I Ola Ka ‘Āina, I Ola Nō Kākou: Place-Based and Indigenous Perspectives on Cultural Ecosystem Services in Hawai‘i

Abstract

Cultural ecosystem services (CES) – the non-material benefits realized through human-environmental interactions – make important contributions to ecosystem service assessments as they reveal key social considerations in natural resource management. Yet there exists a critical gap in understanding how CES are perceived by individuals with strong generational and genealogical ties to land. Existing ecosystem service assessments do not accurately capture these place-based values, thus they have been underrepresented in resource management, particularly in policies surrounding land reform and wildlife management. This research presents a case study from Hawaiʻi to outline a process of eliciting place-based and indigenous CES and to document the challenges and opportunities encountered with this approach. The objective of this project is to highlight important CES in Hawaiʻi as perceived by those with strong cultural connections to place, namely multi-generational residents (kamaʻāina) and indigenous descendants (kamaʻāina), then to demonstrate how those CES compare/contrast with commonly recognized CES. To accomplish this objective, our research team created a novel interdisciplinary, mixed methods approach involving two rural community workshops and the development of a Hawaiʻi-based CES framework. Our results highlight CES from a Hawaiian place-based/indigenous point of view and include services related to cultural practices, ancestral landscapes, and environmental kinship. Although some of the results are site-specific, it is anticipated that the process we created can be applied in natural resource management and land-use planning in place-based communities throughout Hawaiʻi and across the Pacific. The ultimate goal of this project is to provide other researchers with a methodology to engage community/cultural groups when identifying CES in their respective ecosystem service assessments.