Abstract
The knowledge, values, and practices of Indigenous peoples and local communities offer ways to understand and better address social-environmental problems. The article reviews the state of the literature on this topic by focusing on six pathways by which Indigenous peoples and local communities engage with management of and relationships to nature. These are ( a) undertaking territorial management practices and customary governance, ( b) contributing to nature conservation and restoration efforts with regional to global implications, ( c) co-constructing knowledge for assessments and monitoring, ( d) countering the drivers of unsustainable resource use and resisting environmental injustices, ( e) playing key roles in environmental governance across scales, and ( f) offering alternative conceptualizations of the interrelations between people and nature. The review shows that through these pathways Indigenous peoples and local communities are making significant contributions to managing the health of local and regional ecosystems, to producing knowledge based in diverse values of nature, confronting societal pressures and environmental burdens, and leading and partnering in environmental governance. These contributions have local to global implications but have yet to be fully recognized in conservation and development polices, and by society at large.
Highlights
Since the 1980s, an accelerating global environmental crisis, driven by climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, has led to an awakening of interest in the knowledge, values, and practices of Indigenous peoples and local communities as a way to understand and better address regional and global problems
The first pathway through which Indigenous peoples and local communities contribute to territorial management and nature conservation is customary governance and practices that create and maintain biodiversity, based on formal and informal institutional and social arrangements embedded in multiple values of nature [31]
The academic literature on Indigenous and local knowledge and practices has evolved significantly from utilitarian views to increased attention to values and worldviews toward nature, political struggles and violence, research ethics, drivers of environmental change associated with economic development pressures, climate change, and conservation initiatives, as well as social, cultural, and demographic changes experienced by communities
Summary
Notable in recent decades has been the growth of Indigenous scholarship, bringing attention to emic understanding of values, research ethics, drivers of environmental change, and local problems and conflicts, such as those associated with economic development pressures and conservation initiatives [27] These literatures have demonstrated the diversity and sophistication of Indigenous and local knowledge systems and the contributions of both Indigenous peoples and local communities to managing the health of local and regional ecosystems, to producing knowledge based in diverse values of nature, to confronting societal pressures and environmental burdens, and to leading and partnering in environmental governance (e.g., 28–30). We analyze recent scholarship on these contributions and issues, organized into six interconnected pathways
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