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- Convenors:
-
Christian Reichel
(Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space)
Arne Harms (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)
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- Stream:
- Advocacy and Activism
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 16 September, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel helps to answer the question, how institutions and knowledge sharing among various stakeholders can help to promote an inclusive and sustainable transformation of protected area management in coastal areas in the global south.
Long Abstract:
Especially in the global south, the effects of climate change and anthropogenic drivers, including overfishing, plastic contamination, large-scale aquaculture, mining and deforestation are degrading coastal ecosystems and their services. In this interdisciplinary panel we will discuss strategies to promote an inclusive conservation based on knowledge co-creation, by considering multiple visions and values regarding human-nature relationships, which define perceptions of changing seascapes and tradeoffs in the use of ecosystem services. Our aim is to explore I) whether natural resource exploitation and the effects of global climate change lead to or aggravate poverty-driven social-ecological traps or conflicts or migration movements; II) Analyse structures of learning and (barriers to) knowledge sharing and collaborative action among stakeholders across social groups and administrative units (from local to national levels). III) Discuss how participatory and multimedia mapping can be used as multi-narrative platform for visually representing how people perceive their natural environment based on culturally distinct ideas, concepts and norms. Furthermore, how multimedia maps can be an effective participative communication platform, e.g. to facilitate communication between different actors in protected area management and foster knowledge co-creation processes. IV) Analyse the chances and challenges to develop a social-ecological system approach that considers and integrates social diversity and different socio-cultural perceptions and conceptions of nature.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 16 September, 2020, -Paper short abstract:
Integrating local and academic knowledge for developing place-based (embedded) and culturally relevant (embodied) adaptation to climate change impacts requires new theoretical frameworks and methods. Are academic researchers ready for transdisciplinary research for local climate change adaptation?
Paper long abstract:
This paper critically reflects upon the skills academic researchers and universities need for transdisciplinary climate change adaptation research. Considering that effective local adaptation to climate change impacts must be place-based (embedded, geography) and relevant to the local community (culturally embodied, anthropology), climate change adaptation research requires collaboration between people dwelling in the place and academic researchers. The IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (2019) strongly argues for the integration of local and indigenous knowledge in academic research in transformative adaptation. The methodological challenges, however, are non-trivial. What are the challenges academic researchers working on local climate change adaptation projects encounter? The practices of the University of the South Pacific with the studentship of island communities most vulnerable to climatic changes offer important insights. The paper draws on a case study of language documentation of indigenous knowledge of oceanic voyaging in Fiji and its relevance to local climate change adaptation initiatives: Uto ni Yalo Trust and other similar initiatives. It takes as a starting point a shared experience of an action, re-learning to sail, and experiments with techniques that capture tacit learning and the externalisation of tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge. Data includes audio and video recordings, still images and written reflexive accounts, as well as interviews with Uto ni Yalo members, and the navigation training materials. This paper presents methodological suggestions on how to ensure a constructive start in transdisciplinary research that facilitates joint explicit articulation of shared concerns and research questions.
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses how communities living among the islands of Raja Ampat in West Papua engage with others to protect sea and land areas through a patchwork of endogenous and extralocal conservation practices. I argue that these interactions provide a context for ethics across social boundaries.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, I identify how different values motivate distinct types of marine resource management systems in Raja Ampat, West Papua with different stakes involved for the people who support them. I document Beteo and Ma'ya peoples engagements with an institution known as sasi, a type of seasonal harvest prohibition and gear restrictions observed in several maritime societies in eastern Indonesia.
I highlight two distinct forms of sasi currently practiced among the Beteo and Ma'ya people near Waigeo island: sasi gereja, a type of Christian village-based resource protection common in Beteo areas and sasi mon, a set of clan-mediated rules and regulations for territories inhabited by Ma'ya ancestors or nonhuman spirit beings to ensure humans do not tip the balance of nature against them. I show how these institutions have been influenced through interaction with non-governmental conservation organizations.
In Raja Ampat, a patchwork of interlinked regimes of land and sea-based resource governance have contributed to a composite approach to adaptive governance, rather than an inherently conflicting set of practices or norms.
The varieties of conservation practices in coastal West Papua reflect distinct but perhaps commensurable ethical norms and values. The intensity of peoples' engagements with their nonhuman surrounds highlights how conservation in Raja Ampat is a form of ethical practice consequential to people's understanding of themselves and others. It is a way for people to position themselves as ethical subjects of different kinds, amidst ongoing resource degradation, the denial of Christian social virtue or economic marginalization.
Paper short abstract:
This presentation shows how in the time of the Anthropocene local environmental knowledge, its underlying perceptions of nature, and the resulting handling strategies of climate-related risks may be integrated into a adaptive governance approach.
Paper long abstract:
The negative consequences of climate change and environmental destruction are especially noticeable in the MPAs of the Coral Triangle, which is a biodiversity hotspot where over 120 million people depend directly on the use of local ecosystem services. However, many national and international initiatives for the management of protected areas, such as the Coral Triangle Imitative CCTI, largely respond with top-down approaches to existing and expected effects of environmental and climate change. These approaches often fail to reflect local realities, which are shaped by power structures, local frameworks of reference and the associated interpretations of natural and social change. Concerning that, the presentation addresses two questions: a) How do fisherfolks in the coral triangle perceive the socioecological and socioeconomic changes related to environmental destruction and degrading ecosystem services? b) how can local environmental knowledge and the associated local resource use strategies be integrated into sustainable fisheries resource management systems to reduce existing institutional barriers and counteract the inadequate participation of the population. I present two approaches to solving the problem: 1) the "socio-ecological system analysis" as an interdisciplinary bridge concept, and 2) the method of multimedia mapping, which offers the possibility to visualize multimedia data in participative (consultative to active) ways. Especially in combination, these methods can encourage the active participation of communities and integrating cultural meanings and local environmental knowledge into government strategies.