Study Says Indigenous Knowledge Is Already Nature-Based and Must Be Incorporated in Ocean Planning

A recently published study provides specific guidelines countries, communities and organizations can use to incorporate Indigenous knowledge, perspectives and wisdom into ocean governance. The study, Co-Producing Ocean Plans with Indigenous and Traditional Knowledge Holders, says that inequalities in blue economy planning must take into account a significant gap between how Indigenous people and those who colonized their lands approach both the ocean and problem solving.

Led by Claudia Baron-Aguilar at the College of Marine Science, University of South Florida, the study notes that the colonial approach to ocean business focuses on maximum yield and maximum profit. Nature is only beginning to be factored in and stakeholders are struggling to fit nature protection into their economic systems.

But Indigenous Knowledge Systems’ approaches to fisheries science, maritime navigation, health, and social-ecological systems already factor nature in. For example, in ecosystem-based fisheries management, focusing on ‘pretty good’ rather than maximum yield, social harvest control rules, and integrated marine protected area management.”

The IKS principle of reciprocity between people and eco-systems, the study said, ensures that “connections between people and ecosystems are prioritized. Reciprocity between people and ecosystems ensures that policymakers co-create policies essential for sustainable ocean governance that cultivate equitable, reciprocal relationships with the Ocean, people, and all living ecosystems that depend on the Ocean.”

The principles the authors recommend are:

1. Recognizing the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as codified in international agreements such as The 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
2. Acknowledge Pluralism, beginning with embracing diverse ways of knowing. “For example, the Study of Environmental Arctic Change highlights the use of “consistent, continuous and culturally appropriate methods” in ensuring knowledge co-production processes are aligned with Indigenous Peoples’ engagement ethics and value systems.”
3. Align Policy Frameworks by making Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) as at least equal partners alongside scientific and policy expertise, reflecting the deep interconnections between marine eco-systems and Indigenous Peoples and traditional communities.
4. Build Reciprocal Partnerships recognizing the need to respect cultural protocols, ceremonies, and the time required to establish trust and mutual understanding.
5. Prioritize Accessible Data by adhering to the CARE (Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, Ethics) Principles for Indigenous Data Governance, that provide a framework to ensure Indigenous Peoples have ownership and control over data that pertains to their lands and waters.
6. Fund Indigenous Research to allow Indigenous Peoples to avoid reliance on colonial market systems that often conflict with their cultural values.
7. Address Intersectionality, systems of inequality built into the colonial system include marginalization of people and Afro-descendant women, migrant women, women with disabilities, and young girls often face compounded gendered access barriers.
8. Pursue Iterative Processes, emphasizing the importance of pre-collaboration actions such as recognizing Indigenous Peoples rights and co-conceptualizing key terms, co-construction processes, co-designing methodologies and implementing co-governance, and continuous review and reflection.

Indigenous ways of knowing, the authors said, are very context and place dependent so what works in one country or region won’t necessarily work from another. But it’s important to adopt the “Two-Eyed Seeing” approach articulated in 2004 by Murdena Marshall and Albert Marshall, Mi’kmaq Elders in Canada:

“The gift of multiple perspective treasured by many aboriginal peoples and explains that it refers to learning to see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous knowledges and ways of knowing, and from the other eye with the strengths of Western knowledges and ways of knowing, and to using both these eyes together, for the benefit of all.”