Local experience, knowledge, and community adaptations to environmental change: the case of a fishing village in central
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Local experience, knowledge, and community adaptations to environmental change: the case of a fishing village in central Vietnam Henner Leithäuser 1
&
Ronald Lindsey Holzhacker 1
Received: 21 January 2020 / Accepted: 2 September 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Local ecological knowledge (LEK) represents an important link between resource users and their social-ecological system and plays a key role regarding the sustainable planning of environmental resources. This study investigates the nature of LEK in the case of a fishing village at the Tam Giang Lagoon in central Vietnam by applying an ethnographic participant observer approach. The research demonstrates a means to understand a complex, self-organized local network with a multitude of actors with different interests and adaptive behaviors, interfering in diverse and sometimes contradictory ways in the same environmental context. It concludes with two understandings about LEK. (1) It is important to recognize it as a concept that is not fixed in time and space as it is coevolving with broader system changes. (2) Only if approached through careful immersion and participation at the local level can it provide a valuable source of science-based information for improved decision-making. Keywords Local ecological knowledge . Adaptive planning . Knowledge sharing . Ethnography . Vietnam . Southeast Asia
Introduction There are many small fishing and agricultural villages at the edge of rapidly developing cities in the least developed countries (LDCs) and middle-income countries (MICs), which face a variety of social and environmental challenges. Coastal ecosystems and their resources on which these villages depend are rapidly degrading due to industrial activity and a range of other anthropogenic drivers of change, while their social structure is undergoing changes due to the attractiveness and growing income opportunities of nearby cities. Local ecological knowledge (LEK) plays a key role for the scientists and planners of environmental resources involved in the sustainable development of these regions (Agrawal 1995; Al-Roubaie 2010; Bohensky and Maru 2011; Whyte 2013). This importance, however, has only recently begun to receive formal recognition (Mamun 2010; McGregor 2014) and there is still Communicated by Tony Weir * Henner Leithäuser [email protected] 1
Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
much uncertainty regarding how this specific way of knowing should be translated into broadly accepted scientific paradigms (Agrawal 1995; Houde 2007; Whyte 2013; Rathwell et al. 2015). Whyte (2013) pointed out that instead of debating the general definition and scientific applicability of LEK, scientists should regard it as a collaborative concept and thus focus on bidirectional knowledge transfer (see also Fazey et al. 2012). A growing number of studies show various existing barriers regarding the integration of LEK into conventional management and policymaking processes, with one major challe
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