Abstract
Global environmental and societal changes threaten the cultures of indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLC). Despite the importance of IPLC worldviews and knowledge to sustaining human well-being and biodiversity, risks to these cultural resources are commonly neglected in environmental governance, in part because impacts can be indirect and therefore difficult to evaluate. Here, we investigate the connectivity of values associated with the relationship Ngātiwai (a New Zealand Māori tribe) have with their environment. We show that mapping the architecture of values-environment relationships enables assessment of how deep into culture the impacts of environmental change or policy can cascade. Our results detail how loss of access to key environmental elements could potentially have extensive direct and cascading impacts on the cultural values of Ngātiwai, including environmental responsibilities. Thus, considering only direct effects of environmental change or policy on cultural resources, or treating IPLC social-ecological relations simplistically, can severely underestimate threats to cultures.
Highlights
Rapid environmental change and socioeconomic globalization pose significant threats to global biodiversity and
We investigated the potential for changes in the biophysical environment to have direct and cascading effects on cultural values by extracting ego networks for each biophysical node
The values most frequently associated with the local environment were: people to people (PTP, 40%), people to location (PTL, 14%), stewardship (STE, 11%), bioculturalism (BIO, 8%), teaching and learning (TEA, 5%), people to ancestors (PTA, 5%), prestige (PRE, 4%), governance (GOV, 4%), cultural expression (CUL, 4%) and indigenous and local knowledge (ILK, 4%)
Summary
Rapid environmental change and socioeconomic globalization pose significant threats to global biodiversity and. Keywords Cultural heritage Á Environmental values Á Indigenous peoples Á Local communities Á Networks Á Social-ecological systems
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