Abstract

Detractors of relational value contend the concept is incoherent, unnecessary, and misleading. This article argues relational value can be conceptualized coherently and has a distinct role to play in the articulation of non-intrinsic and also non-instrumental ways that natural entities, and relationships with them, matter to people. The article builds upon Deplazes-Zemp and Chapman’s (2021) account of relational value to advance a new taxonomy of environmental values, from which relational value can be coherently characterized and differentiated from other extrinsic values. The concept is defended from recent claims that it is incoherent, misleading, and redundant. The article closes with a discussion of an example, the Ojibwe-Bad River relationship, to demonstrate relational and constitutive values, taken together, can complement each other in analyses of how nature matters to people.