Centre for Responsible Societies (CRiSis)

Today's societies are subject to unprecedented change: climate change, biodiversity loss, and technological political, demographic, social and cultural change. This puts pressure on the Earth's finite resources, which in turn impacts humanity's ability to sustain livelihoods and welfare. As a global society, we urgently need to take responsibility for our joint futures, and in doing so we need to be smarter in terms of our everyday decisions and actions.

The topic of responsible societies is high on the political, business and research agendas. Our research explores the contribution that different actors in society can make to achieve this vision: from international policy makers, to businesses and individual citizens. We work with stakeholders from these groups to develop tools to deliver change.

CRiSis aims to explore innovative solutions for society to act responsibly to deliver a sustainable future for our planet and people.

Valuing nature and multispecies justice: We explore how we can assess the diverse values of nature and its contributions to people in a pluralistic and inclusive way, through economic, sociocultural, deliberative, and integrated valuation approaches. CRiSis members have played a key role in developing new methods and global frameworks for assessing nature's diverse values, as adopted by the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), including leading the IPBES ‘Values Assessment’ report. The multispecies justice framework further extends the way in which the multiple values of nature can be considered, by recognising the needs and rights of other-than-humans in theory, policy and practice.

Community resilience and deliberative democracy: We work closely with local communities in Wales, across the UK, and internationally (including Indigenous peoples) to develop new approaches for integrating local voices in decision making, through for example participatory action research and deliberative democratic approaches such as citizen panels and deliberative valuation approaches. A key aspect of this research is to build resilience, including through capacity building and supporting social learning and participatory governance of social-ecological systems.

New economics: We are actively involved in developing new models for economic thinking, analysis and policy, that are grounded in a focus on wellbeing and living within ecological limits rather than GDP growth, and relationality rather than individualism. We engage with many diverse currents of new economic thinking and practice, from ecological and feminist economics, to degrowth, postgrowth, and doughnut economics, to indigenous economic approaches.

Corporate Social Responsibility: Corporations can have major negative impacts on the environment and society through resource use, pollution, and unethical practices. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) offers a way for businesses to contribute positively by supporting communities, protecting the environment, and promoting economic development, while also improving long-term business success. CRiSis research explores CSR across a wide range of areas, such as consumer behaviour, ethical labour, community participation, carbon reduction, ecosystem assessments, and ethical finance and marketing. This research aims to show how CSR can drive both sustainability and more holistic business performance. By building partnerships and investigating regulatory frameworks, CRiSis seeks to promote responsible corporate behaviour to support more just and sustainable futures.

Although CRiSis aims to be holistic in terms of our coverage of approaches to exploring responsible societies, CRiSis aims to focus its research around the Ecosystem Services assessment conceptual model. This links changes to natural resources to change in provisioning, regulating and cultural ecosystem services, and then to value these services in economic and socio-cultural terms and our research is focused on two core themes:

• Valuing Nature
• Corporate Social Responsibility

CRiSis is involved in a multitude of local, national and international research projects that explore innovative solutions for society to deliver more sustainable and just futures for people and planet. Our research explores the contributions that all agents can make to achieve this vision: from policymakers to businesses, and from local communities to individual citizens.

Relating to these core themes we are currently working on the following projects: 

Understanding Nature’s multiple Values for InteGrATion into dEcisions (NAVIGATE) (2022-2026)

Building on the IPBES ‘Values Assessment’, NAVIGATE aims to enhance our understanding of nature's instrumental, intrinsic, relational, transcendental (broad) and shared values and explore how these values might be better integrated into economic thinking and policy decisions. To test our ideas, we will apply our methods to four case studies that will value the nature’s diverse values associated with woodlands in the UK, Finland and Tanzania. (Funded by UKRI.)

CRiSis members involved: Mike Christie (PI), Kyriaki Remoundou, Jasper Kenter, Ebere Ihemezie

MUST (Enabling Multispecies Transitions) (2024-2027)

The MUST project aims to give a ‘voice’ to nature through the multispecies justice (MSJ) framework. MSJ is an approach that extends the principles of fairness and care beyond humans to include the rights, needs, and intrinsic value of nonhuman species and ecosystems. Using this approach, MUST seeks to explore new ways to represent and integrate the values and needs of humans and other species into nature-based solutions in planning and decision-making processes, enabling multispecies transitions that support mutual well-being between humans and other species, reducing inequality and suffering. We apply these ideas to empirical studies in cities in Finland and Wales. (Funded by the Finnish Strategic Research Council)

CRiSis members involved: Mike Christie (PI), Kyriaki Remoundou, Saman Sobhani

FIRECULT

The FIRECULT project explores how climate-induced wildfires impact on heritage, ways of life, landscapes and landmarks. Case studies: Ireland, Turkey, Kenya, Italy (Funded by AHRC, The Belmont Forum)

CRiSis members involved: Kyriaki Remoundou (Co-I)

Branching Beyond (2024-2025)

Branching Beyond builds on Branching Out to develop a new tool that integrates multiple values for visioning futures for urban treescapes.

CRiSis members involved: Jasper Kenter (PI), Pete Wood

TRACC (2024-2028)

The Transformative Actions for Resilient Coastal Communities (TRACC) project explores and implements new transformative place- and values-based governance structures to support coastal resilience and sustainability across the UK.

CRiSis members involved: Jasper Kenter (PI), Katja Daniels

Global Assessment for a New Economics (GANE) (2021-2025)

GANE project brings together many diverse experts, decision-makers and citizens across the world to synthesise new economics knowledge from science and practice, to drive policy, business and social action.

CRiSis members involved: Jasper Kenter (PI)

ESG Contracting, Climate Governance and Carbon Performance

This project investigates the growing integration of ESG-based incentives in executive compensation arrangements, and examines the extent to which these incentive structures translate into substantive improvements in corporate climate-related outcomes or represent potential instruments for managerial opportunism.

CRiSis members involved: Benjamin Awuah

PhD Projects

Andrew Slaven (PhD): This project looks at increasing the plurality of biodiversity offsetting policy by integrating relational values.

Carl Comer (PhD): This project investigates the relationship between environmental quality and well-being in the UK through a series of environmental economics essays. The PhD thesis will consist of three papers exploring environmental well-being in different contexts:

1. Indicators of environmental well-being,
2. Valuation and the creation of environmental well-being, and
3. Distributional impacts of climate change disasters on environmental well-being.

We are also collaborating with researchers from other departments including IBERS and Geography and Earth Sciences in order to work towards a sustainable future. Further, expertise from the Law School and International Politics staff will help ensure that our research is embedded into regulatory frameworks with the ultimate goal of delivering a sustainable path to prosperity. Key sources of funding include the AU IRC fund and the GCRF Global Challenges Research Fund. CRiSis also work locally in collaboration with the Welsh Government to help to deliver it's "A Living Wales' framework".

European Association of Agricultural Economists Congress 2025, Bonn, Germany, 26-29 August 2025

Economics of Biodiversity Conference (16th-17th September 2025) - Royal Geographical Society London

WISERD Conference (30th June - 1st July 2025) - Aberystwyth University

Centre Director

Professor Michael Christie

Centre Members

Professor Michael Christie

Professor Jasper Kenter

Dr Kyriaki Remoundou

Dr Eberchukwuk Ihemerize

Dr Katja Daniels

Dr Benjamin Awuah

Saman Sobhani (PhD)

Andrew Slaven (PhD)

Carl Comer (PhD)

2025

• Kenter, J.O., Carmenta, R., Christie, M., Griffiths, H., Ihemezie, E., Martin, A., Gomez-Osorio, M.T., Pascual, U., Raymond, C.M., Remoundou, K., & Waters, R. (2025). Toward a relational biodiversity economics: Embedding plural values for sustainability transformation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(40), e2314586122.
• Raymond, C.M., Rautio, P., Fagerholm, N., Aaltonen, V.A., Andersson, E., Celermajer, D., Christie, M., Hällfors, M., Saari, M.H., Mishra, H.S., Lechner, A.M., Pineda-Pinto, M., & Schlosberg, D. (2025). Applying multispecies justice in nature-based solutions and urban sustainability planning: Tensions and prospects. npj Urban Sustainability, 5, Article 2.
• Murali, R., Anderson, C.B., Muraca, B., Arias-Arévalo, P., Gould, R.K., Lenzi, D., Zent, E., Athayde, S., Kenter, J., Raymond, C.M., Vatn, A., 2025. Navigating diverse human–nature worldviews for more inclusive conservation. Conservation Biology, e70144. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.70144.
• Awuah, B., Elbardan, H., Yazdifar, H., Alexander, P., 2025. Accounting for the Sustainable Development Goals. Walking the talk or managing impressions? Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, forthcoming.

• Himes, A., Muraca, B., Allen, K., Chapman, M., Coelho-Junior, M.G., Cundill, G., Gould, R.K., Herrmann, T.M., Kenter, J.O., Nakachi, ’ Alohi, Nemogá, G.R., Ortiz-Przychodzka, S., Pearson, J., Rono, B., Saito, T., Tadaki, M., Bonn, A., n.d. Horizontal portability: A proposal for representing place-based relational values in research and policy. People and Nature 7, 752-764. doi.org/10.1002/pan3.70016

• Kenter, J.O., Martino, S., Buckton, S.J., Waddock, S., Agarwal, B., Anger-Kraavi, A., Costanza, R., Hejnowicz, A.P., Jones, P., Lafayette, J.O., Kabubo-Mariara, J., Mukherjee, N., Pickett, K.E., Riedy, C., Waddell, S., 2025. Ten principles for transforming economics in a time of global crises. Nature Sustainability. doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01562-4

• Sahle, M., Lahoti, S.A., Lee, S.-Y., Brundiers, K., van Riper, C.J., Pohl, C., Chien, H., Bohnet, I.C., Aguilar-Rivera, N., Edwards, P., Pradhan, P., Plieninger, T., Boonstra, W.J., Flor, A.G., Di Fabio, A., Scheidel, A., Gordon, C., Abson, D.J., Andersson, E., Demaria, F., Kenter, J.O., Brooks, J., Kauffman, J., Hamann, M., Graziano, M., Nagabhatla, N., Mimura, N., Fagerholm, N., O’Farrell, P., Saito, O., Takeuchi, K., 2025. Revisiting the sustainability science research agenda. Sustainability Science 20. doi.org/10.1007/s11625-024-01586-3.

• Tindale,S., Frewer, L.J., Sari, N., Jin,S., Teh, Y.A, Whittingham,M.J,. Girling, R., Areal, F.J, Pfiefer, M.  Remoundou, K.,2025 Connections to trees in the countryside: exploring public perceptions of agroforestry as a future land management system in England. Agroforestry Systems 99, DOI:10.1007/s10457-025-01284-8.  

• Woodhead, A.J., Kenter, J.O., Thomas, C.D., Stringer, L.C., 2025. How ecosystem services are co-produced: a critical review identifying multiple research framings. Ecosystem Services 71, 101694. doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2024.101694

2024

• Ainscough, J., Kenter, J.O., Azzopardi, E., Wilson, A.M.W., 2024. Participant perceptions of different forms of deliberative monetary valuation: Comparing democratic monetary valuation and deliberative democratic monetary valuation in the context of regional marine planning. Environmental Values 33, 189–215. doi.org/10.1177/09632719241231510.

• Awuah, B., Elbardan, H., Yazdifar, H., 2024. Chief executive officer narcissism, power and sustainable development goals reporting: An empirical analysis. Business Strategy and the Environment. https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.3889.
• Buckton, S.J., Kenter, J.O., Mukherjee, N., Waddock, S., Anger-Kraavi, A., Martino, S., Fazey, I., Hejnowicz, A.P., Kabubo-Mariara, J., Lafayette, J.O., Locy, K., Scarr, C., 2024. Reform or transform? A spectrum of stances towards the economic status quo within ‘new economics’ discourses. Global Social Challenges Journal 1, 1–40. doi.org/10.1332/27523349Y2024D000000025

• Ives, C.D., Kidwell, J.H., Anderson, C.B., Arias-Arévalo, P., Gould, R.K., Kenter, J.O., Murali, R., 2024. The role of religion in shaping the values of nature. Ecology and Society 29. doi.org/10.5751/ES-15004-290210. 

2023

• Azzopardi, E., Kenter, J.O., Young, J., Leakey, C., O’Connor, S., Martino, S., Flannery, W., Sousa, L.P., Mylona, D., Frangoudes, K., Béguier, I., Pafi, M., da Silva, A.R., Ainscough, J., Koutrakis, M., da Silva, M.F., Pita, C., (2023). What are heritage values? Integrating natural and cultural heritage into environmental valuation. People and Nature 5, 368–383. doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10386.

• Gould, R.K., Saito, T., Allen, K.E., Bonn, A., Chapman, M., Droz, L., Herrmann, T.M., Himes, A., Ishihara, H., Coelho-Junior, M.G., Katsue, F., Kenter, J.O., Muraca, B., Ortiz-Przychodzka, S., Pearson, J., Tadaki, M., Rono, B.J., Tamura, N., 2023. Constraint breeds creativity: A brainstorming method to jumpstart out-of-the-box thinking for sustainability science. BioScience 73, 703–710. doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biad077. 

• Gould, R.K., Saito, T., Allen, K.E, Bonn, A., Chapman, M., Droz, L., Herrmann, T.M., Himes, A., Ishihara, H., Coelho-Junior, M.G., Katsue, F., Kenter, J.O., Muraca, B., Ortiz-Przychodzka, S., Pearson, J., Tadaki, M., Rono, B.J, Tamura, N. (2023) Constraint breeds creativity: A brainstorming method to jumpstart out-of-the-box thinking for sustainability science, BioScience, biad077. doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biad077

• Himes, A., Muraca, B., Anderson, C.B., Athayde, S., Beery, T., Cantú-Fernández, M., González-Jiménez, D., Gould, R.K., Hejnowicz, A.P., Kenter, J.O., Lenzi, D., Murali, R., Pascual, U., Raymond, C., Ring, A., Russo, K., Samakov, A., Stålhammar, S., Thorén, H., Zent, E., (2023). Why nature matters: A systematic review of intrinsic, instrumental, and relational values. BioScience. biad109. doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biad109. 

• Martino, S., Kenter, J.O., 2023. Economic valuation of wildlife conservation. Eur J Wildl Res 69, 32. doi.org/10.1007/s10344-023-01658-2

• Martino, S., Azzopardi, E., Fox, C., Chiaroni, E., Payne, E., Kenter, J.O. (2023). The importance of local fisheries as a cultural attribute: insight from a discreet choice experiment of seafood customers. Maritime Studies 22:22. doi.org/10.1007/s40152-023-00308-2.

• Pascual, U., Balvanera, P., Anderson, C.B., Chaplin-Kramer, R., Christie, M., González-Jiménez, D., Martin, A., Raymond, C.M., Termansen, M., Vatn, A., Athayde, S., Baptiste, B., Barton, D.N., Jacobs, S., Kelemen, E., Kumar, R., Lazos, E., Mwampamba, T.H., Nakangu, B., O’Farrell, P., Subramanian, S.M., van Noordwijk, M., Ahn, S., Amaruzaman, S., Amin, A.M., Arias-Arévalo, P., Arroyo-Robles, G., Cantú-Fernández, M., Castro, A.J., Contreras, V., De Vos, A., Dendoncker, N., Engel, S., Eser, U., Faith, D.P., Filyushkina, A., Ghazi, H., Gómez-Baggethun, E., Gould, R.K., Guibrunet, L., Gundimeda, H., Hahn, T., Harmáčková, Z.V., Hernández-Blanco, M., Horcea-Milcu, A.-I., Huambachano, M., Wicher, N.L.H., Aydın, C.İ., Islar, M., Koessler, A.-K., Kenter, J.O., Kosmus, M., Lee, H., Leimona, B., Lele, S., Lenzi, D., Lliso, B., Mannetti, L.M., Merçon, J., Monroy-Sais, A.S., Mukherjee, N., Muraca, B., Muradian, R., Murali, R., Nelson, S.H., Nemogá-Soto, G.R., Ngouhouo-Poufoun, J., Niamir, A., Nuesiri, E., Nyumba, T.O., Özkaynak, B., Palomo, I., Pandit, R., Pawłowska-Mainville, A., Porter-Bolland, L., Quaas, M., Rode, J., Rozzi, R., Sachdeva, S., Samakov, A., Schaafsma, M., Sitas, N., Ungar, P., Yiu, E., Yoshida, Y., Zent, E. (2023). Diverse values of nature for sustainability. Nature, 620, 813–823. doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06406-9.

• Raymond, C.M., Anderson, C.B, Athayde, S., Vatn. A., Amin, A.M., Arias-Arévalo, P., Christie, M., Cantú-Fernández, M., Gould, R.K., Himes, A., Kenter, J.O., Lenzi, D., Muraca, B., Murali, R., O’Connor, S., Pascual, U., Sachdeva, S., Samakov, A., Zent, E. (2023). An inclusive typology of values for navigating transformations towards a just and sustainable future. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 64, 101301. doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2023.101301. 
• Willemen, L., Kenter, J.O., O’Connor, S., van Noordwijk, M. (2023). Nature living in, from, with, and as people: exploring a mirrored use of the Life Framework of Values. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 63, 101317. doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2023.101317.

• Zimmermann, A., Kenter, J.O., (2023). Framing the change and changing frames: Tensions in participative strategy development. Politics & Policy 51, 81–113. doi.org/10.1111/polp.12518