The concept of "Nature Contribution to People" as a new paradigm to co-create transdisciplinary knowledge on socio-ecological issues

Ecosystem Services (ES) represent an established paradigm in scientific debate (Costanza et al. 2017) applied to environmental governance at different geographical scales, through the use of tools such as InVest and Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes. The ES analytical framework has recently been strongly criticised by scholars for various reasons (e.g. Norgaard 2010), such as: i) its controversial application; ii) the so-called "financialisation of nature"; iii) the poor attention given to local knowledge and socio-political dynamics. A new paradigm, called Nature Contribution to People (NCP), emerged in the context of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service (Díaz et al. 2015, Díaz et al. 2018), providing a deeper understanding of the human-ecosystem relation. The new approach allows to go beyond the top-down and instrumental attitude of the ES analytical framework, without renouncing to a solid scientific basis, but opening spaces to incorporate visions of the human-nature interplay based on relational value systems. The NCP appears poorly distributed in Italy and rarely debated, if not criticised, also in international fora of science-policy. On the contrary, the ES analytical framework often guides the choices of territorial planning practices, food systems management and urban agriculture experiences, finally shaping decisions as well the conceptual framing of the issues at stake. NCP analytical framework allows to include in food governance strategies elements and values hardly recognised by the ES paradigm. Moreover, by acknowledging that analytical frameworks are themselves social processes of value articulation (Ernstson e Sörlin 2013), scholars state ES paradigm has to renounce to its universal claim. This contribution - drawing from the experience of the BRIDGES project, aimed at experimenting new paths of transdisciplinary research inspired by the Post-Normal-Science approach - explores the enriching potential of NCP in investigating UA experiences and to empower relations between institutions, researchers and local communities.