*3.3. Local and Indigenous Human-Environment Relationships and International Climate Change Mitigation*

The results of the meta-ethnographic analysis concerning mitigation strategies based on local and Indigenous knowledge systems in the Pacific Island States revealed that almost no direct mitigation practices could be identified for the region of the South Pacific. Nevertheless, examples of Indigenous peoples' mitigation practices beyond the region of the South Pacific were found in the methodical steps 4-6 such as the use of agroforestry in the Sahel zone which plays a special role in preserving biodiversity [53,54].

The only case hinting at the usage of a concrete mitigation practice close to permacultural agriculture systems was found in Hetzel and Pascht's publication in 2019 [55]. They portray the outcomes of a workshop carried out by an NGO in Vanuatu, during which permaculture techniques, among others, were taught. In this case, originally non-western knowledge was now used and taught to non-western societies [55]. Knowledge about the cultivation method as well as the examples of cultivation in gardens of two different regions showed that the participants creatively brought together different practices and knowledge systems, which they developed in NGO workshops, but also one already used before [55]. Moreover, since different species were found in the garden, the question came up whether biodiversity methods were in a way already cultivated before. Based on the information of their interlocutors the authors state that "creating diversity in the realm of cultivation is an established practice in Vanuatu" [55], p. 212.

Rather than finding more concrete examples of how mitigation practices are carried out in the Pacific Island States, the results of this article provide an indirect answer to this question of what mitigation practices occurred. Set into the context of humanenvironmental relationships, certain ways of life and livelihoods were depicted in different studies [31,32,55]. As one example Beyerl and colleagues describe the following:

"In general, respondents, particularly in Tuvalu and Samoa, referred to an overuse, abuse, or unwise use of resources. Irresponsible and selfish behaviour of not taking care of the environment were mentioned along with valuing money more than the consequences of such behaviours, economic activities, greed, and modernisation. Changed conservation and consumption patterns, societal changes, bad manners of the youth, and new religious denominations came up in the explanations as well". [32], p. 158

What this statement presents is a specific approach on how to understand environmental 'positive' behavior and how this relates to local and traditional ways of life. Ramos-Castillo and colleagues underline that Indigenous peoples stand out through a close relationship with the environment they live in [48]. This relationship inherits knowledge in how to respond to climate change as discussed in Section 3.2. Indigenous knowledge, although new to climate science, has been long recognized as a key source of information and insight in domains such as agroforestry, traditional medicine, biodiversity conservation, customary resource management, impact assessment, and natural disaster preparedness and response [56]. These practices are based on knowledge systems that understand the long-term benefits of agriculture and biodiversity as a key indicator of success like the findings of Hetzel and Pascht constituted [53]. These practices, therefore, contain a knowledge-based quality. Fair explores religious responses on climate change in her study and concludes that through religious framings of climate change challenges as behavioral 'negative' options (e.g., carbon emission framed as a sin), counter-narratives are created which support the value of local, more sustainable lifestyles (a spiritual devotion) in contrast to western, industrialized lifestyles [37], p. 175. These rather philosophical human-environment relationships and livelihoods are understood as a form of mitigation strategy by themselves. This becomes very concrete in how Gucake describes oral narratives of the participants of his research: "Mitigation is inbuilt into oral narratives that demand a greater responsibility for our actions on the environment and I feel that this should not be left out of the equation" [31], p. 65. Gucake's account is supported by general

assessments of how livelihoods of Indigenous peoples are perceived as ways of life that can provide resilience for climate change and when looking at extreme prognoses, even a survival strategy:

"Comprising only four per cent of the worlds population (between 250 to 300 million people), [indigenous peoples] utilize 22 per cent of the world's land surface. In doing so, they maintain 80 per cent of the planet's biodiversity in, or adjacent to, 85 per cent of the world's protected areas. Indigenous lands also contain hundreds of gigatons of carbon—a recognition that is gradually dawning on industrialized countries that seek to secure significant carbon stocks in an effort to mitigate climate change". [56]

If we look at Indigenous ways of life, these are mostly the ones producing the least CO2 and the least non-biodegradable waste as well as using the least non-renewable resources [56]. Moreover "Indigenous peoples play a fundamental role in the conservation of biological diversity and the protection of forests and other natural resources" [48], p. 2. Although the literature review of empirical findings on the mitigation of climate change through local and Indigenous knowledge in the selected Pacific Island States was limited, individual examples of diversity concepts and permaculture were found. Furthermore, the analysis showed that a mitigation quality is inherited within specific worldviews, understandings and creations of human-environment relationships.

#### **4. Conclusions**

Summarizing the results of the meta-ethnographic analysis, it can be expressed that the concept of local and Indigenous understandings of climate change needs a differentiated and contextualized view since local understandings differ. For this approach, the conception of climate change as a travelling idea seems fruitful to differentiate local understandings of climate change. In Section 3.2 several adaptation strategies in the Pacific were identified focusing on the example of housebuilding and passing on traditional practices via oral narratives as well as the discussion of how they further develop since the oral transmission is understood as challenged. Section 3.3 could show that a mitigation strategy not only lies in biodiversification techniques but in the value of understanding Indigenous peoples as knowledgeable actors with advanced awareness of sustainable livelihoods. Most importantly, human-environment interaction and an understanding of sustainable lifestyles can be recorded as a mitigation strategy that is in significant contrast to lifestyles in industrialized countries. Summarizing the review on climate change mitigation in the context of local knowledge systems and relating it to a narrative which urges us, as people, to save the ecosystem earth as we know it, one question arises: Is there a possibility that industrial nations can learn from an Indigenous knowledge on resourcefulness to reduce their ecological footprint without taking advantage of it or culturally imperialize it?

Knowledge of climate change mitigation, (i.e., understanding the advantages of parallel use of soils by perennial trees and annual crops), can be beneficial for other localities: Practices of agroforestry were successfully transformed into others contexts [54,57]. Still, an essential characteristic of Indigenous knowledge is precisely its local embedding and thus its high degree of contextualization, which becomes strengthened by the isolated dimension of islands. Nevertheless, as Lazrus [47], p. 285 argues, an understanding of islanders must not only show the isolation of islands but also the global connection of the island's lives to other countries on economic and social levels. Hau'ufa used the thesis of a "sea of islands" to show how a life lived on islands was also possible because of an exchange of people and goods with faraway places [58]. This notion supports the idea to transfer mitigation strategies into other parts of the world since islanders are here portrayed as interconnected centers to und influenced by the world instead of faraway isolated areas. At the same time, it is still questionable how this knowledge can be passed on and grasped in its high contextualization which would be necessary as the results of Section 3.2 identify. Furthermore, it is unclear how this knowledge will, could, or should not be given greater

significance in international policies, since the appropriation of this Indigenous knowledge system might support postcolonial policy structures [46,59].

At the international, educational level, this challenge is answered with global education policy programs such as ESD and CCE, which the individual countries implement on the recommendation of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Local and Indigenous knowledge on climate change adaptation and mitigation has exactly the quality of knowledge that ESD wants to create to apply solutionoriented action for sustainability [60–62]. But even though they inherent important lessons for international policies of ESD [62], "we should be careful not to view local knowledge as a panacea, and integrating it with Western science as necessarily easy and effective" [46], p. 7. In this sense-making it is of importance to ensure that the usage of Indigenous knowledge does not follow a commercialized logic. In this context, 'Aina-based education ¯ ('Aina-based education is defined as teaching and learning fundamentally through the ¯ connection of people and human community with 'aina hence the land, sea and air. ' ¯ Aina ¯ refers to the environment that nourishes, heals and thus preserves people. Didactic and content-related topics such as community-based learning, self-empowerment strategies or knowledge and handling of local vegetation are central themes [63,64].) from the North Pacific in Hawai'i might show that environmental knowledge of Indigenous peoples has been successfully integrated, not instrumentalized, and was implemented in local contexts defined by civil society, not into forgiven western educational structures [63,64]. This also secured the intergenerational disclosure of knowledge. Indigenous knowledge systems or livelihoods could additionally be perceived as a source to generate resilience beyond one social group within the framework of international policies: For example, as an own variation of education for industrialized societies that presents ideas for more sustainable human-environmental relationships.

**Funding:** The publication of this article was funded by Freie Universität Berlin.

**Acknowledgments:** I would like to thank Anita von Poser, Mandy Singer-Brodowski, and Nadine Etzkorn for their valuable support und constructive feedback. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful suggestions to improve this article.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.
