Enhancing collaboration across the knowledge system boundaries of ecosystem governance

Abstract

In ecosystem governance, due to the ecological, social, and jurisdictional complexity of these systems, pluralities of knowledge are increasingly necessary for informed decision-making. However, there are frictions between different kinds of knowledges, whether scientific, bureaucratic, or local. The bringing together of Indigenous and Western knowledge systems is an especially intractable challenge. Indigenous knowledge is frequently incommensurable with dominant scientific frameworks, particularly in how many Indigenous Peoples conceptualize the social roles of nonhumans. Nonetheless, Indigenous and scientific knowledges are regularly brought together in contexts ranging from wildlife co-management to global environmental assessments, and this can involve Indigenous knowledge being selectively adopted, integrated, translated, or just ignored to fit within those frameworks. In this literature review we suggest that Actor-Network Theory—a way of accounting for the webs of relations constituting and generating social and natural worlds—has the potential to help researchers and practitioners challenge the ontological boundaries that make this work difficult. ANT, as well as other approaches under the wider umbrella of posthumanism, could fit within existing pluralist frameworks like Two-Eyed Seeing which strive to address entrenched power dynamics in work involving Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples, and help inspire new participatory methods for understanding and enhancing knowledge pluralism in governance.