Mai Ka Pō Mai: applying Indigenous cosmology and worldview to empower and transform a management plan for Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument

Abstract

Environmental conservation management planning has an important role in creating conditions for social learning, adaptive governance, and improvements for co-management arrangements with Indigenous peoples. Incorporating Indigenous cosmologies, worldviews, and epistemologies within management planning processes can enable factors that support appropriate management practices for protected areas considered to be sacred natural sites by Indigenous peoples. Here, we review processes and outcomes of management planning led by Native Hawaiians with various positionalities that resulted in the Mai Ka Pō Mai Native Hawaiian Guidance Document for the Management of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. As we look back to look forward, we highlight the factors that supported knowledge co-production and expanded opportunities to develop management planning and evaluation processes informed by Hawaiian place-based knowledge and human-nature relations of care and reciprocity. These include collaborative approaches, long-term commitment to community and institution capacity-building; an enabling policy environment; and diverse and consistent involvement of Native Hawaiians.