Languages of Valuation as a Medium of Synergy between Political Ecology and Ecolinguistics: A Proposal for Preliminary Public Participation in Municipal Spatial Planning

This thesis explores how Languages of Valuation can serve as a medium of synergy between Political Ecology and Ecolinguistics, through a proposed preliminary public participation phase in the spatial planning of the municipality of Cassina de’ Pecchi. The first two chapters provide literature reviews of Political Ecology and Ecolinguistics to demonstrate how the alignment of their fundamental premises and ultimate goals can establish an effective synergy for addressing the current cross-scale socio-ecological crisis. The third chapter examines the development and use of Ecological Economics’ Languages of Valuation and illustrates the potential of this approach to bridge Political Ecology and Ecolinguistics, insofar as it enables the assessment of divergences in how different actors assign value to nature. It then shows how municipal spatial planning exemplifies human intervention in the environment that can generate socio-ecological conflicts due to established power imbalances in decision-making and competing value attributions. The final part of the third chapter outlines a small-scale simulation of a preliminary phase of public participation in Cassina de’ Pecchi’s spatial planning, designed to elicit how a plurality of voices value nature in relation to their daily needs as well as how they envision desired futures for their shared environment.