Biocultural Heritage and Social-Ecological Resilience

该奖项是作为NSF社会、行为和经济学博士后研究奖学金(SPRF)计划的一部分提供的。SPRF计划的目标是为学术界、工业界或私营部门和政府的科学职业生涯培养有前途的、早期职业博士水平的科学家。SPRF奖项包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行两年的培训，并鼓励博士后研究员进行独立研究。国家科学基金会致力于促进科学界所有阶层的科学家参与其研究方案和活动，包括那些来自代表性不足的群体的科学家；博士后阶段被认为是实现这一目标的专业发展的一个重要水平。每个博士后研究员都必须解决推动各自学科领域向前发展的重要科学问题。在普林斯顿大学的若昂·比尔博士和加州大学圣克鲁斯分校的弗洛拉·卢博士的赞助下，这一博士后奖学金奖支持一名早期职业科学家研究土著治理和管理培养社会生态复原力的机制。在许多地点和背景下，土著机构和文化做法产生了积极的环境成果，如促进生物多样性、维持生态系统服务和遏制砍伐森林。这些结果在全球都很重要，因为土著人民管理着世界上25%以上的陆地面积。这项研究通过与土著社区的伙伴关系来探索这些动态，在这些社区，与资源开采和城市化相关的加速砍伐和退化威胁着他们的健康、福祉和主权。通过人种学、人类生态学和空间方法论的结合，这项研究将考察土著生物文化遗产、制度和文化价值之间的联系及其生态影响。一个强有力的传播战略确保成果将使学术界和公众了解土著做法如何建立复原力和支持保护。几千年来，人类与周围环境之间的相互依存关系导致了地球各地土著领土的多样性。利用丰富的生物文化遗产，土著人民建立了复杂的机构，同时维持生态系统服务和与领土的关系。这项研究调查了生物文化遗产的特征，包括土著人民用来衡量、解释和回应内部和外部反馈、传播知识和适应不断变化的社会、环境和政治背景的知识、创新和做法。土著人民如何以这种方式利用他们的生物文化遗产？他们在这样做时面临哪些限制？为什么？这项研究将通过利用长期伙伴关系来解决这些问题，在这种伙伴关系中，气候变化和非激进主义等威胁是影响更广泛地区的威胁的缩影。多方法方法(定量、定性、人种学、参与性)将有助于审查生物文化遗产与特定领土的结合、脱钩和重新结合的潜力。这项研究的结果将描述不同的威胁如何影响土著领土的复原力，并支持我们如何对领土进行理论和理解。这项工作将对人类生态学、景观生态学、土地教育和社会生态系统理论等领域做出贡献。更广泛地说，这项研究将通过强调不同的土著价值观和方法的重要性来支持生物和文化保护，并为正在进行的领土治理参与性规划工具的编制提供信息。该项目还通过吸收土著研究人员来建设当地的能力、培训和指导。最后，该项目为学术和政策受众建立了研究传播机制，包括利用媒体来源广泛传播研究成果。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. João Biehl at Princeton University and Dr. Flora Lu at the University of California, Santa Cruz, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist examining the mechanisms through which Indigenous governance and stewardship fosters social-ecological resilience. In numerous locations and contexts, Indigenous institutions and cultural practices have resulted in positive environmental outcomes, such as promoting biological diversity, maintaining ecosystem services, and curbing deforestation. These outcomes are important globally because Indigenous peoples manage over 25 percent of the world’s land surface. This study explores these dynamics through a partnership with Indigenous communities, where accelerating deforestation and degradation, linked to resource extraction and urbanization, threaten their health, well-being, and sovereignty. Through a combination of ethnographic, human ecological, and spatial methodologies, this research will examine the connections between Indigenous biocultural heritage, institutions, and cultural values and their ecological impacts. A robust communication strategy ensures that results will inform both academics and the general public about how Indigenous practices build resilience and support conservation. Interdependent relationships over millennia between humans and their surroundings gave rise to a diversity of Indigenous territories across the planet. Drawing on rich biocultural heritage, Indigenous peoples have developed sophisticated institutions that simultaneously maintain ecosystem services and relationships with territory. This study investigates features of biocultural heritage, including the knowledge, innovations, and practices used by Indigenous peoples to gauge, interpret, and respond to internal and external feedbacks, transmit knowledge, and adapt to changing social, environmental, and political contexts. How do Indigenous peoples utilize their biocultural heritage in this manner, what limitations do they face in doing so, and why? This research will address such questions by leveraging a long-term partnership, where threats such as climate change and extractivism represent a microcosm of those impacting the broader region. A multi-methods approach (quantitative, qualitative, ethnographic, participatory) will support an examination of the coupling, decoupling, and potential for recoupling of biocultural heritage with specific territories. Results from this research will describe how diverse threats impact the resilience of Indigenous territories, and support how we theorize and understand territory. This work will contribute to the fields of human ecology, landscape ecology, land education, and social-ecological systems theory. More broadly, this research will support biological and cultural conservation by highlighting the importance of diverse Indigenous values and approaches, and inform the on-going production of a participatory planning instrument for territorial governance. The project also builds local capacity, training, and mentoring by including Indigenous researchers. Finally, the project has built in mechanisms for research dissemination, for academic and policy audiences, including engaging media sources to broadly communicate research findings.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.