High-TEK: Using beekeepers' environmental knowledge to enhance sustainable agriculture and land management

基于我的博士研究，该奖学金将探索如何成功地将养蜂人的传统环境知识（TEK）纳入可持续土地管理。在当前气候变化、环境崩溃以及英国退欧后对整个英国农业和土地使用进行彻底重组的计划的时代，传粉者的困境只是需要解决的众多挑战之一。传粉媒介是生物多样性和粮食安全的核心（Potts等人，2010年）。所有传粉者以及其他物种的显著减少引起了学术界和更广泛的社区的极大关注（Sanchez-Bayo和Wyckhuys，2019）。近年来，国际上对传粉媒介的减少作出了反应，许多国家起草了传粉媒介政策。在这些政策回应中，都承认养蜂人是监测和扭转传粉媒介下降的关键利益相关者（Maderson和Wynne-Jones，2016）。鉴于问题的紧迫性，以及养蜂人作为关键利益相关者的认识，人们可以假设养蜂人的见解将始终如一地支持确保粮食系统所需的根本改革的举措，以及更广泛的土地管理发展和授粉者福祉所需的战略。我的博士研究考察了长期养蜂人的环境知识，发现了大量未被充分利用的知识，这些知识涵盖了默契和科学理解。我的研究发现，养蜂人的独特知识在加强环境治理方面具有巨大潜力，从而支持生物多样性和粮食安全。目前，这一知识尚未发挥其改变环境的潜力。从历史上看，这种隐性知识一直被政策制定者和科学界低估。这项奖学金将为我提供必要的时间，在学术和其他背景下交流我的博士研究成果，从而最大限度地发挥我的研究在当前土地管理方法的关键时刻的重要见解的影响。它还将使我能够通过与政策制定者和决策者进行一系列访谈，将我的调查结果付诸实施。与这些关键受众讨论我的研究结果将最大限度地发挥我的研究潜力，为土地管理和可持续农业带来必要的改进。该奖学金还将使我能够与研究和使用TEK支持可持续发展的国际专家会面和合作。TEK可以拓宽我们对环境和社会因素的理解，最终提高我们对环境挑战的适应能力（Berkes，Colding和Folke，2000）。该奖学金将支持英国工业战略的目标和目的，因为我将与Apis Consulting合作，他们为私人和公共土地管理者提供建议，以最好地支持他们土地上的传粉者福祉。我将根据我的研究准备相关的教育材料，这将增加他们的咨询工作的影响。Apis Consulting和我将合作开发成功的方法，以最大限度地提高授粉者的土地管理策略，从而扩大生物多样性。有效地利用养蜂人的知识和建议需要通过认识论的紧张关系进行深思熟虑的谈判，并对影响授粉者和更广泛环境的因素进行跨学科的理解。然而，这些问题不仅与养蜂人的知识有关。不同知识的问题，以及什么是专业知识，在政治上和环境上都很重要（Riley，2009年）。随着全球社会努力应对我们的粮食系统和环境所面临的挑战，开发更具包容性的方法来利用各种知识将是引领21世纪世纪的关键部分。

Building on my PhD research, this Fellowship will explore how to successfully incorporate beekeepers' traditional environmental knowledge (TEK) into sustainable land management. In the current era of climate change, environmental breakdown, and post-Brexit plans for radical restructuring of agriculture and land use throughout the UK, the plight of pollinators is but one of many challenges to be addressed. Pollinators are central to both biodiversity and food security (Potts et al 2010). Significant declines of all pollinators, as well as other species, are a cause of immense concern amongst both the academic and wider community (Sanchez-Bayo and Wyckhuys, 2019). Recent years have seen an international response to pollinator decline, with many countries drafting pollinator policies. Throughout these policy responses is an acknowledgement that beekeepers are key stakeholders in monitoring, and reversing, pollinator decline (Maderson and Wynne-Jones, 2016). Given the urgency of the problem, and the recognition of beekeepers as key stakeholders, one could assume that beekeepers' insights would be consistenly supporting initiatives to ensure the radical reforms needed in the food system, as well as wider land management developments and strateges needed for pollinator wellbeing. My doctoral research examined the environmental knowledge of long-term beekeepers, and discovered a wealth of under-utilised knowledge that spanned both tacit and scientific understanding. My research finds that beekeepers' unique knowledge has significant potential to enhance environmental governance, thus supporting biodiversity and food security. Currently, this knowledge is not achieving its environmentally transformative potential. Historically, such tacit knowledge has been undervalued by policy-makers and the scientific community.This fellowship will provide me with the necessary time to communicate my PhD findings in academic and other contexts, thus maximising the impact of the important insights of my research at this key time of rappraisal of current land management approaches. It will also allow me to operationalise my findings, by carrying out a series of interviews with policy and decision makers. Discussing my findings with these key audiences will maximise the potential for my research to bring about necessary improvements in land management and sustainable agriculture. The fellowship will also allow me to meet and work with international experts studying, and using TEK to support sustainability. TEK can broaden our understanding of environmental and social factors that can ultimately increase our resilience to environmental challenges (Berkes, Colding and Folke, 2000).This fellowship will support the aims and objectives of the UK's Industrial Strategy, as I will work with Apis Consulting, who advise private and public land managers as to how best to support pollinator wellbeing on their lands. I will prepare relevant educational material based on my research which will increase the impact of their consultancy work. Apis Consulting and I will collaboratively develop successful methods to maximise land management strategies for pollinators, and resultant wider biodiversity.Effectively engaging with beekeepers' knowledge and recommendations requires thoughtful negotiation through epistemological tensions, and an interdisciplinary understanding of factors affecting pollinators and the wider environment. Yet these issues are not only relevant to beekeepers' knowledge. The issue of diverse knowldges, and what counts as expertise, is important politically and environmentally (Riley, 2009). As the global community struggles to respond to challenges to our food systems, and our environment, developing more inclusive methods of engaging with diverse knowledge will be a crucial part of navigating the 21st century.