Indigenous and sustainability sciences have much to offer one another regarding the identification of techniques and methods for sustaining resilient landscapes. Based upon the literature, and our findings, it is evident that some Indigenous peoples have maintained distinct systematic, localized, and place-based environmental knowledge over extended time periods. These long-resident knowledge systems contain extensive information regarding not only how to maintain but also to steward biodiverse ecosystems. For example, the Nisqually Tribe of western Washington State, USA blends various aspects of ecological science with their Indigenous knowledge to support the restoration and management of the Nisqually river system watershed along with its associated natural resources of biological and cultural significance. We believe these kinds of Indigenous observations and perspectives are critical for establishing or expanding collaborations with sustainability scientists. Fikret Berkes observed in his foundational text, Sacred Ecology, a “growing interest in traditional ecological knowledge since the 1980s is perhaps indicative of two things: the need for ecological insights from indigenous practices of resource use, and the need to develop a new ecological ethic in part by learning from the wisdom of traditional knowledge holders” (2012: 19). The primary focus of the papers in this special edition of Sustainability Science, including this editorial introduction, is an exploration of the intersection of Indigenous and sustainability sciences. We challenged key thinkers in these research areas to cultivate mutually conducive and appropriate principles, protocols, and practices that address humanity’s collective need to sustain landscapes that demonstrate the ability not only to maintain human life but more crucially the interrelated more-than-human biosphere. The authors were asked to address the strengths and limitations posed by both Indigenous and sustainability sciences in this endeavor. We also encouraged discussion concerning how these two scientific paradigms might collaborate, acknowledging that protocols will need to be identified, or created, to enable successful collaborations. It is our hope that this special edition might add to what Scholz and Steiner (2015) have identified as a scant literature documenting the benefits of transdisciplinary research. This special edition was inspired by an internationally diverse set of Indigenous academics, community scholars and non-Indigenous academics who participated in a National Science Foundation funded workshop entitled Weaving Indigenous and Sustainability Sciences: Diversifying our Methods (WISDOM). The next three sections & Jay T. Johnson jaytjohnson@ku.edu

/pdf/weaving-indigenous-and-sustainability-sciences-to-diversify-49ifi2f8tr.pdf

Weaving Indigenous and sustainability sciences to diversify our methods

Farmers' rights and protection of traditional agricultural knowledge

T he study of the human relationship to the environment is one of the major traditions of geography, bridging physical and human geography, and echoing many of the major debates in the discipline (Manners and Mikesell 1974; Johnston 1983, 1986; Goudie 1986; Kates 1987; Demko 1988; FitzSimmons 1989; Peet and Thrift 1989; Turner 1989; Cooke 1992; Wilbanks 1994). This paper offers some reflections on twenty-five years of continuity and change in the human-environment tradition of geography, and examines how geography has interacted with broader shifts in scholarship and policy on the environment. I have chosen to concentrate on geography and international environmental policy over the last twenty-five years (1972-1997), and especially on global-change research, because this period and theme allows me to provide a more personal perspective on continuities and changes. I discuss policy as well as scholarship because I am interested in how geographers have tried to change the world as well as study it, especially in the international arena. The first part of the paper examines the development of international environmental policy from the 1972 U.N. Stockholm conference to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, assessing the geographic contributions and the changing nature of geographic research over the period. The second section discusses the contemporary agenda of global-change research and policy, particularly the human dimensions, and proposes ways in which geographers might contribute to improved understanding.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2564037.pdf

Geography and the Global Environment

We seek to present and examine a claim: in recent years, global attention to climate change has been distributed unevenly, seeing the impacts of climate change as an urgent concern in some places and less pressing in others. Some changes - the melting of ice in polar regions, the rising sea levels that threaten low-lying islands - are recognized as harmful consequences of climate change, while other changes - shifts in mountain ecosystems, the spread of deserts - are not seen as serious or as closely linked to it. We focus on these four regions to argue that the distribution of concern about climate change impacts is historically situated and constructed rather than solely a reflection of environmental dynamics.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2456779_code1556281.pdf?abstractid=2387809&mirid=5

Recognitions and Responsibilities: On the Origins and Consequences of the Uneven Attention to Climate Change Around the World

Though climate change is a global process, current discussions emphasize its local impacts. A review of media representations, public opinion polls, international organization documents, and scientific reports shows that global attention to climate change is distributed unevenly, with the impacts of climate change seen as an urgent concern in some places and less pressing in others. This uneven attention, or specificity, is linked to issues of selectivity (the inclusion of some cases and exclusion of others), historicity (the long temporal depth of the pathways to inclusion or exclusion), and consequentiality (the effects of this specificity on claims of responsibility for climate change). These issues are explored through a historical examination of four cases—two (the Arctic, low-lying islands) strongly engaged with climate change frameworks, and two (mountains, deserts) closely associated with other frameworks of sustainable development rather than climate change. For all four regions, the 1960s and 19...

http://www.cms.fss.ulaval.ca/upload/ant/fichiers/ca2014_comment_on_orlove_et_al.pdf

Recognitions and Responsibilities On the Origins and Consequences of the Uneven Attention to Climate Change around the World

Historically, northern governments prefer a model of international environmental regulation based on legally binding international Conventions, treating direct UN involvement warily. UNCED however saw a reshaping of old southern objections to international regulation in favour of a positive alternative strategy combining ‘soft law’, alternative and community based forms of action, the participation of nongovernment actors at national and international levels, and voluntary reporting. This is the strategy embodied in Agenda 21 and in the Commission on Sustainable Development, which monitors its implementation. At Rio, this strategy was particularly attractive to the South's middle sized newly industrializing powers, interested in using the UN to set limits to the competitive pressure of different northern based trading blocs. It was also acceptable to countries in Africa and small island states faced with a combination of economic threats and the prospect of climate change. At the Commission, however, governments and their new allies are finding the change harder to implement in practice than it was to agree in theory. The result is that the old model of negotiations designed to produce an ever increasing number of barely enforceable new international environmental agreements, has been rearing its head within the Commission, even as the existing Convention on Climate Change threatens to fail to provide an answer to the problems of reducing northern energy consumption.

Jacqueline Roddick

Papers

Earth Summit north and south