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Scholars have critiqued mainstream economic approaches to environmental valuation for decades. These critiques have intensified with the increased prominence of environmental valuation in decision-making. This paper has three goals. First, we summarise prominent critiques of monetary valuation, drawing mostly on the work of Clive Spash, who worked extensively on cost–benefit analysis early in his career and then became one of monetary valuation's most thorough and ardent critics. Second, we, as a group of scholars who study relational values, describe how relational values research engages with and addresses many of the critiques of monetary valuation. Third, we offer suggestions for relational values research that continues and deepens its ability to respond to critiques of monetary valuation and contributes to transformative change towards sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From ongoing practices and rhetorics of globalization have emerged a new set of actors, logics and relations between and beyond institutions of higher education and research. As universities across the world continue to grapple with fundamental changes in resource structures and institutional missions, the "rolling back" of state support and involvement in university governance has given way to more decentralized and market-oriented forms of organization, leading to new strategies for cooperation and competition. For a variety of reasons, universities are increasingly seeking to develop internationalization strategies and programmes as a part of their evolving institutional missions, and an increasingly important element of these strategies is engagements with and through international consortia. Despite the wealth of scholarship that has emerged exploring internationalization discourses as a predetermined institutional priority, there is a lack of scholarship on the politics and transformative potential of consortia as deliberative spaces capable of reframing internationalization agendas. This article attempts to sketch and interrogate the transformative potential of international consortia by developing a theoretical framework for agency in globalizing universities, and then exploring an empirical case from an international consortium of prestigious research universities in the Asia Pacific. By understanding the discourses and practices of internationalization as always "in the making", we can draw our attention to where and how certain ideas, projects and norms of internationalization become established, and perhaps we can expand our ability to make them differently. (Contains 4 tables.)

The global environmental situation presents humans with challenges of unprecedented complexity, and research into the multiple values of nature aims to inform decision‐making in the context of this complexity.Research suggests that creativity can be a crucial tool in confronting complexity, crises and novel situations.I argue that research into the multiple values of nature should intentionally seek and embrace creativity in approaches, methods and techniques. I draw on diverse fields to summarize the importance of creativity in navigating complex situations and crises.I present specific strategies drawn from the literature on creativity and innovation and link them to research on the multiple values of nature. These strategies are: Define the problem carefully and intentionally; be inspired by others' work; nurture scepticism and be open‐minded; don't use only words; iterate and 'fail early, fail often'; and embrace teamwork. I describe each strategy, then offer thoughts on how each relates to research on the multiple values of nature.To conclude, I address caveats to the use of creativity in multiple‐values‐of‐nature research and suggest the transformative role that rich, collaborative and creative study of the multiple values of nature may play. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental problems often span a set of challenges that each may engage different policy actors across different policy domains. These challenges, or policy issues, nonetheless exhibit interdependencies that may constrain the ability of actors to work together towards joint solutions.Still, we have limited knowledge about whether and how policy issue interdependencies actually shape how actors collaborate.Using data derived from two venues for collaborative water governance in the Norrström basin, Sweden, we investigate whether and how policy issues and policy issue interdependencies influence actors' selection of collaborative partners. We test two alternative sets of propositions; one set assumes that partner selection is driven by actors' engagement in policy issues and their interdependencies, while the other set emphasises social positions and actor attributes.Our results show that in one venue, actors' choices of collaborative partner were associated with factors from both sets, but not with policy issue interdependencies specifically. In the other venue, only actor and relational attributes shaped social tie formation. These results suggest that how actors interact does not necessarily align with the policy issues and the policy issue interdependencies defined by the environmental problem they are to address.Our results provide an important step towards arriving at evidence‐based recommendations for more effective collaborative efforts in addressing complex environmental problems that no actor can address alone. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental valuation provides a way of soliciting and organising information about how people relate to their environments. By canvassing a broad spectrum of human–nature relationships, valuation practice seeks to make environmental decision‐making more inclusive of diverse human concerns and aspirations.When valuation is undertaken in real‐world decision‐making settings, choices must be made about how to adapt valuation into context. Generic guidance illuminates choices of theory and method, as well as practical issues such as cost and complexity; however, little guidance exists on how to understand and respond to the political implications of valuation in places.To address this, we develop four propositions on how valuation intervenes into conflicted environmental decision‐making contexts, drawing on interviews with government officials and marine values‐holders from Aotearoa New Zealand's Marlborough Sounds.Valuation intervenes in politics by (i) vesting certain scales and actors with authority, (ii) aligning with or contesting existing regulatory categories, (iii) reallocating expertise about the environment and (iv) reproducing or reworking the uneven playing field of decision‐making. Understanding these implications can support valuation practitioners to situate their work within locally relevant contexts and objectives.These propositions provide a way of grasping the mechanisms through which valuation intervenes in local political struggles for environmental authority. Using these prompts, and developing others, can help valuation practitioners to 'do good' through seeking place‐based environmental justice and sustainability. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaborative decision-making is widely understood as a democratic corrective to top-down forms of environmental management; it is a way in which citizens can contribute local knowledge to the policy process and have a more direct role in shaping policies and rules that affect them and their environments. However, while the democratic virtues of collaborative governance are often asserted, they are rarely evidenced; this leaves claims of democratic empowerment open to question. This study used a longitudinal survey of three New Zealand regions (n = 1350) to identify whether major multi-year investments in collaborative decision-making (2012-2018) are leading to increased public confidence in the effectiveness, responsiveness and fairness of water management institutions. Residents in collaborative catchments were found to have scores that were statistically indistinguishable from residents of non-collaborative catchments on management effectiveness, perceived agreement about water management, and fairness. Collaborative catchment residents did assign higher scores for water management responsiveness than did other residents, but the size of this difference was small compared to the effects of gender, ethnicity, region and level of individuals' prior engagement in water management. Despite major investments in collaborative community decision-making exercises, community confidence in the legitimacy, fairness and effectiveness of environmental management has not improved over the four years documented in our surveys. Researchers and practitioners should focus on developing ways to assess - and realise - the democratic benefits of collaborative decision-making for water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The granting of rights to the Whanganui River in 2017 emerged as an outcome of Tribunal hearings relating to breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi, signed between Māori chiefs and the British Crown in 1840. As this expression of a river as having legal personhood with rights reflects a distinctively Māori perspective upon river systems, it offers the prospect for a new era of sociocultural approaches to river management in Aotearoa New Zealand. Using the Whanganui River as a case study, this paper explores prospective geomorphic meanings of river rights. The paper asks, "What role can geomorphology play in identifying, articulating and protecting the rights of a river?" Ancestral Māori relations to the river based upon mutual codependence (reciprocity) are juxtaposed against geomorphic understandings of a river's agency as expressed through self‐adjustment, diversity of form, evolution, and catchment‐scale connectivities. Relations between river science and indigenous concepts of rivers, framed under the auspices of river rights, present opportunities for different approaches to river management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]