Dialogue across Indigenous, local and scientific knowledge systems reflecting on the IPBES Assessment on Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production

The Dialogue across Indigenous, local and scientific knowledge systems reflecting on the IPBES Assessment on Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production report presents the main outcomes of a Dialogue across Indigenous, local and scientific knowledge systems that revisited and reflected on the key messages derived from the Assessment Report on Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The Dialogue was hosted from the 21st to the 25th of January 2019 by the Karen community of Hin Lad Nai, Chiang Rai, Thailand, and it was co-convened and jointly designed by the Inter Mountain Peoples Education and Culture in Thailand Association (IMPECT) and Pgakenyaw Association for Sustainable Development (PASD) together with SwedBio at the Stockholm Resilience Centre and UNESCO Natural Science Sector

A representation of a Tuawhenua worldview guides environmental conservation

Indigenous peoples and local communities interact with approximately two-thirds of the world's land area through their worldviews and customary tenure regimes and offer significant knowledge contributions and lessons about sustainability. We worked with Tuawhenua Māori to document domains, concepts, and mechanisms within the worldview representation in a way that could guide environmental conservation in New Zealand. We then applied the framework to a cultural keystone species for Tuawhenua, the kererū ([New Zealand pigeon [(Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae]) to elucidate this human-environment relationship. Whakapapa (genealogy), whenua (land), and tangata (people) were interconnected domains that formed the conceptual basis of our framework. Within these domains, the concepts of mauri (life essence), mana (authority), and ihi (vitality) guided the expression of the community's relationship with the environment. Cultural expressions related to the kererū demonstrated the cultural significance of the bird to Tuawhenua that went well beyond the ecological and intrinsic value of the species. The Tuawhenua worldview representation also emphasized the human-nature relationship and the role that metaphor plays in expressing this relationship. Indigenous peoples and local community worldviews are important for establishing priorities, reconciling the human relationship with the environment, and facilitating the coproduction of knowledge in response to pressing local and global environmental conservation issues

Biocultural diversity, pollinators and their socio-cultural values

[Extract] Diverse knowledge systems, including science and indigenous and local knowledge (ILK), contribute to understanding pollinators and pollination, their economic, environmental and socio-cultural values and their management globally(well established). Scientific knowledge provides extensive and multidimensional understanding of pollinators and pollination, resulting in detailed understanding of their diversity, functions and steps needed to protect pollinators and the values they produce. In indigenous and local knowledge systems, pollination processes are often understood, celebrated and managed holistically in terms of maintaining values through fostering fertility, fecundity, spirituality and diversity of farms, gardens, and other habitats. The combined use of economic, socio-cultural and holistic valuation of pollinator gains and losses, using multiple knowledge systems, brings different perspectives from different stakeholder groups, providing more information for the management of and decision-making about pollinators and pollination, although key knowledge gaps remain