Measure, model, optimise: Understanding reductionist concepts of value in freshwater governance Marc Tadaki a,⇑ , Jim Sinner b a Department of Geography, 1984 West Mall, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z2, Canada b Cawthron Institute, Private Bag 2, Nelson, New Zealand article info Article history: Received 27 January 2012 Received in revised form 16 September 2013 Keywords: Environmental values Freshwater Reductionism Environmental governance Politics of scale Epistemology abstract Approaches to freshwater governance frequently focus on the identification, elicitation and measurement of diverse and competing stakeholder ‘values‘ relating to water resources. The categorisation of ‘values’ has politics – it defines the stakeholders involved, legitimises particular ‘ways of knowing’ and empowers certain developmental trajectories over others. This paper examines the emergence of a reductionist freshwater knowledge-governance methodology in New Zealand, and situates it across its epistemic, institutional and political trajectories. The River Values Assessment System (RiVAS) was conceived as a scalar tool to help local authorities assess and rank rivers according to their ability to provide for a given ‘value’ such as swimming, birdlife or irrigation. Its structural foundations emerged from (1) the rise of conservation science methodologies which attempt to create commensurate values for water bodies, (2) the transfer of these methodologies to the realm of social ‘values’ of river systems, and (3) regional authorities’ need for an ‘objective’ metric to defend water allocation decisions in a decentralising regula- tory environment. A reductionist framework of value carries implications for governance, including issues around representation (whose values matter?), and risks excluding emergent concepts of place in both biophysical and sociocultural dimensions. To engage with these emerging logics of governance, geographers need to understand their underlying epistemological, institutional and political underpin- nings, as well as the management challenges facing agencies. Through understanding the multiple prac- tices that shape knowledge and governance trajectories, we can begin to think about how to practise values governance differently. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The project of environmental management is fundamentally about understanding and enacting values. The environmental worldviews, preferences and meanings that human communities share (or contest) require various forms of bounding, articulation and justification to enable decision making by democratic institu- tions. Even so-called ‘intrinsic’ or ‘existence’ values (O’Neill et al., 2008) – which posit that natural entities should be valued (or pre- served) irrespective of their worth to humans – require some form of human cognition and scientific representation for management practices to enact them. In the context of freshwater, values are of- ten imagined as conflicting entities, with actors or interests ‘at war’ over water use and management (Poff et al., 2003). There are multiple ways of conceptualising and articulating environmental values, in both research and policy contexts (Dietz et al., 2005; Gibbs, 2010; O’Neill and Spash, 2000). On the ‘realist’ side of the spectrum, values are thought of – and practiced as – a set of stable underlying preferences for certain environmental out- comes and processes. Such values might be measured through atti- tudinal and economic surveys, or linked to political ideologies as explanations and predictors of policy preferences or behaviours (Dietz et al., 2005; Vatn, 2005). On the more ‘constructivist’ side, environmental values are understood to be contextually specific relational meanings that are embedded within multiple historical and geographical narratives of identity and social practice (Gibbs, 2010; O’Neill et al., 2008). Across this hypothetical spectrum, not only are different meth- odologies and approaches differentially legitimated, but assump- tions about the human subjects of environmental management – and how they can and ought to be governed – change as well. If hu- mans have stable law-like preferences for environmental out- comes, as realists suggest, then such preferences may be captured ‘properly’ and can be modelled across space and time. In this way, the practices involved in producing knowledge about environmental values can be thought of as ‘value articulating insti- tutions’, which embed certain ideas about human agents and 0016-7185/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.11.001 ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail address: marc.tadaki@geog.ubc.ca (M. Tadaki). Geoforum 51 (2014) 140–151 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Geoforum journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum