Local and Indigenous Decision-Making to Manage Climate Change Risks

In view of the current alarming climate crisis, both scientific communities and policymakers recognize that adaptation efforts must integrate diverse knowledge systems to design robust risk management systems. Many peer-reviewed papers focus on local and indigenous knowledge and its incorporation into scientific knowledge, such as climate services. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) acknowledges and integrates indigenous knowledge from diverse sources, and the last IPCC Working Group II report has a dedicated cross-chapter box on indigenous knowledge as one of the new key aspects in the report. Transdisciplinary collaborative publication between UNESCO’s local and indigenous knowledge system (LINKS) Program, United Nations University’s traditional knowledge initiative, IPCC, and other organizations also presented various case studies to provide insight into how diverse societies around the world pass traditional knowledge through generations and how this knowledge is helpful to design adaptive solutions for the complex issue of global changes. However, most assessments and studies focus on local and indigenous knowledge in the sense of factual knowledge about the environment and practices in managing land. There is relatively little understanding of how local and indigenous communities’ decision-making strategies can provide alternative and complementary tools to address the current climate crisis. For example, indigenous and local decision-making represent multiple-use strategies that increase the multifunctional nature of agriculture and reduce climate change risks. Indigenous and local decision-making strategies are often presented in the literature as one-time actions, changing activities, and local adaptation. Consequently, rational and scientific decision-making continues to be a privilege for external professional and political institutions, for instance, in participatory action research. Our article collection aims to highlight the importance of rational local and indigenous decision-making in the context of current climate change.

The objective of the Research Topic is to assess how different indigenous and local groups and communities elaborate, implement, monitor, and evaluate through deliberate decision-making processes. Understanding the various decision-making procedures and the mutual interactions between human communities and climate and environmental changes through multidisciplinary approaches can help adopt new management strategies for addressing interconnected global challenges such as preserving resources, biodiversity, and assuring food security. Our main goal is to contribute to filling the evidence gap on the role of indigenous and local decision-making in successful adaptation. Secondly, we want to learn from experiences of maladaptation that fail to adopt such strategies. For instance, robust and diverse evidence of ecological knowledge-based decision-making processes can be highly useful for ecosystem adaptation plans. On the other hand, case studies on maladaptation can provide scientific evidence for policy and practical actions for further improvements. This Research Topic explores the integration of multidisciplinary perspectives at the interface of anthropology, socioeconomics, socio-ecology, socio-hydrology, geography, and environmental sciences. It also aims to allow a global understanding of the specificities of local and indigenous decision-making through the adoption and application of qualitative data combined with standardized quantitative parameters. We hope this article collection will provide important data about Indigenous decision-making processes and contribute to the science of decision-making to manage climate change risks.

There is a clear and urgent need to go further from the study of indigenous and local knowledge on climate change to the actionable strategies at a local scale and tight temporality in an uncertain environment. We welcome the submission of research articles that address all aspects of decision-making for managing climate change risks in indigenous and local environments across the world. We welcome articles describing deliberate decision-making processes; potential intergenerational decision-making conflicts, such as the preservation of nature and ecosystems versus short-term higher economic incomes. We particularly encourage submissions of interdisciplinary papers and case studies with innovative methodologies.

• Climate change–relevant decisions (CCRDs) for mitigation or/and adaptation
• Cognitive and deliberative processes, Multiple decision mechanisms
• Decision-making under climate urgency/emergency, temporal and spatial frames of decision-making
• Ecological knowledge-based decision-making processes
• Decision-making and developmental pathways, Interaction of decisions
• Implementation of decisions
• Intergenerational decision-making conflicts, Social, and community participation in decision making
• Governance, Enabling and interfering conditions
• Evaluation of climate actions and impacts, Performance metrics
• Successful adaptation / Maladaptation
• Frugal innovation
• Theories of deliberative democracy
• Theories of co-production
• Theories of Post-Normal Science
• Governing the commons (E. Ostrom)

Keywords: environmental governance, indigenous decision-making, local decision-making, traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), risk management, adaptation, maladaptation, community-based decision-making, climate change, decision mechanisms, social participation

Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.