Towards a More Than Human Assessment of Marginal Landscapes Through the Life Framework of Values

Abstract

Anthropocentric approaches and utilitarian metrics have long dominated the assessment of marginal landscapes. Despite recent advances promoted by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) – which shift the focus from Ecosystem Services to Nature’s Contributions to People (NCP) – such frameworks still struggle to recognise the full range of nature’s values, particularly the relational, intrinsic, and shared dimensions that reflect the complexity of human–nonhuman relationships. In contrast, the disciplines of Environmental Humanities (EH) and Environmental Post-Humanities (EPH) have fundamentally redefined the role of humans within ecological systems, repositioning them not as dominant, autonomous agents but as nodes within a network of interconnected relationships and distributed agencies encompassing multiple human and non-human entities. This theoretical reorientation has in turn reshaped the conceptualisation of landscape – and of marginal landscape in particular – by foregrounding the ecological dimension as co-constitutive with, rather than subordinate to, the anthropogenic one. Within this framework, the Life Framework of Values offers a comprehensive basis for interpreting the instrumental, relational, and intrinsic values of Nature. This research adopts the Life Framework of Values as a critical, More Than Human lens for re-examining the spatial criteria employed in landscape evaluation frameworks. In doing so, it aims to identify and explicate the relational configurations among different territorial agencies, rendering visible the networks of coexistence between human and non-human entities that characterise marginal landscapes.