Indigenous communities at the front lines of climate change and biodiversity loss are increasingly shaping the conservation of lands, waters, and species. The Arctic is a hotbed for emerging local, national, and international conservation efforts, and researchers, managers, and communities alike will benefit from a framework that improves approaches to Indigenous partnerships. Co‐productive conservation is a framework that encompasses both the co‐production of knowledge and the co‐production of public services to pursue ethically conscious, culturally relevant, and fully knowledge‐based approaches to biodiversity concerns. Co‐productive conservation recognizes that conservation can be practiced in a way that embodies Indigenous perspectives, knowledge, rights, priorities, and livelihoods. Six iterative and reflexive co‐production processes (i.e., co‐planning, co‐prioritizing, co‐learning, co‐managing, co‐delivering, and co‐assessing) focus on the human dimensions that allow research, management, and conservation to affect change. By opening discussions on how to structure conservation efforts in partnership with Indigenous communities, the conservation community can move away from narratives that perceive Indigenous participation as an obligation or part of an ethical narrative and instead embrace a process that broadens the evidence base and situates conservation within Indigenous contexts.
- Award ID(s):
- 2001989
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10334616
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Sustainability
- Volume:
- 14
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 2071-1050
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1331
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract -
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Materials & Methods Building on previous research suggesting the critical importance of these networks to community resilience, we use network analysis to investigate whether patterns in resource transfers between households are associated with subsistence harvest diversity—the diversity of species harvested by a household unit. We use exponential random graph models to describe the structure of a sharing network from Aniak, Alaska, and model the links between harvest productivity, harvest diversity, and household position in this network.
Results Our results indicate that both productivity and diversity are positively associated with network connections, and that productivity alone provides an incomplete model of network structure.
Discussion We suggest that subsistence harvest diversity may play a unique role in supporting adaptive capacity and resilience by maintaining the productivity of keystone households despite changing environments and sustaining social network structures that circulate resources throughout the community. Harvest diversity may also serve as a broad indicator of Indigenous ecological knowledge and a tangible representation of cultural practices, values, and worldviews that underlie subsistence in Alaska.
Conclusion Greater attention to harvest diversity is important for understanding how subsistence networks adapt to environmental change and uncertainty linked to social and ecological dynamics of anthropogenic climate change.
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3390/su14031331
