2020 is a significant year in the journey to the unchartered lands of the climate crisis. We have already heard this year’s first alarm bells ring manifesting as huge Australian wildfires which have killed at least 33 and left more than 11 million hectares of bush, forest and parks burnt. Regarded as a country of the West, the case of Australia represents a breach of the West’s climatic change front line; the orchestrators of the climate crisis are finally starting to hear its unpleasant symphony. Our relationship with the natural world is clearly problematic and to meet and exceed mitigation targets we need to closely analyse it. Turning towards indigenous people, many of whom who live in and rely on the regions worse hit by climate change, may provide the answer.

Sit an astrophysicist down with an indigenous tribesman and ask them to converse about science. The astrophysicist will jump at the chance to tell them about blackholes, supernovas and quantum mechanics, meanwhile the tribesman will struggle to understand the value of all this work, they may even question the very nature of what we mean by ‘science’. Indigenous people represent what the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) call the co-productionist perspective. This argues that science is socially constructed, and inseparable to the ways in which we live our lives.¹ This is easy to see in the lifestyles of indigenous people. Knowledge of the environment is essential for just daily survival. Will the thunderstorm mean the monkey for tonight’s dinner is not calling in his usual place? Or worse, will the heavy rain cause the river to swell and the forest to flood? This relationship to the environment makes valuing nature redundant. Through this perspective, nature is infinitely valuable. The free market capitalist will have a hard time trying to convince the tribesman that as long as a cut down forest results in a new McDonalds, nothing bad has taken place. This view dominates Western thinking; critical nature stocks simply present simply unconverted capital. It is clear that the tribesman has bountiful knowledge of nature that we in the West could benefit from with listening too, but how can two different societies, skyscrapers, restaurants and iPhones apart possibly collaborate?

Fortunately this crucial knowledge of the natural world is being recognised through Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS). IKS consist of knowledge systems that have developed prior to, or independent of, modern scientific knowledge ² and are being integrated into Western thinking by what the STS field refers to as ‘boundary organisations’. Boundary organisations carry out ‘boundary work’; the name given to the socially constructed lines between science, politics and society.

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is the boundary organisation which has come closest to co-constructing and integrating IKS at all stages. The result is what STS literature refers to as a ‘boundary object’; a framework/model adaptable to local needs and the various parties employing them but robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites of implementation.³ The latest framework by IPBES follows below:

Terminology such as ‘Nature’s gifts’ and ‘Mother Earth’ may seem alien to mainstream environmentalism but they communicate a relationship dynamic that we could do with understanding. There really is little difference between citizens of the industrialised West and indigenous people. How we acquire our food and shelter may differ, but both are essential for survival. Capitalism has given us shortcuts to these vital resources, but through this process we have become distanced and disenchanted from the natural world despite relying on its produce arguably more than the indigenous tribesman; an average UK citizen lifestyle requiring three planets worth of resources.

This conceptual framework is arguably the best attempt of integrating IKS to date, but there is still work to be done. The framework clearly distinguishes between IKS and mainstream environmentalism terminology and I worry this is at risk of becoming an ‘us and them’ scenario. Ultimately we should work towards a world where terminology like ‘ecosystem services’ is deemed toxic, finding our economics within our environment rather than the converse. Developing new terminology which fits with modern society but employs the relationship dynamics between indigenous people and nature may be a good next step. Completely redefining our relationship with nature offers a daunting but exceedingly powerful solution to solving the climate crisis and boundary organisations may well hold the key for this important transition.

¹Jasanoff, S. and Kim, S.H. eds., 2015. Dreamscapes of modernity: Sociotechnical imaginaries and the fabrication of power. University of Chicago Press.

² Tharakan, J., 2015. Indigenous knowledge systems–a rich appropriate technology resource. African journal of science, technology, innovation and development, 7(1), pp.52-57.

³ Star, S.L. and Griesemer, J.R., 1989. Institutional ecology,translations’ and boundary objects: Amateurs and professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39. Social studies of science, 19(3), pp.387-420.

⁴ Díaz S, Demissew S, Joly C, et al. (2015) A Rosetta Stone for Nature’s Benefits to People. PLoS Biology 13(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002040.