As countries consider new area-based conservation targets under the Convention on Biological Diversity, protected areas (PAs) and their impacts on people and nature are coming under increasing ...scrutiny. We review the evidence base on PA impacts, combining the findings from existing rigorous impact evaluations with local case studies developed for this study. We identify characteristics of PA establishment and management that improve the sustainability of biodiversity conservation and justice for local communities. We find that recognizing and respecting local values and knowledge about natural resource stewardship, colearning, and comanagement are key to achieving positive impacts for nature and people. Transforming PA governance toward more inclusive conservation depends upon the ability of PAs to be designed and implemented around the values and needs of local people.
Much research has demonstrated the effectiveness of customary indigenous management at conserving natural resources. However, little is known about integrating customary management with state-level ...institutions. We present a model case study of collaborative rulemaking based upon customary norms for interacting with resources. We explore the efforts of one Hawai'i community to create formal state law based on customary norms to understand: (1) What is needed to integrate customary norms into state law? (2) What factors influence this integration? (3) What lessons emerge for similar efforts in other locations? First, we find that implementing some norms of customary management requires fundamental changes to state-level institutions. Second, communities can overcome institutional constraints by identifying substitutes for those customary norms that cannot be implemented directly. And third, formal regulation must be supplemented with educational and social programs. Based on these findings, we offer suggestions to integrate customary and state management in other geographies.
Kīpuka Kuleana Monica Montgomery; Mehana Blaich Vaughan
Plants, People, and Places,
08/2020
Book Chapter
Hawai‘i has a long history of local-level customary fisheries management. Survival in one of the most isolated archipelagos in the world depended on knowing island ecosystems well and living within ...their limits. With fish and shellfish serving as the primary source of protein, Native Hawaiians developed specialized harvesting practices, including fishpond aquaculture, a deep understanding of their nearshore environments, and a conservation ethic based on shared cultural, social, and spiritual values (Jokiel et al. 2011; Titcomb 1972). Nearshore fisheries were cared for at the local level of the moku (district) and ahupua‘a, defined as a “culturally appropriate, ecologically aligned, and
HE HAKU ALOHA Blaich Vaughan, Mehana
The Past Before Us,
04/2019
Book Chapter
My research focuses on ʻāina, land, or that which feeds. There is no ʻāina without people, those who are fed by a particular place. I work to illuminate relationships between people and particular ...places in Hawaiʻi. How do people learn about and use particular places? How do these places sustain families and communities? In turn, how are these communities working to care for the places that sustain them? How are responsibilities to ʻāina being learned and taught to future generations?
I learned to pay particular attention to ʻāina, with an eye for what lei could be made from each place,
He Lei Aloha ‘Āina Vaughan, Mehana Blaich
Kanaka 'Oiwi Methodologies,
10/2015
Book Chapter
Throughout Hawai‘i, lei symbolize certain places and show that the wearer has experienced them. Lei offer a way to see and know a landscape because each lei is unique to the place where it is made. ...Like the process of making lei, my research in the field of environmental studies seeks to gather a variety of materials and put them together in stories that build knowledge and ways of seeing certain ‘āina.
My Tūtū, Amelia Ana Ka‘ōpua Bailey, taught me to pay attention to ‘āina, with a focus on what type of lei could be made from each place. Riding
Across the Pacific Islands, declining natural resources have contributed to a cultural renaissance of customary ridge-to-reef management approaches. These indigenous and community conserved areas ...(ICCA) are initiated by local communities to protect natural resources through customary laws. To support these efforts, managers require scientific tools that track land-sea linkages and evaluate how local management scenarios affect coral reefs. We established an interdisciplinary process and modeling framework to inform ridge-to-reef management in Hawai‘i, given increasing coastal development, fishing and climate change related impacts. We applied our framework at opposite ends of the Hawaiian Archipelago, in Hā‘ena and Ka‘ūpūlehu, where local communities have implemented customary resource management approaches through government-recognized processes to perpetuate traditional food systems and cultural practices. We identified coral reefs vulnerable to groundwater-based nutrients and linked them to areas on land, where appropriate management of human-derived nutrients could prevent increases in benthic algae and promote coral recovery from bleaching. Our results demonstrate the value of interdisciplinary collaborations among researchers, managers and community members. We discuss the lessons learned from our culturally-grounded, inclusive research process and highlight critical aspects of collaboration necessary to develop tools that can inform placed-based solutions to local environmental threats and foster coral reef resilience.
Local level management can both conserve and provide for productive use of natural resources over long periods of time. However, natural resource management has largely shifted away from local ...communities to centralized government. In Hāʻena, on the island of Kauaʻi, fishermen continue to catch dinner for their families, alongside over 750,000 tourists per year snorkeling the reefs of one of Hawaiʻi's most popular visitor destinations. Hāʻena has the opportunity to create state sanctioned rules for local level fisheries management; providing a model for 20 other Hawaiʻi communities pursuing similar efforts. I evaluated property rights, responsibilities and rules regulating interactions between people and coastal resources as management shifts from local to state to collaborative partnership through four different mixed-method studies. First, I considered the concept of "community" by investigating how multiple diverse user communities interact with the same place. Through surveys conducted on the beach, I found significant differences in visitor and resident use and views of their responsibilities towards Hāʻena. Second, I worked with one user community, Native Hawaiian subsistence fishermen, to track their catch and the customary practice of sharing fish. I found that sharing yields multiple benefits beyond providing food; these include cultural perpetuation; strong social networks; reciprocal exchange; collective insurance; and enhanced community resilience. Third, I analyzed the unique, legislatively mandated rule-making process in Hāʻena through meeting observations, interviews and analysis of six years of proposed rules drafts. This research highlights difficulties in creating state sanctioned rules based on customary management without enhanced flexibility to adapt these rules and work across government agencies. Nevertheless, communities find creative means to perpetuate customary rules within state constraints. Some examples are gear restrictions that limit fishing to a small user community while protecting public access, and education programs to fulfill social functions of customary rules outside formal regulation. Finally, through interviews with participants in rule making, I illuminated new challenges to early phases of collaborative resource management. These include uncertain legal mandates, overreliance on third party facilitation, capacity needs within government agencies as well as within the community, cross-generational leadership development, and separation of the rule-making process from the target resources themselves. Based on these findings, I offer suggestions to improve other fledging collaborative management efforts. Models in which local users actively collaborate with government as care takers of resources, rather than mere targets of external regulation or professional management, offer potential to enhance communities' -- and society's - ability to meet unprecedented environmental challenges.
Kanaka 'Ōiwi Methodologies Oliveira, Katrina-Ann R. Kapā'anaokalāokeola Nākoa; Wright, Erin Kahunawaika'ala; Balutski, Brandi Jean Nālani ...
2015
eBook
For many new indigenous scholars, the start of academic research can be an experience rife with conflict in many dimensions. Though there are a multitude of approaches to research and inquiry, many ...of those methods ignore ancient wisdom and traditions as well as alternative worldviews and avenues for both discovery and learning. The fourth volume in the Hawai'inuiākea series, guest coedited by Katrina-Ann R. Kapā'anaokalāokeola Nākoa Oliveira and Erin Kahunawaika'ala Wright, explores techniques for inquiry through some of the many perspectives of Kanaka 'Ōiwi (Native Hawaiian) scholars at work today.
Kanaka 'Ōiwi Methodologies: Mo'olelo and Metaphor is a collection of methods-focused essays written by Kanaka scholars across academic disciplines. To better illustrate for practitioners how to use research for deeper understanding, positive social change, as well as language and cultural revitalization, the texts examine Native Hawaiian Critical Race Theory, Hawaiian traditions and protocol in environmental research, using mele (song) for program evaluation, and more.
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