This paper concludes a special feature of Sustainability Science that explores a broad range of social value theoretical traditions, such as religious studies, social psychology, indigenous knowledge, economics, sociology, and philosophy. We introduce a novel transdisciplinary conceptual framework that revolves around concepts of ‘lenses’ and ‘tensions’ to help navigate value diversity. First, we consider the notion of lenses: perspectives on value and valuation along diverse dimensions that describe what values focus on, how their sociality is envisioned, and what epistemic and procedural assumptions are made. We characterise fourteen of such dimensions. This provides a foundation for exploration of seven areas of tension, between: (1) the values of individuals vs collectives; (2) values as discrete and held vs embedded and constructed; (3) value as static or changeable; (4) valuation as descriptive vs normative and transformative; (5) social vs relational values; (6) different rationalities and their relation to value integration; (7) degrees of acknowledgment of the role of power in navigating value conflicts. In doing so, we embrace the ‘mess’ of diversity, yet also provide a framework to organise this mess and support and encourage active transdisciplinary collaboration. We identify key research areas where such collaborations can be harnessed for sustainability transformation. Here it is crucial to understand how certain social value lenses are privileged over others and build capacity in decision-making for understanding and drawing on multiple value, epistemic and procedural lenses.

In recent years, rewilding has been attracting growing attention as novel, process‐oriented concept supporting ecosystem restoration and biodiversity conservation. Rewilding aims to strengthen the adaptive capacity of ecosystems by restoring natural processes and withdrawing anthropogenic interventions. Yet, diverging understandings, conceptions and definitions of rewilding result in a somewhat fuzzy concept. So far, the scientific discussion focused primarily on biological and ecological effects and success factors of rewilding. However, particularly in Europe, which is characterised by densely populated areas and a long history of landscape cultivation, rewilding affects also socio‐economic and socio‐cultural dimensions Based on a synthesis of current scientific publications, we argue that rewilding should be understood as an increase in wildness, that is restoring the autonomy of natural processes and self‐sustaining ecosystems in order to overcome the improper dualistic understanding of human‐nature relationships in which humanity is outside of nature. We identify knowledge gaps and emphasise the need for inter‐ and transdisciplinary research on rewilding to develop a holistic approach to biodiversity conservation and ecosystem restoration. In this context, we particularly emphasise the temporal dynamics of changes in landscapes, which are often long‐term and therefore difficult to monitor, the openness of rewilding processes and the associated uncertainty about end states, as well as the complexity of human‐nature relations and the associated value pluralism. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Conservation efforts are increasingly supported by ecosystem service assessments. These assessments depend on complex multi-disciplinary methods, and rely on a number of assumptions which reduce complexity. If assumptions are ambiguous or inadequate, misconceptions and misinterpretations may arise when interpreting results of assessments. An interdisciplinary understanding of assumptions in ecosystem service science is needed to provide consistent conservation recommendations. Here, we synthesise and elaborate on 12 prevalent types of assumptions in ecosystem service assessments. These comprise conceptual and ethical foundations of the ecosystem service concept, assumptions on data collection, indication, mapping, and modelling, on socio-economic valuation and value aggregation, as well as about using assessment results for decision-making. We recommend future assessments to increase transparency about assumptions, and to test and validate them and their potential consequences on assessment reliability. This will support the taking up of assessment results in conservation science, policy and practice.

Economic environmental valuation remains a much debated and contested issue. Concerns have been voiced that it is unable to capture the manifold immaterial values of ecosystems due to conceptual and methodological issues. Thus, additional value categories (social values) as well as novel valuation approaches like deliberative (monetary) valuation are areas of growing interest, yet the theoretical foundations are rather weak. Against this background, this article aims to develop a consistent conceptual framework for making sense of social values in economic environmental valuation. Based on a holistic view of society and individuals, the role of institutions, the social environment, culture and transcendental values is emphasised. To synthesise diverging concepts of value into an economic concept and to account for the multidimensionality of social values, the framework consists of three spheres: social, natural and contextual. The novel framework demonstrates that social values may be integrated into a preference-based utility framework when denoting a holistic understanding of social preferences and human embeddedness in nature and society.

Global climate change is a significant challenge for current and, particularly, future generations. In the public debate about the fair allocation of associated costs commonly the moral claim that the developed countries should burden the costs is expressed. To support this claim, often four moral arguments, based on the theory of justice, are raised: (i) the polluter pays, (ii) the historical responsibility, (iii) the beneficiary pays, and (iv) the ability to pay. The aim of the paper is to assess whether these principles impose a duty on the developed countries and whether a fair allocation of costs would be achieved.