspectives. We argue that the siloed and heavy regulatory load related to phosphorus produces technocratic and incremental policy revisions, singular state-level approaches and reductionist prisms that exclude extraterritoriality. These exacerbate the inability of institutions to translate technical studies into policy foresight and counter the pervasiveness of linearity. Phosphorus requires instead a holistic and intersectoral governance object that is integrated with the multiple transition instruments on the policy-making agenda of the European Union. To achieve phosphorus sustainability and avoid the dependence on shocks for its self-renewal, phosphorus governance needs to overcome the technocratic incrementalism of individual sectors and adapt to alternative discursive framings that transcend the existing …

This article intervenes in the persistent hierarchy of epistemological worth that produces scientific knowledge as meaningful, and knowledge from arts or humanities as marginal, or illustrative. The specific trans-disciplinary project we discuss brings together environmental social sciences with performance-based Forum Theatre methods to explore ‘value’ as understood in communities in Tabasco and Chiapas, Mexico in relation to Payment for Ecosystem Services. Trans-disciplinary collaborations that seek to incorporate ‘novel’ methods to engage participants differently might better reflect the dynamic, emergent, and often shifting nature of beliefs, attitudes and values.

Values of local people are often poorly represented in environmental decisions due to power differences. Performance arts-based methods have been put forward as one way to increase the representation of local values and signalling power differences. Environmental professionals’ validation of these methods is essential as they shape the interpretation, uptake, and implementation of environmental decisions in practice, but their views remain largely unexplored. This paper uses interviews and focus groups with environmental professionals in Mexico to explore their views on whether these methods a) open the space to discuss a plurality of values and power differences within local communities; and b) can contribute to environmental decision-making, particularly with respect to their viability, cultural relevance and credibility. We use a case study applying Forum Theatre in two rural communities. Results indicate …

Amongst mounting criticisms surrounding market-based instruments for conservation, there have been calls to develop new tools to incentivise conservation action. Conservation basic income (CBI) has recently been proposed as a means of combining the environmental aims of market-based instruments with the positive social impacts of cash transfer programmes. So far, CBI has only been discussed conceptually, with little attention given to the practicalities of implementing it, especially through empirical work. This scoping mixed-methods study is the first to explore the views of conservation professionals on CBI and applying cash giving for conservation. In our study, we use a questionnaire conducted with 45 conservationists experienced in working in low-income countries (though mostly originally from high income countries) and six in-depth interviews with an environmental NGO implementing cash transfers …

Large mammals often impose significant costs such as livestock depredation or crop foraging on rural communities, and this can lead to the retaliatory killing of threatened wildlife populations. One conservation approach—payments to encourage coexistence (PEC)—aims to reduce these costs through financial mechanisms, such as compensation, insurance, revenue sharing, and conservation performance payments. Little is known about the equitability of PEC, however, despite its moral and instrumental importance, prevalence as a conservation approach, and the fact that other financial tools for conservation are often inequitable. We used examples from the literature to examine the capability of PEC—as currently perceived and implemented—to be inequitable. We recommend improving the equitability of current and future schemes through the cooperative design of schemes that promote compensatory equity …

Nature degradation, poverty and social discrimination are some of the consequences of unfair decision‐making over environmental resources within rural communities in the Global South. Barriers to achieving fair environmental decisions are entrenched power differences and the lack of representation of the diversity of local values in environmental decision‐making. Using intersectionality and value pluralism as a conceptual base, this is the first paper to examine the potential of Forum Theatre, a performance arts‐based method, to discuss ‘solutions’ regarding power differences and values towards nature in environmental decision‐making. We implemented Forum Theatre in two rural villages in Chiapas, Mexico, framed around conflicts and power differences in eco‐tourism development. Participants felt empathy with the Forum Theatre characters and dissatisfaction over the conflicts, and this motivated them …

Doñana is one of the largest wet-lands in Europe, and one of its most iconic protected areas. A World Heritage and Ramsar site, it hosts up to half a million migratory waterbirds annually, around 50 resident waterbird species, a rich biodiversity, and highly endangered species such as the Iberian imperial eagle and the Iberian lynx. But it has been degrading for decades—and a recent farming bill legalising informal land occupation for intensive irrigated strawberry production in its immediate neighbourhood is risking to devastate it completely. The conflictive process that led to Doñana’s legal protection in the 60s left a lasting legacy on its fate as a conservation area. Only onethird of the original marshland and a fraction of its forests, streams and ponds were covered by the protected status. The rest were turned into polders, rice fields, irrigated agriculture, and exotic tree plantations 1. These changes resulted in a …

This chapter examines the way commodification processes are playing out in the domain of human-nature relationships. More specifically, we look at how and to what extent this phenomenon has been facilitated by the concept of ecosystem services, a generic term of wide use in environmental sciences and policy to denote the tangible and intangible benefits humans obtain from nature, including for instance food, air and water regulation, energy, recreation, and cultural and spiritual fulfilment.

Understanding the value base of water decision-making: a practitioners’ guide to the Value Landscapes Approach — University of St Andrews Research Portal Skip to main navigation Skip to search Skip to main content University of St Andrews Research Portal Home University of St Andrews Research Portal Logo Help & FAQ Home Profiles Research output Datasets/Software Research units Projects Activities Impacts Prizes Press/Media Student theses Search by expertise, name or affiliation Understanding the value base of water decision-making: a practitioners’ guide to the Value Landscapes Approach Christopher Schulz, Julia Martin-Ortega, Klaus Glenk School of Geography & Sustainable Development Research output: Book/Report › Commissioned report Overview Original language English Place of Publication The Hague Publisher Valuing Water Initiative Number of pages 19 Publication status Published - …

Background1. In this report, we update figures from previous reports (Glenk et al. 2020; 2021) on peatland restoration cost based on data collected as part of the Peatland Action Programme (PAP). 2. The previous reports can be found on the SEFARI webpage: https://sefari. scot/research/the-costof-peatland-restoration-in-scotland.3. Our update is based on another batch of additional data, which going forward will enhance the robustness of the analysis. For the purpose of this report, we closely follow the structure of the initial Glenk et al.(2021) report. This means that we will keep the Section structure and numbering of Tables and Figures, making the report directly comparable with previously reported estimates. 4. We refer the reader to the initial Glenk et al.(2020) report for detailed background information, and a more detailed account of the structure of the data and the interpretation of findings. 5. The initial database was collated by researchers of SRUC, the James Hutton Institute and the University of Leeds using data collected as part of the grant application and reporting process for the PAP, funded by Scottish Government and administered by Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), between 2016 and 2019 (https://www. nature. scot/climate-change/taking-action/peatlandaction). The update, involving researchers of SRUC and the University of Leeds, includes more recent data from the 2019/20 and 20/21 PAP funding rounds. 6. The authors wish to acknowledge and highlight that data collection was greatly facilitated through collaboration between SRUC, James Hutton Institute, the University of Leeds and the SNH Peatland Action coordination and …

The Valuing Water Survey represents the first attempt to study links between personal values and preferences for strategic dimensions of the global water governance agenda. This presumes that there are indeed commonalities that can be found across cultures, sectors, and locally specific scenarios for water management. This is possible through consideration of a relatively broad level of values which may demonstrate that concerns and patterns of interaction around water are, in fact, rather universal. It is also worth noting that this is the first survey of its kind based on the views of professional respondents, that is, people who are actively involved in decision-making about water as part of their work (while previous surveys were based on the views of citizens).The survey measured several kinds of personal values held by respondents. 3 First, we sought to understand people’s perceptions of water values, that is, the importance that people assign to water resources. Water values are often expressed in economic, ecological, or cultural terms. All terms cover important values of water, but not everyone would prioritise them in the same way. For example, to measure water values, we included questions about uses or values of freshwater resources such as ‘basis for agricultural production’,‘places of beauty’, or as ‘habitats for aquatic animals and plants’. 4

Nature-based Solutions (NBS) have been increasingly advocated as means of achieving a greener and sustainable future. Although discussion on the definition, scale and applicability of NBS in country and city-level agendas are ongoing, NBS have received less attention in terms of them supporting country-level approaches to Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR). This paper uses a series of indicators reflecting national capability and national necessity for NBS as a means to support DRR activities. Using both Principal Components Analysis and Cluster Analysis results show that of a total of 178 countries, two groups emerge; with countries in one group showing high levels of both national capability and necessity for NBS. Such countries are also found to be around 23 % more likely to be currently implementing disaster risk reduction actions than countries with lower capability and necessity scores, showing that NBS …

This report sets out the UK’s first comprehensive national phosphorus transformation strategy, based on extensive stakeholder consultation across the UK food system, in addition to economic modelling and biophysical analyses. The UK’s food system is in transition, driven in part by major changes to agricultural policy. It is also under pressure from climate change, land use change, Brexit uncertainties, and unforeseen shocks like COVID-19. However one critical challenge that has not been sufficiently addressed is the secure supply and sustainable use of phosphorus. Phosphorus is a lynchpin of the food system and has no substitute. Yet its mismanagement has led to serious risks of compromising future food and water security in the UK and globally. This Strategy forms part of a larger, 3-year, UKRI-funded research effort, the RePhoKUs project.

Phosphorus (P) is a critical natural resource for food production, but one that is subject to global supply vulnerabilities. P is also responsible for endemic eutrophication in waterbodies due to poor stewardship in the food chain. Catchments are natural social-ecologically bounded systems for P use in agriculture and water management. Stakeholders, such as farmers, water and sewerage service companies, local authorities, and environmental organisations mediate catchment adaptive capacity to P supply risks and P pollution in waterbodies. Adaptive capacity at this level has been insufficiently explored in addressing the P challenge, yet is essential to it. We address this gap by exploring through a qualitative study of stakeholders in two United Kingdom catchments. Our results suggest that the awareness and relevance of P-supply challenges is low in catchments, but the problem of waterbody vulnerability to excess …

Valuing water in the Ewaso Ng'iro River Basin, Kenya — University of St Andrews Research Portal Skip to main navigation Skip to search Skip to main content University of St Andrews Research Portal Home University of St Andrews Research Portal Logo Help & FAQ Home Profiles Research output Datasets/Software Research units Projects Activities Impacts Prizes Press/Media Student theses Search by expertise, name or affiliation Valuing water in the Ewaso Ng'iro River Basin, Kenya Christopher Schulz, Julia Martin-Ortega, Klaus Glenk School of Geography & Sustainable Development Research output: Book/Report › Commissioned report Overview Original language English Place of Publication The Hague Publisher Valuing Water Initiative Number of pages 20 Publication status Published - 1 Dec 2022 Access to Document Schulz et al 2022_Valuing water in the Ewaso Ng'iro River Basin, Kenya_reportFinal …