Abstract Advancing research and practice that recognize diverse worldviews, knowledge systems, and value orientations is essential to enable transformative change towards sustainability. Biocultural ...approaches recognize the diverse ways in which people relate to nature, offering a potential pathway for sustainability transformations. However, recent scholarship on biocultural approaches to sustainability has highlighted that social aspects such as equity and justice have not been substantively addressed, whereby gender issues have been overlooked to a great extent. Through qualitative content analysis, this review synthesizes the conceptualizations of gender and social difference within the literature on biocultural approaches to sustainability published in English and Spanish. The biocultural literature predominantly focuses on describing knowledge and management practices, neglecting power and gender relations that affect access and control over resources, and how different axes of social difference matter across different social‐ecological contexts. Overall, we found that gender considerations within the literature reviewed do not build upon feminist and gender theories. Based on these findings, we provide insights into how more nuanced engagements, especially in relation to feminist theories and tools as intersectionality and decolonial perspectives, can allow for more just scholarly efforts to address biocultural relations. Finally, we draw attention to responsible and engaged praxis towards promoting biocultural approaches that include the diverse perspectives of those who can contribute to transformative change, and which prevent the reinforcement of gender‐based power relations. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
Resumen Avanzar las investigaciones y prácticas que reconozcan las diversas visiones del mundo, de los sistemas de conocimiento y de los valores es esencial para posibilitar un cambio transformador hacia la sostenibilidad. Los enfoques bioculturales dan cuenta de la multiplicidad de formas en que las personas se relacionan con la naturaleza, ofreciendo una senda potencial para las transformaciones hacia la sostenibilidad. Sin embargo, estudios recientes sobre los enfoques bioculturales a la sostenibilidad han puesto de manifiesto que aspectos sociales como la equidad y la justicia no se han abordado de forma sustantiva, y que las cuestiones de género se han pasado por alto en gran medida. A través de un análisis de contenido cualitativo, esta revisión sintetiza las conceptualizaciones de género y diferencia social en la literatura sobre enfoques bioculturales a la sostenibilidad publicada en inglés y español. La literatura revisada se centra predominantemente en describir el conocimiento y las prácticas de gestión, descuidando las relaciones de poder y de género que afectan al acceso y control sobre los recursos, y cómo diferentes ejes de diversidad social se interrelacionan en diferentes contextos socio‐ecológicos. En general, encontramos que las consideraciones de género dentro de la literatura no se basan en teorías feministas y de género. Basándonos en estas conclusiones, aportamos ideas sobre cómo un mayor compromiso con teorías y herramientas feministas, como la interseccionalidad y las perspectivas decoloniales, pueden contribuir a unos resultados académicos más justos para abordar las relaciones bioculturales. Por último, resaltamos la necesidad de una praxis responsable y comprometida con la promoción de enfoques bioculturales que incluyan las perspectivas diversas de quienes pueden contribuir al cambio transformador, y que eviten la perpetuación de las relaciones de poder basadas en el género.
Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
Food Sovereignty (FS) is growing in popularity in food-nature academic discussions. This systematic review depicts 1) the level of engagement and 2) the topics related to the "Works with Nature" ...pillar (WwNP) of food sovereignty present in the academic literature. Most articles engaged with this pillar. Common topics included ecological agriculture practices, rejecting intensive-industrial agriculture and exploring how human-nature values and traditional ecological knowledge are affected. An in-depth engagement with ecological conditions (e.g. biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and resilience) was less prominent. We conclude that a broader variety of topics could be explored to support politically engaged research on the systemic nature of food purported by a paradigm born from grassroots movements.
The relational turn in the academic literature on environmental values explores ontologies that rethink the dualistic, hierarchical separations of humans from nature. In particular, the consideration ...of a plurality of values and ways in which humans connect to nature has brought new insights on the dynamic interconnections between people, place and environmental processes, all highly relevant for the world's sustainability challenges. However, many conceptualizations of economic practices and values are still predominantly dualistic and anthropocentric. To overcome this human-nature divide we propose a conceptual integration of relational values with assemblages of more-than-human relations, illustrated with examples from the literature and ongoing empirical research. These concepts offer a way of representing meaningful and dynamic interrelationships, including humans, physical elements, materials (e.g. technologies, tools), immaterial entities (e.g. sounds, lights, colors), and other non-human beings. We argue that such conceptual integration provides a useful framework to rethink diverse economies as the processes through which humans and non-humans co-constitute their interrelated livelihoods. With this, we extend the relational turn to research on economic human-nature connections, following the call of many scholars in the field of ecological economics to unveil non-utilitarian values and consider multiple economic agencies.
Rethinking economic practices and values as assemblages of more-than-human relations involves four key considerations: involves four key considerations: (1) assemblages are dynamic webs of relations; (2) senses of place emerge from people's experience of assemblages; (3) economies are a type of assemblage that include values, practices and abilities involved in the co-constitution and negotiation of interrelated livelihoods; (4) economies produce places, and places produce economies. Display omitted
•Conceptualizations linking economies and human-nature relations are predominantly dualistic.•We propose a conceptual integration of economies as assemblages of more-than-human relations.•Economies are negotiated and shaped by human and non-human practices and abilities.•Humans experience economies through blends of relational, instrumental values and senses of place.•Such perspective shifts away from a utilitarian morality towards relational diverse economies.
Biocultural approaches that acknowledge the multiple and dynamic relationships between the diversity of cultures and nature are growing in popularity in sustainability research. Scientific ...contributions to biocultural approaches written in Spanish are numerous, including influential work on biocultural memory, biocultural heritage and biocultural ethics. However, despite linguistic diversity being considered essential in knowledge production for assuring broad and balanced evidence to successfully cope with sustainability challenges, non-English literature is rarely reviewed and taken into account in English-language scientific knowledge production and publications. This review assesses how the scientific literature in Spanish conceptualizes and applies biocultural approaches, showing their richness beyond the Anglophone predominance in academic knowledge production and communication. The results suggest that insights from Spanish-language scientific literature could contribute alternative methodological and theoretical pathways for biocultural approaches that might foster transformations for more sustainable human-nature relationships. We conclude by highlighting avenues that could bring more plural biocultural studies.
Strategies to address the current unsustainable trajectory of our planet require deep transformations. The leverage points perspective can support such efforts for transformative change by motivating ...more research combining empirical and theoretical frameworks to understand the dynamics of complex social–ecological systems. We argue that the leverage points perspective can foster (i) a stronger engagement with plural ways of knowing (i.e. diverse epistemologies) and diverse, potentially divergent paradigms; (ii) a combination of methods to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of system dynamics; (iii) special attention to possible interactions between leverage points within a given system to design more effective interventions and (iv) the recognition of power imbalances and differing values to reach agreements, shared visions and codesigned actions.
Abstract
Conservation science often addresses highly complex issues; creative approaches can help develop new ways of doing so. We describe constraint-based brainstorming, a 10-minute ...creativity-inducing exercise inspired by design thinking. Although we applied the method with the goal of developing creative environmental valuation methods, it is applicable to almost any complex, interdisciplinary environmental research problem. We tried the approach at two academic workshops, in Japan and in Germany. We generated, in each short activity, scores of unique ideas for the target question. We present this engaging activity as a way to simultaneously achieve multiple outcomes that can support innovative conservation science: quickly generate many seeds of ideas to address a challenge or goal, offer insight into nuances of and shared convictions related to the topic at hand, set a tone of creativity and breaking outside of established thought structures, and build community around a willingness to take risks and freely share ideas.
Background. Family gardens represent spaces that promot the conservation and use of agrobiodiversity, generating welfare and sustainability conditions for rural communities. Objective. This study ...explores the relationship between biodiversity, agrobiodiversity and family farming economy in rural areas in departments of Caldas (Association of Indigenous and Peasant Producers) and Cundinamarca (Reserve Zone of Cabrera), Colombia. Methodology. Data on farm size, land use, present agrobiodiversity, income generation and self-consumption levels were compiled. The variability in these characteristics is strongly influenced by the size of the farms and by the areas destined for production and conservation. It is noted that smaller farms tend to generate higher agricultural income and self-consumption values per unit of productive area. Conclusions. The article concludes the importance of considering agrobiodiversity as a determinant component for the sustainability of the agro-food system and highlights the fundamental role of family farming in protecting it through its knowledge and traditional systems of use and management. At the end, the authors recommend the promotion of agrobiodiversity in public policies for national food security and sovereignty including its conservation as a criterion in land planning plans.
La investigación basada en arte ofrece formas innovadoras de estudiar las relaciones humanos-naturaleza. En este artículo se presenta un estudio exploratorio con habitantes de la ciudad de La Paz, en ...Bolivia, usando dibujos como aproximación basada en arte, para entender cómo las personas valoran y se relacionan con las áreas protegidas municipales. Participaron 37 personas en un concurso de dibujo organizado por una de las áreas protegidas municipales. Los participantes representaron algún elemento (paisaje, especies) de las áreas protegidas que consideraron inspirador y reflejo de su importancia. La mayoría dibujó plantas o animales específicos locales, y expresó varias formas de valoración intrínsecas, instrumentales y relacionales. La investigación muestra que una aproximación basada en arte tiene potencial como herramienta investigativa, ya que permite revelar aspectos poco explorados de las relaciones humanos-naturaleza. Se concluye que los valores plurales y el conocimiento ecológico local a través del arte pueden proveer oportunidades para repensar el manejo participativo y la educación ambiental, y diseñar políticas hacia la sustentabilidad.
Uncertainty and change are increasingly commonplace as communities respond to impacts of social-ecological change including climate change, and dangerous levels of pollution. Given the extent of ...these crises, new approaches are needed to support responses. Here we identify challenges and discuss insights that the nexus of Senses of place (SoP) and mobilities research offers in navigating such uncertainty. We conducted a two-round Delphi, followed by a workshop, and collaborative writing process with a global network of researchers with expertise in either or both SoP and mobilities research. Participants identified five challenges at the place-mobility nexus that emerge when a social-ecological system is disrupted. We use the 2022 Odra River fish die-off to exemplify the identified challenges: 1) accounting for power dynamics, inequalities and motility; 2) doing justice to more-than human actors; 3) integrating multiple and sometimes nested spatial scales; 4) considering temporalities of place and mobilities, and 5) embracing multisensoriality. To address these challenges, we recommend drawing on diverse methods and knowledge co-creation processes that combine more-than-human perspectives, multisensoriality, and engage in the dynamic relations between places to understand people-place disruptions in the face of socio-spatial precarity. Addressing such knowledge gaps requires stronger collaboration of mobilities and place researchers.
•Understanding the nexus of mobilities and place perspectives is necessary to understand human response to place disruptions.•Place and mobilities researchers identified five key challenges at the nexus through mixed-method approach.•Challenges evolve around power, multispecies perspective, spatial and temporal scales, and multisensoriality.•We use case of Odra River's ecological catastrophe to illustrate relevance of interconnected place and mobility research.
