Professor Shares Lessons Learned Doing Global Conservation Research

ATLANTA — Lelani Mannetti believes her class, Urban Environmental Sustainability, is best taught as a conversation, a collective sharing of diverse worldviews. As a Values Assessment Fellow for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), she is working to help others understand that to make sustainable, transformative change, all voices must be heard.

The IPBES is a global, independent intergovernmental body of 139 member states working to strengthen the science-policy interface among biodiversity and ecosystem services. Its programs advance the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, long-term human well-being and sustainable development.

Mannetti, an assistant professor of urban studies and graduate program director for Georgia State University’s Urban Studies Institute, recently co-authored — along with more than 80 IPBES scientists, scholars and policy experts — a new IPBES report featured in the journal Nature, “Diverse values of nature for sustainability.” She was on one of six teams that spent four years examining more than 50,000 reports on nature valuations and holding workshops with multiple stakeholder groups. The report assesses more than 50 valuation methods based on economic, ecological and sociocultural value indicators and presents a typology of the diverse values of nature and the use of valuation around the world.

“It was important to have multiple-stakeholder involvement, especially with local and indigenous communities,” Mannetti said. “There was an exclusive emphasis on creating a more inclusive environment around who gets to be involved in policy assessment, in general. That’s the way the platform was run. Given so many valuation methods already come from developed countries, this project put an emphasis on Global South (Africa, Asia and Latin America) scholars as well as gender balance, age balance and across disciplines.”

Mannetti, who has a background leading scenario and visioning workshops, contributed to the study’s fifth chapter regarding futures and scenarios.

“I have a background in leading others in looking forward and asking, ‘What does the future hold?’” she said. “In any kind of strategic development, it’s important to forecast what is envisioned. Then you figure out the steps to get there.”

The way nature is valued in political and economic decisions is both a key driver of the global biodiversity crises and offers a vital opportunity to address it, according to their findings. Economic and political decisions predominantly prioritize certain values of nature, particularly market-based values that prioritize short-term gains and economic growth — such as those associated with intensive food production — over other important values of nature. Policymakers subsequently overlook the many non-market values associated with nature’s contributions to people, such as climate regulation and cultural identity.

The research calls for rebalancing the values that underpin socioeconomic structures by promoting deeply held values like care, solidarity, responsibility, reciprocity and justice, both toward other people and nature, as stated in a video produced to promote the work.

“We can’t keep using the same market approaches to give value to nature,” Mannetti said. “Now that we’ve shown we’re undervaluing nature, we need to find ways to use the valuation concepts and methods we reveal in the study in new and inclusive ways. To do so will impact policy and create big ways of change along with the many smaller changes needed to protect biodiversity, our long-term quality of life and our natural world.”

With this study published, the IPBES teams have begun the next.

“We’re working on an assessment of transformative change — how governments can most effectively change in such a way that they won’t just add bullet points to policymaking decisions but will make necessary changes that will result in just and sustainable futures, and just and sustainable policies,” Mannetti said.

Who will help lead this more inclusive future? Mannetti hopes it will be some of her students, and she encourages master’s students who are interested in studying urban environmental sustainability to contact her at [email protected] to learn more about her Spring 2024 class.

“It’s a Ph.D.-level course, however, we welcome master’s-level students to join us in this conversation,” she said.