INTRODUCTION

“Water is the blood of the earth. Without its blood, the earth would have no life, no living thing could live. When the lakes are destroyed, where will the owners of the lakes live? I am not referring to the people but to the goblins (duendes), because they are there taking care of you, Madre Agua, Mamayacu, and they don’t ask us for anything,” says Nélida Ayay Chilón, a peasant woman from Cajamarca, Peru (Cabellos Damián 2015). Nélida is concerned about the material and intangible life in her ancestral territory and joins the mobilizations against the mining company that seeks to expand its activities in the Conga Lake region, 14 km from the Yanacocha site, the largest open-pit gold mine in South America. Nélida speaks to the lake: “Mamayacu, you have gold in your entrails. Gold cannot be drunk; gold cannot be eaten. Blood is shed for gold. Only by taking good care of you, you will always be able to feed us.”

The values that motivate Nélida to defend Mamayacu differ significantly from those that drive members of the mining company to exploit the region. The values or preferences, principles, and virtues that underlie Nélida’s community’s relationship with nature were not considered when the Peruvian government granted mining rights to Newmont Mining Corporation in the 1990s. Could the socio-environmental devastation of the 120 km² area where the mining company operates have been avoided if the government of Peru had considered the diverse ways of valuing nature expressed by all stakeholders? How could multiple values participate in this type of socio-environmental decisions? Some concerns of this sort run through the Methodological Assessment of the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature (hereafter, Values Assessment), commissioned by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES 2022). In line with the struggle of many Indigenous peoples and local communities, the Values Assessment recognizes that “Ignoring, excluding or marginalizing local values often leads to socio-environmental conflicts linked to value clashes, especially in the context of power asymmetries, which undermine the effectiveness of environmental policies” (IPBES 2022:C6, XXXVIII).

As a lead author of the Values Assessment and a pardo Brazilian woman researcher working with Indigenous and peasant organizations in Latin America, one of my main interests is to build critical and constructive bridges between social movements, academia, and policy. In these collaborative efforts, I have encountered various situations like the one experienced by Nélida Ayay Chilón, in which the values held by Indigenous peoples are strikingly different from those expressed by governments (CEMDA 2020). Instead of creating conditions for these values to participate in environmental decisions through the articulation of diverse value-practice-knowledge systems and policy, governmental processes continue to systematically exclude them.

The Values Assessment represents a breakthrough in showing how what we call “nature” can be valued in different, and even incommensurable, ways. In advancing this vision, it calls on governments to recognize and embed diverse values in decision making, what ultimately contributes to the struggles of Indigenous and local communities. However, there is a dimension of this encounter between policy, research, and Indigenous movements that remains subsumed: when we refer to diverse values of nature, that which is being differently valued is assumed to be the same although it might not be so. Although the Values Assessment recognizes diverse values and worldviews, its own naturalist ontology of values (based on the modern separation between nature and culture) is not questioned. By not disclosing this ontological assumption, the recognition of diverse ontologies is hindered, and the modern nature-culture divide is perpetuated as a universal reality (Hird et al. 2023). Considering that this modern ontology, dominant in science and policy, has long been identified as a key driver of the global environmental crisis, its naturalization is increasingly challenged for its negative implications both in terms of sustainability and social justice (Uggla 2010, McGregor et al. 2020, Hird et al. 2023, Stein at al. 2024).

What if in addition to addressing diverse value systems we considered the diverse ontologies that these systems may comprise? In this essay, I propose a dialogue between aspects of the Values Assessment and the emerging field of political ontology to explore some of the hidden complexities of the values debate. I present some key terms of the typology of values put forward by the Values Assessment and some of the challenges involved in studies of this kind, with special attention given to meta-valuation. By shifting the discussion on the ontology of diverse values to the value of diverse ontologies, the divide between nature and culture that stands as an ontological premise of the Values Assessment is problematized. Certain differences in valuation are reframed as a matter of political ontology and later discussed, as that which converges in the process of commoning without becoming sameness. I conclude with reflections on the importance of alliances that aim at the creation of worlds in which many worlds can fit and flourish.

ONTOLOGY OF VALUES

Ontology is a broad term with philosophical roots that refers to the nature of being, and the relationship between existing entities. Value ontology addresses the existence of values, their categorization, and relationship to the socio-physical world (Smith 2014). The Values Assessment places the notion of value at the center, showing that “the causes of the global biodiversity crisis and the opportunities to address them are tightly linked to the ways in which nature is valued in political and economic decisions at all levels” (IPBES 2022:KM1, XIV). To address the crisis of values associated with the global socio-environmental crisis, the Values Assessment offers a typology of the values of nature based on broad values, which are general moral guiding principles and life goals (e.g., freedom, justice, responsibility, harmony with nature, harmony with Mother Earth, health, prosperity) informed by people’s world-views and beliefs; and specific values, which are judgements regarding nature’s importance in particular situations. In turn, specific values can be grouped into instrumental, intrinsic, and relational values. Instrumental values relate to things that are a means to a desired end and tend to be associated with nature (e.g., as asset, capital, resources) and its contributions to people. Intrinsic values relate to the values of nature expressed independently of any reference to people and include entities such as habitats or species that are worth protecting as ends in and of themselves. Finally, relational values refer to the meaningfulness of people-nature interactions, and interactions among people (including across generations) through nature (e.g., sense of place, spirituality, care, reciprocity; IPBES 2022).

To promote sustainability-aligned values, the Values Assessment proposes working with a combination of four values-based leverage points: (i) undertaking valuation, (ii) embedding values in decision making, (iii) reforming policy, and (iv) shifting societal goals. Altogether, these measures provide conceptual and methodological strategies to catalyze transformations toward just and sustainable futures (IPBES 2022).

Thus presented, the work on values of nature might appear to be a simple undertaking. However, the study of values is often accompanied by a number of challenges, many of which relate to its interdisciplinary nature (requiring collaborations across disciplines such as ecology, philosophy, sociology, economics, and environmental science); the complexity of theoretical definitions (which may include beliefs, attitudes, preferences, principles, and other aspects); valuation difficulties (due to the intangible and dynamic nature of values); and ethical-political considerations (as values frame debates around social and environmental justice). Moreover, the study of values is subject to what we could denominate regressive meta-valuation, which refers to the fact that the values themselves imply valuations, points of view, or appreciations from which their value is derived. In other words, what we identify as values are effects of other values, leading to possible regressions in their analysis and pointing to the importance of reflecting upon researchers’ positionality.

This last challenge especially interests us because it allows us to inquire about the invisible epistemes, regimes of truth (Foucault 2019) or conditions that make certain studies possible, such as those around the ontology of diverse values of nature. In this sense, situating knowledge (Haraway 2016, Ribeiro 2019) becomes crucial to evidence part of the conceptual, historical, and political factors that make it possible, including fundamental ontological premises on which our studies are based. From a meta-valuation standpoint, bringing the Values Assessment’s ontological assumptions to discussion is relevant to elucidate aspects of its own value system, as I explore below.

FROM THE ONTOLOGY OF DIVERSE VALUES TO THE VALUE OF DIVERSE ONTOLOGIES

To reflect plural perspectives on nature, the Values Assessment links its typology of values to different “life frames.” According to the authors (IPBES 2022, Pascual et al. 2023), different broad and specific values are highlighted by four general perspectives: living from, living in, living with, and living as nature. Living from nature emphasizes nature’s capacity to provide resources for sustaining livelihoods, needs, and wants of people, such as food and material goods. Living in nature refers to the importance of nature as the setting for people’s sense of place and identity. Living with nature has a focus on life “other than human” such as the intrinsic right of fish in a river to thrive independently of human needs. Living as nature sees the natural world as a physical, mental, and spiritual part of oneself (Fig. 1).

The authors explain that these life frames correspond to different worldviews, which encompass the ways people conceive and interact with the world (IPBES 2022). The worldviews are expressed through knowledge systems, understood as bodies of knowledge, practices, and beliefs associated with culture and language. In the literature, worldviews are frequently classified as anthropocentric (prioritizing human interests), biocentric, or ecocentric (emphasizing living beings or nature’s processes as a whole), and as pluricentric (with no single center, focusing on several intertwined relationships among humans, other-than-human beings, nature’s components, and systemic processes). In adopting the notion of “worldview,” it is recognized that many cultural groups, including diverse Indigenous peoples and local communities, Eastern philosophies, and others, do not have an encompassing term or concept for “nature” in general. Moreover, many human groups do not separate it as part of a human-nature dichotomy. When referring to nature, the intention in the Values Assessment is to embrace diverse manifestations, including, for instance, natural entities and features (e.g., species, communities, rivers, forests, and mountains), and also interconnected human-nature entities (e.g., sacred sites, human-nonhuman kinship systems, urban green/blue space, and cultural landscapes). According to the authors, this values typology contributes to the recognition of diverse forms of relationship with nature, operationalizes the IPBES conceptual framework, and expands the notion of nature beyond the ecological realm (IPBES 2022).

Without denying the importance of this proposal, I would like to draw attention to a crucial invisible premise. The figure makes use of an optical metaphor typical of modernity: each life frame is a perspective linked to a world-“view,” that is, a way of looking at nature. Vision and thought are presented as synonyms, and light represents understanding. The image, however, does not shed light on the very life frame or worldview that structures it, or to be clearer, the very ontology on which this proposal is based. Conceiving nature as a single reality approached by several perspectives and knowledge systems is one way of understanding (and producing) reality among others. The invisible frame of life or ontology present here is what Philipe Descola calls naturalism.

Descola (2006) defines ontology as the system of properties that humans attribute to beings in general or the system of understanding and practice involved in determining the type of possible relations between human and non-human entities. The author describes four modes of relation or ontologies that result from the classification of different beings in terms of their physical attributes (external form, bodies, substance, perceptual and sensory-motor processes) and their internal qualities (subjectivity, intentionality, and agency). One of these ontologies is totemism, in which humans and non-humans are linked to each other by virtue of their internal and physical similarities. Another ontology corresponds to animism, in which humans and non-humans share a spiritual interiority but possess radically different bodies; another ontological system is analogism, in which humans and non-humans appear as an assemblage of fragmented essences; and finally, there is naturalism, in which beyond-human and human entities possess similar physical-chemical attributes but only humans have spirit and subjectivity.

This diversity of ontological routes, and other possible ways of constructing and experiencing realities, destabilize and denaturalize the very notion of nature. It does so not because nature does not exist but because it ceases to be understood in an unquestionable and stable way, as a kind of univocal reality on which various cultural lenses or worldviews are built. By considering the existence of different ontologies, the multiculturalist interpretation of reality is repositioned, and attention is directed to the existence of a multiplicity of realities, natures, or worlds (Viveiros de Castro 2014).

The naturalist ontology of the Values Assessment assumes that there is only one nature viewed and valued by different perspectives, as illustrated by Figure 1. A transition from its ontology of diverse values (i.e., from the study of the relations between values and an alleged universal natural reality) to the value of diverse ontologies (i.e., to the importance of considering different realities) implies three key stances: (i) the denaturalization of the notion of nature, whereby nature is no longer conceived as an unquestioned univocal reality; (ii) the recognition of radical differences between socio-physical worlds or ontological realms; and (iii) an understanding of the world as a symbolic and material process instead of a static and external entity. These ideas are put forward and explored by the emerging field of political ontology (Blaser 2009, 2014).

POLITICAL ONTOLOGY

Let us recall the struggle of Nélida Ayay Chilón, for whom Mamayacu is not a natural resource but a deity: Mother Water. We could say that the values that Nélida and her community attribute to the lagoon entail a relationship of devotion (Muradian and Pascual, 2018) from their ecocentric worldview. For the miner, the lagoon is what should be exploited for gold. Both parties value this body of water, but in incommensurable ways (Martinez-Alier et al. 1998). With the Values Assessment we could say that it is important to recognize the existence of diverse values about the lagoon and that it would be important to tailor valuation processes “to equitably take into account the values of nature of multiple stakeholders in different decision-making contexts” (IPBES 2022:SPM, XVI). According to the naturalist ontology, dominant in science and the state, the lagoon is considered the same stable and separate natural entity that is understood and valued in different ways by different parties. These differences, however, cannot be valued themselves in the same way because to conceive of the lagoon as a mother would be completely irrational from the point of view of scientific knowledge and government policy. At best, it would be considered a cultural belief.

Mario Blaser (2019) argues that what exceeds the dominant rationality, such as the idea that kinship ties may exist with entities beyond-human, can only be considered within the hegemonic political space as cultural difference. However, thus posed, difference is only tolerated. It is therefore liable to be judged and expelled from the space of political discussion according to the dominant conceptions about the limit beyond which respect for cultural differences ceases to be rational. To tolerate here would mean to suspend the application of the most rational form of understanding in deference to those who have beliefs (and values different from ours) but not knowledge.

Anibal Quijano (2000) explains how the hegemonic modern naturalist ontology is at the base of coloniality. Modernity and coloniality are mutually constitutive and operate naturalizing other ways of knowing and being as inferior. By positioning what is different from modern naturalist ontology as inferior, exclusion and domination are justified. Reduced to the terms of worldview or culture, the difference that may be at stake in socio-environmental conflicts is easily subsumed into the logic of universal science. Indeed, those who have culture and traditional knowledge but not science will hardly be taken seriously on their own terms by science and the state. At best, there will be attempts to reconcile cognitive models of human-nature relations (Muradian and Pascual 2018, Zafra-Calvo et al. 2020) since ontological conflicts (about what exists) are usually treated as epistemological conflicts (about the ways of knowing what has already been established as existent) or value conflicts (about the type of importance attributed to what has already been established as existent).

With the recognition of diverse values and the presentation of valuation methods that take non-hegemonic values into account, the Values Assessment undoubtedly presents notable ethical-political and epistemological contributions. It shows the importance of expanding (and confronting) certain forms of valuation, currently dominated by economics and science, as well as proposing clear procedures for the inclusion of diverse values in decision making. Political ontology would point out, however, that the modern ontological premises that divide nature and culture are not questioned by the Values Assessment, but further endorsed by presenting (and naturalizing) nature as a separate and stable object, to which different worldviews, knowledge systems, and cultural values relate.

Rather than taking modern naturalism as an unquestioned starting point, political ontology invites us to rethink the premises of our dominant ontology to engage in more equitable relations with groups embodying different ontologies. Many of these non-modern ontologies are disappearing at an alarming rate, resulting in the homogenization of forms of life sustained by the instrumentalization of nature, which in turn feeds the global crisis. To put a halt to this ongoing ontological atrophy, it is important to imagine the commons as a possible outcome, rather than taking it as a veiled and unquestioned starting point.

Alliances between different ontological and value systems often depend on the creation of commons or commoning through the recognition of difference or the “uncommons.” In what follows, I explore the notion of commoning as a key process that often takes place in situations of value clash and inter-ontological conflict.

COMMONS AND UNCOMMONS: WHEN DIFFERENT VALUES CONVERGE IN COMMONING

Generally conceptualized as tangible and intangible shared resources, the commons have been a subject of complex and varied social-ecological debates around its community-based management (Ostrom 1990), its application to digital knowledge (Hess and Ostrom 2007), urban shared spaces (Borch and Kornberger 2015), and global commons such as the atmosphere and biodiversity (Vogler 2012). These debates often intersect with social justice issues, as questions arise about who has access and control over common resources, how decisions are made, and whether commons contribute to inequalities (Reid and Taylor 2010, Gupta 2019). In most cases, however, the commons refer to a stable entity or domain over which different interests, values, knowledge, and practices are held.

From a perspective that recognizes and politicizes the (often conflictive) coexistence of different ontologies, the consideration of certain resources or natural goods as preconceived commons is questioned. This is because what sometimes emerges as an entity or domain in dispute by different ontological communities is precisely what is not and cannot be common, but what allows the emergence of differences that go beyond dominant ways of naming and knowing. According to Mario Blaser and Marisol de la Cadena (2017:186), “the uncommons are a condition that disrupts (yet does not replace) the idea of ‘the world’ as shared ground.”

The notion of commoning derives from the critique of views of the commons as a set of static things or a pool of resources. Different authors have pointed to the problems of objectifying commons or naming them as nouns, thus proposing that we consider them as activities (Linebaugh 2008) or a process of community creation (Bollier and Helfrich 2012). George Caffentzis and Silvia Federici (2014) suggest, for example, that the kind of community that has commoning as a practice is based on principles of cooperation and responsibility that create its members as a common subject. David Harvey (2012) states that a key principle of commoning as a practice is the creation of social relations (around that aspect of the environment considered as commons) that are both collective and non-commodified, thus resisting the logic of market valuations. Commoning would thus be defined “as an unstable and malleable social relation between a particular self-defined social group and those aspects of its actually existing or yet-to-be-created social and/or physical environment deemed crucial to its life and livelihood” (Harvey 2012:73).

In the face of our concerns for the uncommons, the notions of commons and commoning are accompanied by questions around what contributes to creating material and symbolic commons. Marisol de la Cadena (2019) suggests that, insofar as commons are not a given but projects that need to be constantly realized, agreements between different parties become crucial. Acknowledging differences and being open to the creation of agreements allows for alternative alliances that include the parties’ constitutive divergence in ways that they may converge without becoming the same (de la Cadena 2019). This type of inter-ontological alliance would also create conditions for differently valued commons that are not fully based on the dominant division between universal nature and diverse human cultures.

A key challenge inherent to inter-ontological alliances lies in the recursive nature of knowledge practices. Knowledge practices are conditioned to reinstate themselves, leading to epistemic and ontological invisibilities or invalidations (Strathern 2018). Because Western science constitutes a sphere of knowledge whose limits are not visible from within (Bourdieu 1977), being able to consider that which exceeds or lies outside of this sphere requires ethico-political dispositions such as attentive listening, cross-cultural immersions (Saxena et al. 2018), and onto-epistemic openings (de la Cadena 2022, de la Cadena and Escobar 2023) that are not usually learned within dominant knowledge practices.

In the aforementioned experience of conflict around Conga Lagoon, local communities with their ontology and respective values-knowledge-practices converge with civil society organizations who seek to conserve the environment. The protection of Mamayacu and the conservation of the environment express radically different ontologies (ways of being, valuing, knowing, doing). These ontologies become allies against the actions of the mining company and the government, whose values diverge from those of the communities and NGOs (although the premises of ontological naturalism are shared by environmental conservationism, the mining company, and the government). Here the lagoon emerges as a dynamic commons that would not be so without uncommons. What contributes to its commoning does not only convey relational values of devotion and stewardship of nature, as it is also the expression of “a worlding of many worlds ecologically related across their constitutive difference” (de la Cadena 2019:53). The conversion of the noun “world” into the verb “worlding” has been proposed to emphasize the open, practical, and dynamic character of the continuous construction of worlds (Barad 2007, Mika et al. 2020).

We could thus say that inter-ontological alliances contribute to worlding ecologically related worlds that converge in commoning whilst also preserving uncommons. In addition to showing the power of creating the commons among the different, these alliances, erected through onto-epistemic openings, also show that significant disagreements based on divergent valuations often occur within shared ontologies, because the uncommons among “equals” is also possible. Beyond the antagonisms that will test the strength of such alliances, commoning appears here as a political, ethical, epistemic, and ontological effort of continuous creation of a pluriverse (Escobar 2018, Demaria and Khotary 2020), that is, a common world in which several worlds are recognized and respected in their coexistence.

In the context of the IPBES Assessments, the notion of commoning could seem to reinforce the “consensus-oriented way of addressing diversity,” which has been properly criticized for the constrains it poses for contestation, dissent, and pluralism (Díaz-Reviriego et al. 2019:461). In order to avoid any conflation between commoning and consensus, it is important to note that commoning departs from the recognition of ontological pluralism, fundamental differences, and incompatibilities that cannot be translated from one knowledge-value-ontological system to another. Collective reflections on the power dynamics that shape assumptions, objectives, participation, and procedures would also be needed for commoning, transformative learning, and decolonization in global assessments (Borie et al. 2020, Pereira and Bina 2020, Lahsen and Turnhout 2021). This could open the path toward the co-creation of inter-ontological frameworks that, despite contravening dominant tenets of scientific credibility and policy relevance, might more effectively contribute to the acclaimed ends of justice and sustainability.

A WORLD IN WHICH MANY WORLDS FIT AND FLOURISH

In its 30 years of struggle for justice and self-determination, the Zapatista movement has nurtured inter-ontological alliances between Indigenous peoples and activists from different parts of Mexico and the planet (CLACSO 2024). Consistent with their critique of neoliberal policies and their active opposition to the privatization of land and exploitation of natural resources, the Zapatistas have practiced their own government in autonomous zones (caracoles) and created powerful commons (Casanova 2003). In the Fourth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, the Zapatistas declared: “In the world of the powerful there is room only for the big and their helpers. In the world we want, everybody fits. The world we want is a world in which many worlds fit.”

The aspiration of the Zapatistas is shared by numerous collectives and initiatives dedicated to the continuous construction of a pluriverse or a world in which different ontologies are respected and flourish. This commitment to the recognition of other ways of world-making and to the generation of conditions for the co-construction of the commons among the different is also present in the Values Assessment. Its Summary for Policy Makers and chapters show the importance of including the diverse values of nature and nature’s contributions to people for the construction of just and sustainable futures (IPBES 2022). However, unlike the Zapatistas who state that “in the world of the powerful there is room only for the big and their helpers,” the Values Assessment bets on the adherence of governments (the powerful) to processes of worlding a world in which many worlds fit, a world that hospitably makes room not only for “the big and their helpers.”

Considering that governments are the main interlocutors of the Values Assessment, what was previously described as a limitation from a political ontology view could also be seen as a virtue: The ontology of diverse values creates opportunities for negotiations within the dominant naturalist ontology that perhaps would be hardly achieved by the radical position of political ontology. Some of these opportunities were enacted within the Values Assessment through the work of the Indigenous and Local Knowledge Taskforce, workshops with external Indigenous members, and the active participation of Indigenous scholars. In all cases, there were significant challenges to avoid cooptation, assimilation, or “grafting” Indigenous knowledge onto dominant science (Ahenakew 2016), showing that the Values Assessment and other IPBES processes are a long way from decolonizing science (Stein et al. 2024). Nevertheless, I would still argue that the Values Assessment moves forward a key ethico-political agenda without exceeding the limits of modern rationality. The significant trade-offs here encompass the suppression of other worlds or their reduction to value systems as a more tamable form of difference, as well as the perpetuation of naturalism as a hegemonic ontology.

Finally, it is important to recall that in the struggle for creating a world in which many worlds can fit and flourish, diverse types of efforts and alliances are necessary. Between the ontology of diverse values proposed by the Values Assessment and the value of diverse ontologies advocated by political ontology, there are elements that converge in commoning whilst also preserving uncommons. In the face of the increasing loss of worlds, commoning in defense of life and diversity is a ceaseless, fallible, and powerful world-creating venture. The continuous deconstruction of ontological colonialism and the co-creation of political frames that promote respectful exchanges between diverse values, knowledges, and ontologies are crucial steps toward worlding pluriversely.

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