Understanding the range of values that are held and ascribed to the marine environment is key to supporting sustainable management across environmental, social and economic dimensions. The work builds on a wide range of literature on values in environmental management and on the authors’ experiences in addressing the roles that values (of individuals, communities and industry) play in climate adaptation problems in a range of terrestrial, coastal and, to a more limited extent, marine environments.
This report focuses on presenting a conceptual and analytical framework designed to help stakeholders understand, interrogate and deliberate over: 1) the concept of values; 2) the dependence or conditionality of values on the magnitudes of environmental change and the decision-making context of stakeholders; 3) the roles that values do, can or should play in environmental research, management and governance; and 4) what this means for future marine systems research and governance. We propose that the next steps flowing from this work might involve testing and revising this conceptual framework with a range of stakeholders in the marine research and policy space to identify key issues and potential case studies for further work.