Tamara Ticktin on Indigenous Land Management in Hawai’i & Fiji

PANTROPICA Virtual Seminar Series #1: The past, present & future ‘Pantropocene’: Pacific perspectives

Prof Tamara Ticktin (U Hawai’i ) on Indigenous land management, resilience & conservation: learning from Hawai’i and Fiji

Abstract: There is global interest in land-use strategies that can both produce food and conserve biodiversity in the face of climate change.  Pacific Islands communities have a long history of resilience to environmental variability and unpredictability, and their resource management practices have historically produced nutritious food while maintaining high biodiversity.  As such, Pacific Island resource management systems can yield lessons with broad applicability to global challenges today. I draw on our research on agroforestry systems in Fiji and Hawaii, past and present, to illustrate the ways in which community resilience and biodiversity conservation are fundamentally intertwined. I then discuss the potential to apply these lessons to the future.

Tamara Ticktin is a Professor in the School of Life Sciences, at the University of Hawaiʿi at Mānoa. She is interested in understanding the ways in which local use and management of tropical forests can be compatible with biological and biocultural conservation and restoration.  Her interdisciplinary research combines ecological and biocultural approaches, and has centered on the harvest of wild plant resources and traditional management of agroforestry systems. You can find out more about Tamara and her research at http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/people/tamara-ticktin/

You can listen to Tamara’s presentation here: