Relational values reflect the qualities of the relationships between humans and nature, such as care, social bonding, place attachment and spiritual meanings. In this perspective article, we argue that understanding relational values is vital for nature conservation, and we identify how incorporation of these values may function as leverage points for achieving more effective nature policy. We discuss the distinctive features of the concept of relational values and elaborate how relational values strongly influence people’s perceptions of, engagement with and action for nature. Relational values can also provide important deep leverage points for policy interventions aiming to support citizen’s contribution to nature conservation, to strengthen biodiversity policy and the relationship between people and nature. Based on three realms of leverage (re-think, re-structure and re-connect), we distinguish six routes through which relational values can be integrated in policies and practices of nature conservation: (1) incorporation of pluralized meanings of nature; (2) the uptake of relational language in policy discourse; (3) a prioritization of landscape-based policy; (4) empowering citizens in nature conservation; (5) re-orienting nature education to stimulate people’s personal bond with nature; and (6) using digital technology to stimulate new relationships with nature.

This paper focuses on understanding the transformative potential of active citizenship in green space governance. Through an in-depth case study, we show how citizens promoted the redevelopment of a brownfield into a green space, but eventually also contributed towards a broader co-creative shift in local governance. In this process, we highlight how a shift in citizens’ activities from contestation towards collaboration led to the uptake of citizen-driven discourses and activities in spatial planning. The social connectivity between governance practices is of key importance in this transformation—successful governance practices that involve active citizens can inspire others. Even so, transformation is often a slow and path-dependent process which also depends on an enabling policy environment. Cooperating with authorities provides citizens with power, but also requires alignment with official rules. Creating and maintaining effective partnerships will remain a challenge for citizens and policymakers that strive for societal transformations.

Social resilience and ecological resilience are related and distinguished, and the potential of social resilience to enhance resilience of encompassing social-ecological systems is discussed. The value of resilience thinking is recognized, yet social resilience needs to be better understood in its distinctive qualities, while resisting identification of social resilience with one particular form of governance or organization. Emerging self-organizing citizen’s initiatives in The Netherlands, initiatives involving re-relating to nature in the living environment, are analyzed, using a systems theoretical framework which resists reduction of nature to culture or vice versa. It is argued that space for self-organization needs to be cultivated, that local self-organization and mobilization around themes of nature in daily life and space have the potential to re-link social and ecological systems in a more resilient manner, yet that maintaining the diversity of forms of knowing and organizing in the overall governance system is essential to the maintenance of social resilience and of diverse capacities to know human-environment relations and to reorganize them in an adaptive manner. Conclusions are drawn in the light of the new Biodiversity Strategy.

Today’s western society is characterized by a transition towards self-organization by citizens in communities. Increasingly, societal problems are addressed by groups of citizens who take action to find concrete solutions. A second feature of western society is that it is an information society in which information and communication play a key role. In this paper, we analyse how these two societal trends come together at the community level. Applying a relational and contingent perspective to how green urban citizens’ initiatives develop, we look into the role of information in their interactions with other people, organizations and institutions. We analyse the mechanisms whereby information plays a role in the citizens’ initiatives. This leads to the conclusion that informational capital is fundamental to the realization of citizens’ initiatives and that informational capital is generated, identified, used and enlarged through the relational strategies of bonding, bridging and linking. It is a process that works in both ways and reinforces citizens’ initiatives.