Coproducing Knowledge About Climate Change: Indigenous Perspectives can be Revealing

INTRODUCTION

Knowledge coproduction is a research strategy that makes room for pluralism in many forms. It rests on the idea that a broader understanding can be reached by involving a variety of cultural and disciplinary perspectives, research methods, types of expertise, and societal roles, as well as different ethnicities, genders, and ages. ¹ As it aims to dignify the knowledge and viewpoint of specific communities that have long been marginalized and discriminated against and risk continuing to be so, it can also become a means to promote social and epistemic justice. ²

The present article focuses on Indigenous knowledge (IK) and its role in the coproduction of knowledge about climate change, in interaction with Western science. Its purpose is to highlight different ways in which this could happen, their different implications, and the issues to be faced.

INDIGENOUS FACTUAL KNOWLEDGE

First, as known for decades, IK is a source of baseline data and climate histories. Especially in regions like the Arctic, it can broaden the range and depth of the information available, as it is grounded on long-term and local-based experience and observation. ³ The most interesting records reveal how global warming is reflected in biophysical changes and socioecological impacts. Stories about glaciers of First Nations elders describe, for instance, the dramatic transformations that have occurred in the last centuries. ⁴ In addition, they keep track of the timing and intensity of weather seasons—which are now more unpredictable and increasingly typified by extreme events—and changes in permafrost, wildlife distribution, and sea ice. ⁵

As they live in close connection with their environment, Indigenous communities have also learned to recognize warning signals, detecting in advance potentially dangerous changes. A well-known example was the phenomenon called the Arctic haze (Poo-jok in the Inuit language): caused by anthropogenic air pollution, Western science was able to determine its origins only decades later.

Of course, in saying this, the focus is on the “utility” of IK, in terms of the data and factual components it can provide to scientific understanding. However, aside from the risk of commodifying IK, the features of these factual components should be properly understood. They originate from observation of nature but, as for scientific investigation, the way observation is conducted and interpreted is culturally shaped: ⁶ they should be seen as Indigenous facts, i.e., the outcomes of a cosmology-laden observation. In fact, although their empirical content often overlaps with scientific findings, the cultural meanings involved might differ, and it would be methodologically unsound to assume that they can be automatically added to scientific facts.

INDIGENOUS COSMOLOGIES AND WAYS OF KNOWING

The magnitude of climate change is, however, such that epochal challenges are expected in the near future, and the very survival of life on the planet might be at risk. Although equipped with all our scientific knowledge and technological advancement, if (because of us) the planet is close to its point of collapse, it is clear that something went wrong. We must therefore delve into the deeper reasons of this situation, unveiling root assumptions and reaching the worldview level.

Here, especially valuable are the Indigenous overall ways of understanding reality, which can provide insight into alternative (i.e., nonexploitative) views of the human–nature relationship, picturing a complex web of mutual relationships and obligations. A simple mental experiment illustrates the point: how different would the world be if we had viewed it as made of deeply entangled and interdependent parts? What would be the cascade effects of believing, as shown by many Indigenous systems, that no single part—humans included—should predominate, as the priority is to maintain an overall balance?

Further insight may be gained by Indigenous modes of knowing, which are usually ethically grounded. Today in particular, due to the environmental emergency, there is the urge to combine knowledge generation with ethical engagement, so as to affect not only political decisions but also people’s behavior. The relationship between knowledge and values, as well as knowledge and action, should then be investigated. However, this contrasts with a number of pillars of Western thinking, e.g., the idea of science as value-free or conceiving the higher forms of knowledge as only speculatively valid, which today has yet raised much criticism.^7,8 In several Native American cultures, knowledge is never an end goal per se. Rather, it should be turned into patterns of behavior that reflect their understanding of reality: ⁹ for instance, to act out of respect for all the elements of the natural environment (including the atmosphere) and lifeforms, which are perceived as gifts and relatives. ¹⁰ Many forms of IK are thus laden with specific values.

This also becomes clear in how Indigenous scholars “define” IK. For instance, the Anishinaabe scholar Deborah McGregor (2004, 389–390) states that:

The relationship with Creation and its beings was meant to be maintained and enhanced, and the knowledge that would ensure this was passed on for generations over thousands of years. The responsibilities that one would assume would ensure the continuation of Creation (or what academics or scientists might call ‘sustainability’). This knowledge I call Indigenous Knowledge (IK) … it is regarded as a gift from the Creator and provides instructions for appropriate conduct to all the Creation and its beings. It not only instructs humanity but assigns roles and responsibilities to all of Creation as well … IK is not just ‘knowledge’ per se. It is the lives lived by peoples and their particular relationship with Creation. In conventional Eurocentric definitions of Indigenous Knowledge, it is presented as a noun, a thing, knowledge; but to Indigenous people, it is much more than knowledge. Indigenous Knowledge cannot be separated from the people who hold and practice it, nor can it be separated from the land/environment/Creation. ¹¹

According to this view, IK is a “way of life,” which has a cosmological basis (i.e., the relationship with “Creation”) and involves embracing a system of responsibilities. Hence, it does not only correspond to the knowledge of how to live but also, more crucially, to the real living of life. ¹²

Conceptions about how the world is made and knowledge practices are mutually implicated and rooted in specific genealogies. This is a common aspect in many Indigenous cultures, including the Aboriginal Australians, the Maori of Aotearoa/New Zealand, Native Americans such as the Lakota, and the Andean people. ¹³ Genealogies provide stories of origins, showing individual and people’s ancestry, their intimate connection with the land, and establishing temporal and spatial belonging. It is out of these affiliation ties that reciprocal obligations emerge, together with the notion of “guardianship” (also expressed by the Māori concept of kaitiakitanga), i.e., a moral responsibility towards the Earth as well as past and future generations. ¹⁴

By relying on this conception of knowledge and moral stance, and through their constant evolution, many Indigenous communities have been able to endure—and, in their own ways, also to prosper—for millennia. They have also been able to make sense of the climate crisis and respond to it.^15,16 Indigenous groups often live in areas undergoing massive and fast transformations, which cause the disruption of their ways of life, lessening the possibility of implementing key sociocultural practices and impacting their overall well-being. Several of their adaptive strategies also depend on cultural values, such as those promoting sharing and communitarianism, which are key factors of societal strength. ¹⁷

THE CHALLENGES OF KNOWLEDGE COPRODUCTION

IK should thus participate in knowledge coproduction about climate change, but the challenges posed by such a research strategy should be properly recognized. More and earlier involvement of Indigenous scholars and knowledge holders is clearly needed, but creating the conditions to make this possible and overcoming the rhetoric of knowledge democratization is not an easy task. Colonizing approaches might be in place even when they are not perceptible; to really have the possibility to impact such approaches, it is thus vital to investigate the historical, socioeconomic, and political drivers that led to their creation. Related issues, such as land dispossession, lack of self-determination, and cultural appropriation, which also influence Indigenous communities’ vulnerability and capacity to adapt to climate change, should be taken into consideration. ¹⁸ Furthermore, it would be important to display how power imbalance impacts processes of institutional design, ¹⁹ the planning of research structures and funding mechanisms, ²⁰ and even the account (or lack of account) of IK in IPCC assessments and official international agreements, e.g., the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement.^{21,22, 23}

What is even more crucial is to accurately create the epistemic space of coproduction, allowing a balanced contribution of different bodies of knowledge. Five points are especially important here.

First, each knowledge tradition should be seen as a source of understanding that is legitimate in its own right, thus having the right to speak for itself. ²⁴ It is not easy to dismantle deeply ingrained prejudices, which undermined IK’s credibility until recently. However, the chance for Indigenous people to be recognized as knowledge coproducers depends on how much these prejudices are faced. As pointed out by the philosopher Miranda Fricker, ²⁵ situations in which prejudices (e.g., stereotypes) provide a distorted portrayal of given social actors (e.g., historically marginalized groups), also involving a deflated assessment of their epistemic reliability, are expressions of epistemic injustice. They show how the dynamics of trust and social power are often interlinked and can cause the loss or misreading of specific types of knowledge, as has been the case of IK.

Second, the challenges posed by comparing alternative knowledge systems and traditions should not be understated. Divergences might, of course, arise from the involvement of different knowledge procedures and standards- e.g., relying on experiments, mathematical models, and peer-reviewed literature vs. relying on qualitative observations, oral histories, dreaming, and the words of elders- or, as already discussed, of different conceptions of knowledge itself. So, the question is this: when conflicts of this sort arise, how can we tell who is right among the parties involved? ²⁶

Third, coproduction does not only concern epistemological issues but also how climate change is actually experienced, thus involving ontological issues. ²⁷ Different perceptions of reality, which condense millennial cultural histories, could be in fact implied.^28,29 Not only case-specific misunderstandings or communication barriers might emerge but also a deep disagreement about key questions: for example, the material the world is made of and how this affects the understanding of climate dynamics? Indigenous cosmologies include aspects or agents, e.g., affective relationships with nature or the spirits of the land (as in various Native American, e.g., the Cherokee and the Potawatomi, and Andean cultures), ³⁰ that, although shaping people’s experience of the climate, are often ignored or misinterpreted in coproduction projects. More generally speaking, rather than as an object, nature is mostly experienced as a subject. So, here the question is: what should be permitted to “exist” in the space of coproduction?^31,32

Fourth, the ultimate purpose of coproduction should not be to settle differences and incompatibilities and amalgamate knowledge systems. Several projects, still subsumed under the category of coproduction, do not focus on the value of IK per se, but on mechanisms for “integrating” it into Western science, so that only IK’s elements that seem to fit with the scientific methods are accepted and valued.^33,34 However, taking seriously the idea of coproduction does not mean to transform it into a monologue, relegating all the other voices to only provide bits of information. This would only reinforce the hegemony of a specific way of knowing.^35,36 Of course, as repeatedly underscored by Indigenous people themselves, ³⁷ what we call IK is not a monolithic body but an array of multiple different systems, each having its own internal organization and coherence; none of them is a set of empirical observations alone, but the complex expression of a cultural universe, embedded in a particular worldview and linked to a specific set of principles. In the space of coproduction, the coexistence of distinct knowledge frameworks should thus be allowed, enabling to preserve their autonomy and consistency, ³⁸ although their interaction might also trigger processes of cross-cultural hybridization.

Fifth, care should be taken to avoid that, speaking in contrasting terms of Western science and IK – a pragmatic and terminological choice that this article has done so far – could lead to the establishment of a rigid dichotomy and their reification. As suggested by Arun Agrawal, ³⁹ a few issues should be at least acknowledged: (1) they both are composite systems (not even Western science is a homogenous body and incorporates several elements from other traditions); (2) each of their parts has an ever-evolving and not isolated nature (recurrent interactions between sectors of Western science and IK are in fact historically documented);^40,41 and (3) Western science and all forms of IK are vital elements of their respective societies, given that the functioning of any society necessarily relies on some “usable” knowledge. Recognizing these structural commonalities would serve to temper their description in oppositional terms, potentially favoring the dialogue and exchange between them.

MULTIPLE TRADITIONS, MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES

Aside from elaborating a set of procedures or recommendations—still useful to meet an array of ethical requirements and cultural protocols—adopting the proper stance, i.e., genuinely valuing the existence of multiple interacting perspectives, is what is most needed. This means that when they contradict each other or produce conflicting evidence, instead of immediately trying to establish who is right and who is wrong, we should take the opportunity to consider what different perspectives have to say. ⁴² Each can display something that the others cannot reach—ultimately glimpses of reality—and generate alternative findings about the situation at hand. ⁴³

A number of approaches going in this direction have been proposed, such as the principle of “two-eyed seeing” (Etuaptmumk in the Mi’kmaw language), ⁴⁴ developed by Mi’kmaw elder Albert Marshall, or the multiple evidence base (MEB) methodology. ⁴⁵ The two-eyed seeing approach attempts to establish a framework in which different cultural perspectives and knowledge systems coexist in knowledge production, in a way that they maintain their distinctness and uniqueness but at the same time can complement and learn from each other. Its key purpose is thus not integrating diverse knowledge systems; rather, it is learning to embrace a “binocular vision” as a means to achieve an enriched understanding, i.e., a broader one than might be reached by each perspective separately. ⁴⁶ The MEB approach too values the diversity in knowledge systems and cultural standpoints. To be emphasized is the process of triangulation, i.e., investigating a particular issue using multiple methods and sources, to obtain conclusions that are more robust (thus reducing uncertainty) when there is convergence or complementarity across multiple lines of evidence, or novel hypotheses for further investigation when instead there is discrepancy and disagreement.

These approaches have indeed much political appeal, as they both promote, in their own ways, a pluralism of knowledge, based on the principle that each knowledge system should be evaluated and validated by internal criteria, thus not by an external (usually presumed as universal) reference body.

However, there is still a long way to go to address the many philosophical items involved in them, and more generally in comparing multiple knowledge traditions. A key issue is, for instance, the distinction between different types of pluralism. One thing is, in fact, merely acknowledging the existence of many different (culturally biased) knowledge systems, but believing that all knowledge patterns are, in principle, equally correct or valid—e.g., as they all are context-relative—is another matter. The former thesis corresponds to a weak descriptive pluralism; the latter instead is a stronger version of pluralism, which many (at least Western) scholars would find controversial as leading to relativism. ⁴⁷ So, here is the final question: is it possible to be pluralistic (in some substantial sense) without embracing relativism? ⁴⁸