NiaTero - 2020 Annual Report - Flipbook - Page 49
BIOCULTURAL MONITORING
When fully implemented, this powerful capability will
empower both guardians and their allies to enable
collaboration about real time guardianship activity,
assisting Indigenous leaders as
they inform policy making.
Since the end of 2019, Nia
Tero has been working with
Conservation Metrics, Terras
App, and Tui Shortland—a Maori
expert on biocultural metrics—
on the development of a
monitoring system appropriate
for our place-anchored
partnerships. This system
aims to follow an approach
that begins with connecting
cultural perspectives to placebased values, knowledge,
relationships, and needs; and
recognizes mutual interdependence between ecological
states and human wellbeing.
In 2020, a beta-version of the system was developed
which enables Indigenous peoples to track how they are
NIA TERO - THRIVING PEOPLES. THRIVING PLACES.
thriving based on their self-determined vision of wellbeing,
how their territories are thriving rooted in land-use and
land-cover, and other environmental changes. In 2020,
we expanded the definition of
high-level biocultural metrics and
developed high-level protocols
ensuring Indigenous peoples
engage in the use of the monitoring
system on their own terms; however
COVID-19 delayed the progress on
testing this biocultural approach on
the ground.
In 2021 we expect to advance
testing of the biocultural approach
to monitoring in two Indigenous
territories in Amazonia, where
partners are eager to have a
system supporting their territorial
protection efforts. We also hope
to offer to other Indigenous partners the opportunity to
access this system in 2021 to track ecosystem changes
within their territories.
SCIENCE & LEARNING - BIOCULTURAL MONITORING
| 49
