Collaborative Engagement of Local and Traditional Knowledge and Science in Marine Environments: A Review
By Thomas F. Thornton, A. Scheer. 2012
260 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Local and traditional ecological knowledge (LTK) is increasingly recognized as an important component of scientific research, conservation, and resource management. Especially where there are gaps in the scientific literature, LTK can be a critical source of basic environmental data; this situation is particularly apparent in the case of marine ecosystems, about which comparatively less is known than terrestrial ones. We surveyed the global literature relating to the LTK of marine environments and analyzed what knowledge has been collected and with what aims and results. A large proportion of LTK which has been documented by researchers consists of species-specific information that is important for traditional resource use. However, knowledge relating to marine ecology, environmental change, and contemporary resource management practices is increasingly emphasized in the literature. Today, marine LTK is being used to provide historical and contemporary baseline information, suggest stewardship techniques, improve conservation planning and practice, and to resolve management disputes. Still, comparatively few studies are geared toward the practicalities of developing a truly collaborative, adaptive, and resilient management infrastructure that is embracive of modern science and LTK and practices in marine environments. Based on the literature, we thus suggest how such an infrastructure might be advanced through collaborative projects and "bridging" institutions that highlight the importance of trust-building and the involvement of communities in all stages of research, and the importance of shared interest in project objectives, settings (seascapes), and outcomes.
Subfields: Ecology, General Health Professions
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/63df743cd0f0ad12bf40e3b44575ad8859ab4a6d
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In Ecology
Citations in the corpus
- Culture, law, risk and governance: contexts of traditional knowledge in climate change adaptation (2013, background): “Their knowledge of past ecological patterns can help reconstruct historical baselines (Thornton and Scheer 2012).”
- Small islands, valuable insights: systems of customary resource use and resilience to climate change in the Pacific (2014, background): “Because seasonal calendars focus on past patterns in annual variability, they represent an opportunity to identify current and future changes by serving as reference points, especially in cases where information is not well documented in the scientific literature (e.g., Thornton and Scheer 2012).”
- Placing Transdisciplinarity in Context: A Review of Approaches to Connect Scholars, Society and Action (2019, background): “Critiques include removing knowledge from its social and political contexts, and therefore overlooking issues of power and privilege [74,84], failing to incorporate knowledge systems or epistemologies [85], and lack of attention to issues of process (e.”