Research

INTRODUCTION

Indigenous and local communities steward a large fraction of global ecosystems and biocultural diversity, yet their values have been marginalized in many decision-making processes (IPBES 2022). Such marginalization often results in dispossession, resource extraction, or exploitation of Indigenous knowledge without consent (Toledo and Barrera-Bassols 2009). Yet many communities have self-organized to protect their territories and the values intertwined with those territories. This study explores environmental values in one such community and reflects on whether a transdisciplinary research partnership can create results that are helpful to that community.

This study is a collaboration between local communal authorities in Capulálpam de Méndez (a southern Mexican Indigenous community; details below), professors and students at the local communal university, and academics at both Mexican and U.S. universities. This transdisciplinary team worked closely together to design the project, collect data, share the results with the community in multiple ways, and write this paper.

Conceptual underpinnings

The study advances inquiry and recommendations in the United Nations’ IPBES Values Assessment.^[1] The Values Assessment is an international report on the “multiple values of nature.” In this analysis, we focus on three aspects of the Values Assessment’s conceptual framework: (1) the nested categories of worldviews, broad values, specific values, and indicators, (2) understanding values as relational, instrumental, or intrinsic, and also as material and non-material, and (3) the importance of plural valuation. We explore this framework in the context of (4) the theory and practice of communal governance in southern Mexico. This study inquires whether and how these conceptual tools can help to “make visible” important values in Capulálpam de Méndez (hereafter Capulálpam). We summarize past research on these four areas.

Nested categories of worldviews, broad values, specific values, and indicators

The IPBES values typology synthesizes multiple decades of work, in diverse disciplines, on environmental values (IPBES 2022, Pascual et al. 2023). The typology aims to assist decision making because it offers a way to understand the complexity of the various forms of values and representations of values, and how they interact with one another. The typology presents four main value types (see Fig. 1).

Types of value: instrumental/intrinsic/relational and material/non-material

There are many ways to categorize values. This study focuses on two primary designations: values as instrumental, intrinsic, and relational, and values as material and non-material.

The Values Assessment categorizes specific values as instrumental (for human purposes), intrinsic (irrespective of humans), and relational (associated with the content of human-environment or human-mediated relationships; Chan et al. 2016, Himes et al. 2024). Instrumental and intrinsic values have been discussed in the environmental valuation space for decades (e.g., Rolston 1988, Tallis and Lubchenco 2014), with varying permutations of meaning (Himes et al. 2024). Relational values have recently gained attention in sustainability science, first conceptually (Chan et al. 2016, Muraca 2016), then empirically (e.g., Pratson et al. 2023). A primary reason for this is that they provide a language and conceptual structure for perspectives often marginalized, like Indigenous and feminist views that foreground processes and relationships (Muraca 2016).

The distinction between material and non-material values is also helpful. The IPBES Global Assessment designates non-material nature’s contributions to people (NCP) as one of three main NCP types (material and regulating are the other two; IPBES 2022). Yet distinctions between material and non-material contributions (and associated values) are fuzzy, and that fuzziness has plagued cultural ecosystem services and related research since its inception (Gould and Satterfield 2025). Though we fully recognize the material/non-material distinction as imperfect, the emphasis on non-material values can ensure that less discussed, often ignored non-material values have space in research and practice.

Plural valuation

The IPBES Values Assessment defines valuation as “an explicit, intentional process in which agreed-upon methods are applied to make visible the diverse values” associated with nature (IPBES 2022:12). Academic valuation began with a focus on nature’s benefits or worth (i.e., the “value of” ecosystems); it focused on the interface between economics and ecology (Daily et al. 2000). Recent interdisciplinary work emphasizes that valuation must expand beyond this focus, to include characterization of not only values that “flow from” ecosystems, but also of values that intertwine with ecosystems (i.e., “values about” ecosystems, such as principles; Farley and Kish 2021). The IPBES Values Assessment emphasizes the importance of these diverse values and describes the benefits of plural valuation, i.e., valuation that includes multiple forms of value (Jacobs et al. 2016, IPBES 2022).

A crucial element of plural valuation is the use of indicators beyond money to represent value; plural valuation is in many ways a reaction to abundant and convincing critiques of monetary valuation (IPBES 2022). Yet despite increasing consensus that monetary valuation is insufficient and problem-ridden (and thus that plural valuation is needed), the role that diverse values play in diverse decision making contexts needs further exploration. The Values Assessment suggests that valuation processes in Indigenous communities may be inherently integrated and implicitly plural, but explicit studies of environmental valuation in Indigenous communities are rare. This paper contributes to ongoing inquiry into diverse manifestations of valuation, in the context of an Indigenous community undergirded by a strong communal governance philosophy.

Communal governance

Southern Mexican communities are globally recognized for communal thought and philosophy (Escobar 2018, Martínez-Luna 2021); this philosophy forms the governance theory upon which this study is based. Scholars in southern Mexico (Martínez-Luna 2021) coined the term comunalidad (communality) to name this “mode of being and living” (Escobar 2018:269). Comunalidad involves collective identity, but it does not imply a lack of tension; municipalities’ governance faces diverse challenges associated with power imbalances (among internal actors and with external funders and regulators) and constitutional reforms that promote the privatization of previously common tenure systems (Guibrunet et al. 2021). Though communities differ, Figure 2 portrays common core characteristics of this communal governance.

Project aims

In this paper we describe a transdisciplinary exploration to make visible the values associated with environmental decision making in the Indigenous community of Capulálpam. Our primary focus was to create a project useful to Capulálpam. Throughout the process, we also explored the utility of the IPBES Values Assessment’s frameworks; reflections from that exploration will be published separately (Gould et al. unpublished manuscript).

METHODS

Study context

Oaxacan Indigenous communities

Fifty-one percent of Mexico’s land base is federally recognized as communally owned; this is one of the highest proportions of any nation (Rights and Resources Initiative 2015). This communal ownership has its origins in pre-colonial land-tenure practices and has been upheld by a complex mix of resistance and governmental action (Merino et al. 1997). Communal owners determine details of how they manage their lands, though they must comply with the national Constitution (which dictates a basic system of local governance) and various national regulations.

Capulálpam is one of these communal-ownership communities. The town is located in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, which is globally known for decentralized governance; it has an abundance of locally managed territories, which range widely in size, from roughly 200 hectares to roughly 460,000 hectares (García Aguirre 2015). Proportional use of the territories also varies, but averages 36% for conservation, 37% for timber production, 5% for restoration, and 22% for agriculture, dwellings, and other uses (based on a survey of Capulálpam and 22 neighboring communities; Pazos-Almada and Bray 2018). These communities’ political and cultural configuration is a self-generated hybrid that combines elements of pre-colonial governance structures, colonial processes, social movements such as the Mexican Revolution (1910–1917), and, most recently, federally granted autonomy related to forest management (see below; Bray 2020). The philosophy of comunalidad emerged in these autonomous municipalities.

Communal forest governance is intertwined with decentralized governance and comunalidad. Roughly 40 years ago, community-owned commercial forestry operations began in Mexico (Ramirez Santiago et al. 2019). These operations exist under a supportive federal framework that grants management power to local actors, and they now form an important part of many communities’ livelihoods (Bray 2016). Communal forest governance involves principles such as collective ownership and rights, collective decision making, self-determination, and benefit-sharing (Bray et al. 2003, Antinori and Bray 2005). This forest-management approach contributes to biodiversity conservation, maintenance of biocultural knowledge, and poverty alleviation (Antinori and Bray 2005, Porter-Bolland et al. 2013); scholars have identified Mexican communal forest management as a globally relevant example of sustainable practice (Bray et al. 2003, 2006).

Capulálpam de Mendez

Capulálpam is at an elevation of about 2200 meters, and the territory covers roughly 7800 hectares (30 square miles). In 2017, the community had 1595 inhabitants. The town was founded roughly 1000 years ago, and the ensuing centuries involved a complex mix of self-governance, colonization, conversion to Catholicism, resistance to colonization, and recognition of self-governance.

In the past few decades, interaction with outside “experts” in fields such as forestry and Indigenous tourism, combined with professional training and the existing expertise of community members, has aided Capulalpenses in defending their territory. In perhaps the most notable example, the community expelled a transnational precious-metals mining company in the early 1990s. Part of this process was the creation, influenced by national and international academics and other professionals, of a regional forestry organization. This organization provided technical guidance to Capulálpam and nearby communities and contributed to the success of the expulsion.

Transdisciplinary team and objectives

Our transdisciplinary team includes Capulálpam community members, professionals involved in international governance, and academics from regional, national, and international universities. Capulálpam community members are the president of the community’s Common Lands Commission and a member of the community’s traditional medicine cooperative. The professional in international governance has represented Mexico’s Indigenous communities in fora such as IPBES and the Convention on Biological Diversity; she is Indigenous and based in an Indigenous community one hour from Capulálpam. Academics come from disciplines of ecology, anthropology, and environmental social science; two are based in Oaxaca and one in the United States.

In alignment with this team, this study had transdisciplinary objectives. The first was to discuss multifaceted values in Capulálpam: to encourage and facilitate conversation of seldom-discussed issues that the community found important. The second was to organize those values to make sense of them in ways that connect the community’s activities with global conversations (connections that interested community members). The third objective was to summarize and share study findings in a way that would help the community discuss the study’s implications.

We worked to implement a co-production process that would both benefit local authorities and fulfill academic goals. The leader of Capulálpam’s Common Lands Commission (Comisariado de Bienes Comunales; author FGL) emphasized the utility of increasing the visibility of values related to community decision making that are infrequently discussed in the community and thus often invisible. This study complied with Capulálpam’s Community Biocultural Protocol (PNUD et al. 2018) and the University of Vermont ethics review board. Appendix 1 contains details of the free prior and informed consent process.

Community listening sessions

We conducted community listening sessions, a type of modified focus group that emphasizes the value of mutual learning and dialogue amongst participants (Ardoin et al. 2022). We invited 12 community groups to participate. One group, a senior women’s organization, declined to participate because of uncertainty about whether we had appropriately engaged with the community biocultural protocol process (this was clarified, but too late for the session to occur; see Appendix 1 for details). We thus conducted 11 sessions: two pilot sessions, followed by nine additional sessions after slight revisions to the conversation structure. We conducted all sessions in early 2023. The first author (RKG) facilitated all groups, with the support of one or two other authors, one of whom (AKCP) is also a member of the Capulálpam community.

Each session lasted between 60 and 90 minutes. After consent, the first author briefly described the values of nature and specified the differences between material and nonmaterial values. Discussion then addressed three areas:

1. What does the phrase “territory of Capulálpam” mean to you? This allowed the participants to talk about a familiar topic, and for us to understand how they consider their territory, a concept widely recognized as important in many Indigenous management contexts (Zanjani et al. 2023).
2. A land-management-related decision or action taken by the community that is relevant to the group’s activities (Table 1). Each group chose a different decision or action; discussion of this decision or action, strongly focused on the material and non-material values related to it, occupied the majority of each session. (Hereafter, we refer to the community land-management-related practices each group chose as the topic of their discussion as “decisions.” We do so even for practices such as medicinal-plant use or enactment of seasonal ceremony, which might more commonly be referred to as actions or practices, because they involve a series of smaller-scale decisions with impacts in the aggregate).
3. Material and non-material values relevant for the Community’s movement against gold mining.

At the end of each discussion, we asked for suggestions for how to share the collected information with the rest of the community.

As each discussion progressed, we created a mental map: a visual representation of the ideas expressed and how they were connected. We used a large (~1.5-m square) sheet of paper that all participants could see. On this paper and on sticky notes placed on the paper, we recorded core value-related points that emerged in the conversation (the use of sticky notes allowed all researchers present to record points in the context of a fast-paced conversation). As we added points to the maps, we connected them spatially and with lines. The maps had four purposes, all related to better articulating a complex set of abstract ideas about relationships between values and decisions; Appendix 1 describes the purposes in detail and with connections to past research that motivated this approach.

Analysis

Territory-related points that arose in sessions

Three authors (RKG, MCF, AKCP) used open coding (i.e., based on the data, not on a priori categories) to create a comprehensive list of every response mentioned, throughout the listening sessions, to the question of “what is the territory of Capulálpam?” We identified 113 distinct responses, which fell into 10 categories.

Value-related points that arose in sessions

After each listening session, we created a list of 20–40 value-related points from the conversation, based on the mental map we created during the session. We coded this list of value-related points in two ways: (1) by type of comment: one of the IPBES value types (Fig. 1) or an overall value-related reflection; and (2) by topic (see Box 1 for definitions of terms we use in our analysis and results). Two authors (RKG and MCF) categorized all points; iterations involved revisiting transcripts to clarify ambiguous points and discussion amongst these two authors, sometimes with consultation with author and community member AKCP. The Supplementary Materials detail the multi-stage coding process.

Fuzzy cognitive maps

We based our concept mapping approach, both during and after listening sessions, on the fuzzy cognitive mapping method. The basic idea behind fuzzy cognitive maps is to represent approximate (or “fuzzy”) relationships between entities in a system, as those relationships are understood by participants (Gray et al. 2013). During listening sessions, we created a schematic, first-draft version of a fuzzy cognitive map via a straightforward two-step process: one researcher wrote points mentioned on sticky notes, then the lead facilitator placed the sticky notes on a sheet of butcher paper and drew lines and images to reflect their relationships. Participants occasionally suggested that specific links be added, but this was not a focus of conversation.

After data collection, we used Mental Modeler software (https://www.mentalmodeler.com/) to create fuzzy cognitive maps for each group conversation. To create these maps, the second author listened to all recordings and took detailed notes to summarize each conversation, with a focus on links between values and decisions. She then created a draft cognitive map for each group; this involved specifying factors and links between them. The first author reviewed maps, and suggested changes. The first and second author discussed these suggestions and agreed on any changes made.

Community discussion of preliminary results

After a first round of analysis, we invited all participants to a discussion of preliminary results. Roughly 20 people attended; in addition to listening session participants, attendees included multiple members of the Distinguished Council who had not been present in any listening session. At this event, we shared drafts of the results presented below, and also shared the 11 cognitive maps from each listening session. We first presented and discussed overall results with the entire group, then allowed whomever was present from each group to consider and offer feedback on their group’s map. The maps were, according to community member and co-author AKCP (who was present), “the sensation of the night” (“la sensación de la noche”); participants were extremely enthusiastic about the maps and their ability to convey connections that had been expressed in conversation.

Summary cognitive map

In addition to individual groups’ enthusiasm about their own maps, multiple community leaders expressed interest in a synthetic map that could be displayed in community spaces (e.g., the community radio’s office/recording space) and shared with visitors. Thus after the community discussion of preliminary results, we created a summary cognitive map.

To create this map, we used the following process. The three authors who were present at most listening sessions and the community discussion of preliminary results independently rated the intensity of each map link, from 0.1 (weak) to 1 (strong; we rated intensities for groups only when we either attended or listened to the recording). We calculated the average and standard deviation of our ratings. When the standard deviation was less than 0.3, we used the average intensity. When the standard deviation was greater than 0.3, we discussed the discrepant ratings and came to agreement as to an appropriate intensity. These intensities were then entered into the Mental Modeler software, which we then used to calculate statistics (e.g., centralities) for each link.

The lead author reviewed the connections, centralities calculated by the software, and frequencies from all maps. She used the components with highest centralities to create the summary cognitive map (a process similar to Özesmi and Özesmi 2004). All authors reviewed this summary map and agreed on slight changes (to connections between or placement of map components).

This process did not directly involve participants; it is not a statistically rigorous summary of participants’ responses. Given that participants were not randomly chosen, it is also not a statistically rigorous summary of the community’s views. Instead, because of the many rounds of review and approval by diverse community members, along with the inclusion of multiple community members on the analysis team, we suggest it is a reasonable conceptual summary of what many in the community think and feel.

Results-sharing event

When we had completed analysis and prepared draft reports of results, we invited the entire community to a “Results-Sharing Event.” This event included seven interactive “stations:” a youth-oriented scavenger hunt, a photograph-based “values museum,” a mural-sized reproduction of the collective mental map, a “values web” collective creation, a discussion with author [GYHM] about global environmental initiatives, an opportunity to share questions and visions for the future, and a collectively created values mural (Fig. 3). All stations had content and prompts based on the research findings. They were created in collaboration with Cocina Colaboratorio, a research-arts-community partnership based in a nearby town (Balvanera et al. 2025).

RESULTS

Participant groups addressed diverse land-management actions undertaken in Capulálpam (Table 1). Groups defined the territory using 10 commonly recurring elements (Table 2). Discussions about links between values and decision making addressed diverse value types; indicators dominated (Table 3). Care was the most commonly discussed value, with related values like celo^[2] and responsibility also common (Fig. 4). These values and indicators connect to land management decisions in ways that foreground past and future generations and help to maintain material benefits (Fig. 5). We elaborate on these results and discuss five emergent conceptual themes.

Definitions of territory

There were clear patterns in how groups discussed the Capulálpam territory. All groups identified territory as a physical area; most mentioned people, resources/benefits from the land, and care or conservation (Table 2 and Fig. 3). There was also variation and richness in points mentioned; though a few responses were extremely common (see Table 2), many were uncommon (66 elements were mentioned by only one group and 30 elements were mentioned by only two groups). One response, from a participant in the women’s traditional medicine collective, effectively summarized the holistic essence of many territory-related comments (see Fig 3).

Participants at the community discussion of preliminary results confirmed the list of summary points in Table 2. They also wished to add a short “motto” to represent the community. After collective brainstorming followed by informal voting on proposed mottos, they selected the motto “Coexistence in equilibrium with nature.” At the results-sharing event, the community used watercolors to illustrate this conception of the territory (Fig. 3).

Values related to community land-management decisions

Most frequently mentioned topics

Throughout the listening sessions, the most commonly addressed topics were care/conservation, basic resources, and values-as-principles (i.e., broad values); after these three, the next-most common topics were less than half as frequently mentioned. Table 3 depicts how points brought up under these topics aligned with the four categories in the IPBES Values typology.

Overall, resources and relationships were central to our conversations: many of the topics mentioned intertwine with resources, relationships, or both (e.g., relationships of care maintain resources). Resources, i.e., physical benefits that the territory provides, were top concerns. Groups named resources that directly meet basic needs (e.g., water, food) much more often than income that the territory generates (which is categorized as “economic value” in Table 3), even though multiple groups engaged in economic activities in the territory (water bottling, ecotourism, forestry, farming). Relationships, in turn, are central to Capulalpenses’ reflections on how values impact their territorial management. All frequently discussed topics have relationships at their core, different kinds of relationships for different values. We elaborate on resources and relationships below as they infuse many of our other results and therefore our discussion.

Value types

Broad values: Groups mentioned, collectively, over 50 points related to broad values, or values as principles that transcend specific situations. These values, though they fit the IPBES definition of broad values because they transcend specific situations, all have relational aspects (for instance, connection to a particular place). This means that our results related to broad values resonate poorly with the IPBES Values Assessment’s claim that understanding of value as intrinsic, instrumental, and relational values is relevant only to specific (not broad) values. Figure 4 demonstrates how Capulalpenses’ discussion of broad values resonates with intrinsic, instrumental, and relational values (we discuss the implication of this finding for the Values Assessment’s typology in a different publication: Gould et al. unpublished manuscript).

Twenty-three broad values were mentioned only once (they thus do not appear in any of our tables). Most of these were variations of community-related values, such as collective consciousness, mutual support, community spirit, and sharing values. A few were preservation-related values such as preservation itself and preventing extinction. Others were abundance, intentionality, affection, and nobility.

Specific values: The specific values category included both physical and non-physical entities (Table 3). A large proportion (nearly half) of the specific values we recorded were natural features and entities derived from, or directly dependent on, those features, e.g., water, minerals, air, timber, nature, ecotourism, employment, and traditional medicine. Yet people discussed specific values that ranged far beyond these natural-resources-related responses. Participants mentioned, for instance, multiple spiritually imbued entities, including sacred sites and the sacred spiritual beings who are “owners” of the forest/mountain (dueños del monte).

Indicators: The most common category in our analysis was indicators (Table 3). The vast majority of indicators were sociocultural, e.g., practices or states that respondents identified as expressions of values. Examples range from recently adopted practices (e.g., forestry practices that protect biodiversity, such as leaving “perch trees” during harvest) to centuries-old traditions (e.g., the tequio, or community workday, wherein people come together to implement projects that aid the territory).

Care figured prominently in the indicators category. Nearly half of indicators mentioned related to care and conservation; examples include the perches and tequio mentioned above. In addition, over two-thirds of mentions of care and conservation were indicators (i.e., people were much more likely to describe an action that represented care than to simply say care is important). These findings highlight the crucial importance in Capulálpam of care for the territory, and especially of actions that people described as care. Many mentions of care centered around two types of practices: resource use that does not damage the territory (e.g., “Aprovechamiento que no dañe”), and practices that balance extraction with giving back (e.g., the community returns 65% of forestry profits to taking care of the forest). In other words, non-destructive use of the territory was central to the “care” topic.

Five overarching themes from listening sessions

Five themes from our conversations address how the community collectively thinks about how value(s) relate(s) to territorial management. They transcend topics and value types, and infuse the relationships conveyed in the cognitive map.

Non-monetary value is central

When we introduced the listening session conversations, we described the proposed focus on nonmaterial values related to the territory, but we also emphasized our desire to hear about how participants think about value and importance overall, including monetary value. We (especially our authors who are Capulálpam community members) thus think that the predominance of discussion of non-monetary over monetary value reflects community perspectives. In addition to results presented above (e.g., resources were mentioned more often than monetary income), many groups had big-picture reflections on value (coded as reflections; see Box 1), and the most common reflection was the crucial importance of considering value that transcends monetary value. The Ecotourism group discussed the importance of “being able to value what we have [the territory]; if we don’t have values we are lost.”^[3] In this comment, they fluidly moved between specific values (“values of,” valuing what we have) and broad values (“values about,” having values) and provided a concise example of both how economic value cannot fully capture what matters, and how broad and specific value types intertwine. The Common Lands Commission explicitly emphasized that to value the land goes beyond the economic.^[4] The Forestry group expressed a sentiment repeated in multiple other groups: that non-monetary aspects of the territory’s importance are difficult to articulate. “It’s something that is felt,” one Forestry participant said, “but that cannot be explained.”^[5] These comments and many others suggest that people appreciated the space offered by the project to discuss and try to explain seldom-discussed, yet crucial, non-monetary values.

Interaction between monetary and non-monetary value(s)

Almost half of the groups explicitly discussed the interaction between monetary value and non-monetary value(s). Groups recognized that limiting resource extraction and conserving their territory curtailed explosive economic growth (e.g., as one group expressed, “preservation detains economic growth”^[6]). Yet groups discussed this detained growth as necessary, even desirable. Groups identified the dangers of over-emphasis on monetary value in different ways. The Esteemed Council noted that the economy is fleeting.^[7] The mining group talked at length about the temptation to expand the mining operation to increase profit, but were unequivocal that this was a bad idea because it would harm the territory and thus future generations. They said that money runs out,^[8] whereas the territory lives on. They characterized the situation as one of “temptation vs. water.” The water company, in turn, described how it is better to have nature than money, and also noted the need to educate the youth about this.

Importance of commitment to community and place

Multiple groups expressed the importance of a deeply embedded service mindset, the hard work involved in maintaining a vibrant functioning community, and commitment to Capulálpam (which, as noted above is an intertwined social-physical territory). One participant currently engaged in a time-consuming service position (a cargo) related to land management noted that the cargo system is hard work. He noted that the tranquility that characterizes Capulálpam, which everyone loves and values, does not come easily: “tranquility is costly,”^[9] he said, in terms of time, energy, and organization. But this individual was clear in his commitment to that organizational system, and he noted a strong desire to do something positive for the forest while in his cargo.^[10] Strong commitment to the organizational system was perhaps most notable in the Municipal Cabinet, who stated obedience as one of the most important values that impacts decisions. They explained their roles in the Cabinet as existing entirely to serve the community, to be obedient to the community and enact collective wishes and goals.

Intergenerational values infuse the community’s land management

Our sessions revealed the powerful centrality of intergenerational values and connections in Capulálpam. Every conversation addressed both the past and the future in some way, and often in many ways. Discussions of the past focused mostly on human ancestors: their lessons, knowledge, and practices are seen as rich sources of value, guidance, and wisdom, often as to how to manage the territory. Discussions of the future addressed both human and non-human future beings (e.g., “more and more living beings are coming”^[11]), though in many cases focused most strongly on future humans.

Environmental consciousness of youth

One of the only areas of notable variation in different groups’ responses concerned the environmental consciousness of the community’s youth. The high-school-graduates group (i.e., 18-year-olds) expressed strong environmental consciousness and awareness of the territory’s situation. Yet many older residents, and at least one participant in his 20s, noted a decline in interest in and awareness of the territory. The Esteemed Council noted that there had been, in the past few decades, a “break” with nature.^[12] The water company group noted that today’s youth are less familiar with the territory, but that it’s important that they come to know it.^[13] The forestry company noted, in the community overall, a loss of interest in knowing the territory.^[14] It thus seems that there is variation in youth environmental awareness in Capulálpam: the young adults in our young-adult-focus group were highly aware of and engaged with Capulálpam’s physical territory, but this engagement was not universal across other listening sessions. This variation in engagement is likely one reason that study partners and co-authors associated with the community’s Common Lands Commission have identified consciousness-raising and a focus on nonmaterial values as an important goal for the next few years.

Cognitive map of values-decision links

Our summary cognitive map (Fig. 5) condenses salient values (including indicators), actors, and connections between them from all 11 listening sessions. The cognitive map highlights the prevalence and centrality of value indicators in our conversations. Value indicators, in particular “value expressions,” were the most common way Capulalpenses discussed values. Our mental-mapping methods captured this importance and make clear that expressions of value play a crucial role in values-decision links in Capulálpam. In the community discussion of preliminary results, we asked why expressions were so prevalent in the data. The collective response was simple: Talk is easy. What really matters is what you do.

DISCUSSION

Our results have both local and global implications. We discuss “lessons” for and from Capulálpam that are especially relevant locally, but that also have meaning for global readers.

This research distilled multiple issues that were present in the community, but not necessarily visible or frequently discussed. This distillation can help inform decision making within the community and nearby; it also provides lessons and insights relevant far beyond. Below, we reflect on this study’s limitations and make suggestions for future research, and describe four overarching lessons from this study.

Shortcomings and suggestions for future research

Here we reflect on aspects of this project that can be seen as shortcomings, and on how this project can inform future research on deeply rooted, nuanced issues such as values. First, the core research involved a relatively short-term engagement (about five months from conception to share-back event). This brevity was in some ways a shortcoming, but it also has positive aspects: it demonstrates that a productive engagement, when connected to existing relationship networks, can unfold over a relatively short time. Second, the authors come from very distinct points of view, including different ontologies and epistemologies. It is thus possible, perhaps likely, that the research did not capture the full richness and complexity of values-decision relationships in Capulálpam, even though we employed a flexible, responsive research approach to accommodate these diverse perspectives. Working across knowledge systems is one of the preeminent challenges of sustainability science (Reid et al. 2006, Tengö et al. 2017); we hope that our flexible approach at least partially addressed this challenge, and know that future values-related research will continue to innovate and share approaches that address this bridging, weaving work.

Lessons for and from Capulálpam

Strong communal organization that can manifest values takes work

A functioning communal space that allows for embedded valuation of the territory does not happen on its own. Community members must work hard to allow it to be effective; that hard work is situated within a framework of strong communal organization (which the community’s relatively small size also facilitates).

Most of our listening sessions emphasized the importance of shared organization (i.e., an organizational structure that people agree to and then comply with) to effective territorial management. Published descriptions of communal governance systems in southern Mexico describe how the government, in the phrasing of a primary Zapatista principle, “manda porque obedece” (rules/directs because it obeys; Patzi Paco 2004, Escobar 2018). Capulálpam’s municipal cabinet expressed this sentiment by naming their obedience to the community as a central value that guides territorial management.

Past research recognizes that a communal governance system “requires organization, which tends to be horizontal in that power is not delegated, nor does it operate on the basis of representation; rather, it fosters alternative forms of power through types of autonomous organization such as communal assemblies and the rotation of obligations” (Escobar 2018:275). The Capulálpam community recognizes that these forms of organization, the assembly and the “cargo” system (rotation of obligations) chief among them, are crucial to the community’s successful territorial management.

A crucial aspect of this organizational structure is that it is social-ecological, not only social. The “organization” people so often discussed does not abruptly stop at humans; it includes humans, saints, air, water, the forest, sacred forest guardians, etc. Authors in the area that surrounds and includes Capulálpam have written about how this communal organization interweaves countless social-ecological links (Martínez-Luna 2023).

Intergenerational values

In Capulálpam, values and territorial management are embedded in a temporally rich throughline. That throughline stretches from prior human generations (the source of customs and traditions that form the society’s backbone), through present generations, to the future (both human and non-human). Researchers have called this concept the “long present,” wherein the past, present, and future are so intertwined that the present is understood as “longer” than in a linear-time mindset (Kim et al. 2019, Xu et al. 2023).

Though much sustainability science often ignores past generations, many societies extensively incorporate the past in present-day decision making. Empirical work in Madagascar provides one example: it describes agropastoralists’ “social contract with the ancestors” (von Heland and Folke 2014), a sense of obligation closely related to Capulalpenses’ discussion of care and celo. As a second example, Native Hawaiian worldviews foreground ancestors in decision making; for instance, culturally important rituals often focus on links with ancestors (Kealiikanakaoleohaililani et al. 2018) and some animals understood as representations of ancestors provide present-day guidance (Pukui et al. 1972). Similar perspectives and practices are found in rural communities in East Africa (Kim et al. 2019) and within Amerindian populations (Chisholm Hatfield et al. 2018).

The richness of ancestral wisdom is similarly relevant in Oaxaca, where Zapotec culture has existed for over 8000 years (Oudijk 1995). Its sophistication is evident in important sites, some of which still exist today (e.g., Monte Alban), and in a suite of nonmaterial inheritances that include values, principles, and wisdom. One important element of this wisdom is the understanding of “communal being” that infuses ways of being in Capulálpam and neighboring communities (Marín 2010).

In sustainability science, attention to future generations is more common than attention to past generations (most definitions of sustainability involve sustaining something “into the future”). Yet explicit consideration of future generations is still relatively undeveloped in the field. The IPBES values assessment, for example, reviewed thousands of environmental valuation studies and found that the vast majority focus on the current generation and do not consider future generations (IPBES 2022, Martin et al. 2024). Though some initiatives in dominant decision-making contexts have a central focus on the future (e.g., the European Union; Krznaric 2021), most elements of modern European and North American society exhibit what one philosopher has called “pathological short-termism” (Krznaric 2021:4). In these societies, long-term thinking “exists on the margins” and “is strikingly underdeveloped” conceptually (Krznaric 2021:8).

Yet a future-focused orientation is not globally unusual; many worldviews prioritize future generations. African worldviews provide one clear example. Philosopher Behrens summarizes two important tenets of African thought (he aggregates across African cultures) that relate to future generations (Behrens 2012:180); both tenets are so relevant to Capulálpam that we could use them to summarize many of our conversations. First, “the environment is a resource shared by the community as a whole,” and that community “comprises past, present, and future generations.” Second, “gratitude to our predecessors obligates us to preserve the environment for posterity.” As African philosopher Wiredu explains, the “rights of the unborn play such a cardinal role that any traditional African would be nonplussed by the debate in Western philosophy as to the existence of such rights” (Wiredu 1994:46). Capulalpenses exhibited a similar sentiment, for instance via quizzical looks in response to a probe about why the gravel plant would forego the temptation of immediate profit to benefit future generations. The reason seemed self-evident.

In the Western academic space, ecological economists perhaps come closest to this sentiment in the concept of “intergenerational transfers,” i.e., transferring assets like natural resources to future generations (Cumberland 1991, Costanza et al. 1997). Though the Capulálpam community does not use the language of intergenerational transfers, they definitively and repeatedly express this idea. Responsibility for future generations infused all our conversations, and was clearly central to how people understand values’ interactions with territorial management.

Temptation vs. the future

Capulalpenses have a deep understanding that they live in a finite territory, so restraint is required to leave anything for future generations. In Capulálpam, this fact is so obvious that it is almost not worth verbalizing. Multiple groups discussed the temptation to acquire money, and the need to resist that temptation. The main reason, they shared, is that money is transitory. As one group said, ambition for more money leads eventually to death, of humans and non-humans alike.

This aligns with widely used definitions of sustainability, which involve not impeding future generations’ ability to enjoy a high quality of life. Capulalpenses have an ingrained awareness that in many cases this care for the future may require “resisting temptation” now.

This idea of resisting temptation can engender visions of aestheticism, of the need to sacrifice to achieve sustainability. Yet Capulálpam provides an example of how resistance to temptation need not equate to deprivation or diminished well-being. Indeed, in many ways the community exemplifies emerging, and increasingly prevalent, suggestions for sustainable well-being: well-being that foregrounds social relationships, time with others and with nature, and the sharing of life’s joys and sorrows, a non-materialistic vision of “the good life” (IPBES 2019). Multiple widely used well-being indicators (e.g., the Better Life Index [OECD 2025] or the capabilities approach [Nussbaum 2001]) also highlight this multi-faceted, socially rich conception of well-being. Capulálpam exemplifies these visions of “the good life”; the community is constantly abuzz with meetings, ceremonies, shared meals, festivals, parties, performances, parades, discussions, collective work events, and, undergirding all of this, substantial lifelong community service and dedication to protect a shared territory. This dedication includes commitment to continually and collectively address tensions and disagreements. At the risk of romanticizing, this seems a powerful model to which many other places might aspire.

Explicit discussion of values is helpful and desirable

A core tenet of the IPBES Values Assessment is to “make visible” (e.g., discuss and illuminate) values that are often invisible. Members of our project team and many participants expressed appreciation for the opportunity and encouragement this project, following that core tenet, provided: to explicitly discuss values and what is most important to the Capulálpam community. There was general agreement that the community cannot take values for granted; instead, Capulalpenses should, participants repeatedly said, intentionally discuss shared values, work to understand them, and maintain them by sharing them with younger generations as the society continues to modernize.

This project offered an opportunity to organize a series of conversations to foreground community-selected values, and to systematically analyze and portray what emerged. As our results describe, multiple groups identified a decline in interest in the territory and the paramount importance of re-connecting the community’s youth with the territory and territory-related values. To that end, the Common Lands Commission team, in part inspired by our findings, has created a community-wide education initiative that exposes younger generations to these values. This is one way in which explicit conversation of values will continue far beyond the project and be part of the community’s dynamic thought and action.

CONCLUSION

This study adds new insight about how values, and themes closely related to values such as intergenerational transfer, shape territorial decision making in one Indigenous community. It demonstrates that relational values can play a pivotal role in territorial management, and that open discussion of values-management links can facilitate broader community awareness of these values’ role, and even subsequent community-led action to increase values awareness. Given the central roles that diverse values, and particularly relational values, will likely play in transformations toward sustainability (IPBES 2024), research such as this, which deepens understanding the nuances of values-management links in contexts with long histories of sustainable management, can offer potentially helpful guidance for transitions to sustainability.

__________

^[1] IPBES stands for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. The Values Assessment’s formal name is the “Methodological assessment regarding the diverse conceptualization of multiple values of nature and its benefits, including biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services.”
^[2] The word celo has a complex meaning, and that meaning may be one of the best encapsulations of the ways that values, institutions, and land management interact in Capulálpam. A summary of celo’s meaning in our study context might be “zealous love and protection,” but here we offer two definitions. First, the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española defines celo as (the first two definitions, both of which are relevant): “1. cuidado, diligencia, esmero que alguien pone al hacer algo; 2. interés extremado y activo que alguien siente por una causa o por una persona.” (1. care/carefulness, diligence, the care that someone puts into doing something; 2. extreme and active interest that someone feels for a cause or a person). Second author [MCF] defines celo as the obligation and passion to protect and defend something that we know and have, be it tangible or intangible.
^[3] “Poder valorar lo que tenemos; si no tenemos valores estamos perdidos.”
^[4] “Valorar va más allá de lo económico.”
^[5] “Es algo que se siente pero que no se puede explicar.”
^[6] “Preservar detiene crecimiento económico.”
^[7] “La economía es pasajera.”
^[8] “El dinero se acaba.”
^[9] “La tranquilidad es costosa.”
^[10] “Deseo de hacer algo bueno por el monte mientras se está en el cargo.”
^[11] “vienen más y más seres vivos”
^[12] “Hubo un rompimiento con la naturaleza.”
^[13] “Que los jóvenes conozcan es importante; ahora no tanto conocen pero es muy importante que empiecen a conocer.”
^[14] “Pérdida de interés en conocer el territorio.”

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