Honoring Traditional Wisdom, Uplifting Community-Led Management

For millennia, Native Hawaiians have sustained and been sustained by the islands’ lands and waters. In many areas, this way of life continues, with communities upholding and reviving long-held Hawaiian practices in fishing, farming and caring for ʻāina.

But for generations, profound and painful challenges such as colonialism, forced resettlement, strong development pressures and exclusion from natural resource decisions have undermined Native Hawaiian agency and ability to manage their lands and waters. And mounting global pressures—including climate change and invasive species—now pose urgent challenges. Fortunately, coastal communities across the state are working to reverse these trends through the perpetuation of traditional stewardship practices that maintain resources, culture, livelihoods and ways of life.

Guided by Indigenous stewardship principles and inspired by peoples and partners across the Pacific, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is committed to collaborative, community and Indigenous-led conservation in Hawaiʻi. We work closely with dozens of local community organizations and individuals leading community-based makai management efforts across five Hawaiian Islands to improve coastal and coral reef health and enhance sustainability. We carry kuleana to the places where we work and to the people we work alongside to find better, more inclusive ways to manage the lands and waters we share.

When opportunities arise or we are invited to collaborate, TNC works in partnership with Indigenous Peoples and local communities to support their visions, learn from their stewardship experiences and amplify their leadership in conserving lands, waters and ways of life.

TNC is helping to build a strong foundation for collaborative, culturally grounded, community-driven conservation by:

• Collaborating on scientific tools and data
• Supporting peer networks
• Centering Indigenous peoples and local communities

The Power of Co-creating Science

Successful decision making depends on good information and integrating contemporary science with traditional, Native Hawaiian knowledge. One of the biggest challenges facing sustainable fisheries is the lack of stock data, especially in smaller coastal communities. TNC collaborates with partners to conduct monitoring, co-develops data-sharing agreements that respect data sovereignty and shares that data to inform decision making. We also support community-led monitoring surveys such as fish counts, by helping design scientifically rigorous monitoring programs and training volunteers in monitoring protocols and to analyze data. We also support communities by building open-source, participatory tools community fisheries managers and fishers can use to collect their own data, analyze it and apply it to make decisions guided by local needs and traditional knowledge.

With this in mind, we developed FishPath and FishKit, a set of software tools that make it easier, faster and more intuitive for coastal communities to collect and analyze data and develop their own culturally appropriate fisheries management plans. Watch our video below to hear more about how FishKit is being used in Hawaiʻi and across French Polynesia.

Building Knowledge, Fostering Networks

Over the last two decades, some of the greatest conservation impacts in the Pacific came from building connections between community groups and among local leaders through peer networks. These networks share knowledge, tools, data and resources to grow community and Indigenous-led management and take collective action to accelerate and strengthen management of coastal and marine resources. As local networks implement successful conservation actions, they provide a powerful example for other communities. In Hawaiʻi, TNC currently supports community leaders focused on marine conservation across three peer networks, including the Maui Nui Makai Network, the Kai Kuleana Network and Hui Loko.

Centering Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities

Advancing Indigenous Data Sovereignty

As TNC strives toward right relations with Indigenous Peoples, we are developing new frameworks to support Indigenous data sovereignty, which supports Indigenous Peoples’ efforts to access, authorize and own data about their lands and waters.

TNC Hawaiʻi Marine Conservation Fellows Collin Aldridge’s and KaiLeiʻa Duriano’s capstone projects focused on advancing this work in Hawaiʻi and across TNC. Watch our video to hear more about this important and evolving effort and learn how TNC is working to become a better partner and collaborator.

Understanding the Pacific Way

For decades, conservation organizations recognized the vibrant cultures, ecological significance and profound beauty of the Pacific Islands. However, these organizations have not always given due respect to the peoples, wisdom, values, traditions and knowledge rooted in these places.

In the early 1990s, marine conservation was a new frontier for the growing global conservation movement. But applying Western conservation models, such as government mandated “no-take” protected areas, was not culturally appropriate and often even harmful in the Pacific, where Indigenous management and resource use was commonly practiced. Instead, community-based conservation, where traditional resource owners and managers lead, emerged as the “new” and powerful way to protect and restore natural areas across the Pacific.

This Indigenous People-first approach demands that organizations like TNC embrace and uplift the wisdom of local communities and honor the vast history of Indigenous environmental stewardship practiced across the Pacific. To elicit knowledge gained from the first two decades of community-based conservation in the Pacific, TNC interviewed leaders in this field who offered insights and guidance on how to approach conservation The Pacific Way.

Throughout all these interviews and efforts, one profound truth emerges: community leadership is not peripheral to conservation success; it is foundational.