Leading the Response to the Climate Crisis by Re-organizing for Public Value in the Anthropocene

This paper reconceptualises public value for the epoch of the Anthropocene and proposes that the organizing of the creation of public value is the most appropriately carried out at the local or city level. Existing understandings of public value are human-centric and predominantly consider economic values in defining both ‘what’ is valuable to do and ‘who’ it is valuable to do things for. This paper contributes to the development of public value theory by expanding the definition of ‘who it is valuable to do things for to local ecologies and other non-human actors as beneficiaries of public value creation. Including the non-human actors then facilitates a new understanding of ‘what’ is valuable for all actors to do and shift focus onto sustainability and resilience in the local natural ecosystem. The paper argues that City leadership and governance are well placed to both understand the needs of the local ecology and to produce the networks to create value for it.