Send message to Authors

Presentation short abstract

Local communities' situated knowledge is largely marginalised in biodiversity conservation and climate governance. We introduce the concepts of knowledge-scapes and adaptive spaces to weave diverse knowledge systems as an approach to achieve environmental justice.

Presentation long abstract

Biodiversity conservation and climate governance across Southeast Asia increasingly deploy technocratic frameworks rooted in reductionist epistemologies that privilege quantifiable metrics and centralised control. These approaches systematically marginalise the situated, place-based knowledge systems of farming communities who bear the greatest burden of climate and biodiversity crises, precisely the communities whose adaptive capacities are most urgently needed.

This paper interrogates the politics of knowledge that shape which epistemologies are legitimised or excluded in biodiversity conservation and climate governance. We introduce the concept of knowledge-scapes to trace how competing epistemologies: scientific, indigenous, and experiential, are produced, reproduced, and contested across institutional and territorial scales. We analyse adaptive spaces as relational configurations in which farmers, civil society actors, and researchers co-produce socio-ecological strategies under conditions of climatic precarity. Participatory research approaches, rather than extracting local knowledge into academic frameworks, strive to create conditions for communities to articulate, validate, and mobilise their own knowledge.

Creating the conditions under which locally held knowledge is legitimised, connected, and capable of shaping effective and just governance approaches, we argue, demands more than the integration of diverse knowledge systems into existing frameworks. It requires weaving together diverse knowledge systems in the face of critical environmental justice dilemmas within adaptive spaces. A reflexive engagement with knowledge politics is instrumental in connecting place-based knowledge systems with broader policy processes.