Culturally Grounded Indicators of Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems

Eleanor Sterling, Tamara Ticktin, Tē Kipa Kepa Morgan, Georgina Cullman, Diana Alvira, Pelika Andrade, Nadia Bergamini, Erin Betley, Kate Burrows, Sophie Caillon, Joachim Claudet, Rachel Dacks, Pablo Eyzaguirre, Chris Filardi, Nadav Gazit, Christian Giardina, Stacy Jupiter, Kealohanuiopuna Kinney, Joe McCarter, Manuel Mejia, Kanoe Morishige, Jennifer Newell, Lihla Noori, John Parks, Pua’ala Pascua, Ashwin Ravikumar, Jamie Tanguay, Amanda Sigouin, Tina Stege, Mark Stege, and Alaka Wali1

Indigenous and other place-based, local communities increasingly face an assortment of externally codifed development and sustainability goals, regional commitments, and national policies and actions that are designed, in part, to foster adaptation and resilience at the local level.Resilience refers to the capacity of a system to absorb shocks and disturbances and to catalyze renewal, adaptation, transformation, and innovation (Bé né et al. 2013).Identifying and setting criteria for the underlying factors that confer resilience to a community are the frst steps toward efectively aligning external sustainability-seeking processes, ofen associated with resourcing mechanisms, with locally relevant and locally embraced approaches to sustaining environmental health and community well-being in the face of environmental, social, and economic change (Fazey et al. 2011;Folke et al. 2003).
Here we present case studies on locally grounded indicators of resilience that include both social-cultural (institutions, networks, knowledge systems) and ecological (biodiversity, habitat, ecosystem services) components and their combined ability to respond to disturbances (Gunderson and Holling 2002)."Measuring" social-ecological resilience is particularly challenging, because neither organizational processes nor ecological processes can be understood in isolation (Olsson et al. 2004).For example, conventional indicators of ecosystem health (species richness, soil fertility, etc.) are not designed to capture dimensions of individual and community well-being, only rarely provide historical depth, and are not designed to engage traditional knowledge that can provide practical insights into local ecology or the social-cultural interactions that ofen govern ecosystem functioning and resilience (van Oudenhoven et al. 2011).
Indicator sets typically seek to provide credible qualitative or quantitative data-driven insights that allow for better understanding of a system while distilling complexity.Trend and state indicators are widely used by a range of entities-from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and local governments to international governing bodies-to track change within and across complex systems, identify stabilizing processes and drivers of positive or negative change, inform management and planning, and communicate patterns to constituents, managers, and policy makers.Further, indicator sets can measure the status of resources units, resources systems, or governance systems and actors in a social-ecological systems framework (SES) (Ostrom 2009) or measure relational elements within a framework (e.g., a driving forces, pressures, states, impacts, responses framework, or DPSIR) (Sparks et al. 2011).
Indicator sets are grounded in a vision or plan that forms the basis for responses to important questions such as indicators for whom, about what, and toward which goals.Externally developed goals, targets, and indicators, such as those associated with the United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goals and the Sustainable Development Goals, are intended for use at high levels and, by necessity, are general.Goals, targets, and indicators infuence a range of scales, including local contexts.For example, the near-universal use of economic indicators based on gross domestic product (GDP) ofen drives policies that promote material progress over the less tangible "well-being." As a result, such initiatives may prescribe actions to increase GDP with limited beneft for, or negative impact on, local communities (Cochran et al. 2008).
Elsewhere we have argued that in situ, culturally grounded approaches to developing indicators of human well-being and coupled ecological resilience-what we term biocultural approaches-can lead to efective local action as well as communication about local needs to national and international actors (Sterling et al. forthcoming).Ideally, when local communities are involved in indicator development, they create or co-create indicators that capture the social, cultural, and environmental context for managing coupled human and natural systems (Ens 2012;Preuss and Dixon 2012).Locally developed indicators and criteria greatly facilitate local understanding of their development and use, and therefore may also increase community ownership, adoption, and acceptance.Locally tailored metrics also present challenges, including the potential time commitment, costs, and feasibility involved in the process of developing and monitoring such metrics.
In this article, we assess seven case studies and one model framework for in situ, culturally grounded indicator development to derive broadly relevant insights and lessons learned for future indicator development.Each contribution was written by authors who were part of an indicator or framework development process; additionally, some authors assessed indicators through community focus groups, ran programs to support and expand the use of the indicators, and/or used the indicators in their research and management.Case study and framework authors addressed guiding elements shown in Table 1 and were encouraged to share any unique attributes of their case studies.Te authors of these contributions are among the leaders in implementing practical approaches to resource management using techniques that span social and ecological characteristics of a system; many have not yet published extensively on these practical experiences.All of these contributions describe initiatives that are "biocultural, " meaning they take an approach strongly grounded in local culture and values for understanding and managing social-ecological systems.Te majority of the initiatives presented here have been developed within social-ecological systems in Pacifc Island environments.However, the lessons learned can be applied more broadly.

Indicators of Resilience in Socio-Ecological Production Landscapes and Seascapes
Nadia Bergamini and Pablo Eyzaguirre Tis indicator set is intended for use at the community level, was designed for use in diverse settings, and has been used across the world.Its outcomes are geared toward social-ecological production landscapes and seascapes.Te term "social-ecological production landscapes and seascapes, " or SEPLS, was coined under the Satoyama Initiative to refer to mosaic production landscapes, which have been shaped through long-term harmonious interactions between humans and nature in a manner that fosters human well-being while maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services (Gu and Subramanian 2012).Monitoring of natural resource management practices and how these adjust to changing conditions can contribute to evaluation of the resilience of SEPLS.
Trough an iterative process of indicator development-which included on-the-ground testing to capture each community's priority elements of resilience and consultation with community members, local NGOs, and research institutes to ensure that local views and values were properly captured-a suite of researchers from international organizations designed 20 indicators to measure a community's capacity to build resilience and harness ecosystem services through innovation, adaptation, and the sustainable use of biodiversity (Mijatovi et al. 2013;UNU-IAS et al. 2014;van Oudenhoven et al. 2011).Te indicators cover the cultural, social, economic, ecological, and agricultural dimensions that inf uence, in positive or negative ways, biodiversity maintenance and therefore resilience in SEPLS.Tey can be customized to ref ect the circumstances of each particular landscape and its associated communities.T ey encompass both qualitative and quantifable indicators based on observations, tallies, perceptions, desires, visions, and experiences of local communities.Te indicators do not provide precise measurements of resilience but rather serve as a framework for communities to discuss and analyze SEPLS resilience, and build community sense of ownership over landscape planning by incorporating biocultural views.
Te spatial scale of SEPLS encompassed by the indicators depends on how local communities identify the area they depend on for their survival and livelihoods.It generally includes the mosaic of land uses from which communities derive the goods and services on which they depend directly or indirectly and where they have a direct impact on the resource base and regular interaction with biodiversity.Te indicators are grouped into fve areas (Table 2): SEPLS resilience and landscape/seascape diversity (Colding et al. 2003), biodiversity (Taman et al. 2002), knowledge and innovation (Folke et al. 2003), governance and equity (Lebel et al. 2006), and livelihoods and well-being (Adger 2000).
Tese indicators may be adapted to and applied in diferent areas and can be used alongside other types of indicators.Te ways in which social-ecological indicators are employed by communities, policy makers, and external scientists may difer.Indigenous communities may use them to monitor the impacts of conservation projects on traditional livelihoods and lifeways, or, once a "baseline" has been established, to monitor at regular intervals socialecological dynamics and defne priorities for community and conservation action.Lessons and knowledge generated by these activities can then be used by communities to communicate local visions and strategies for resilient SEPLS as input for higher-level policies and programs that afect community livelihoods, as well as further conservation and resource-management planning.Policy makers in turn can use the results to promote participatory SEPLS landscape management among diferent stakeholders and identify an integrated approach in project planning and implementation.Te indicators and biocultural approach can deepen Western scientifc understanding of human-environment interactions and how these may be supported in a conservation context.
Tese indicators have been piloted across varied ecosystems in more than 25 dif erent SEPLS in several countries.While refning the indicators, it was sometimes dif cult to predict the overall sustainability of a given agroecosystem and measure the direct efects of management practices on ecosystem services.In this regard, Western knowledge can be applied in synergy with traditional knowledge systems.Te goal is to learn from and strengthen the innovation present in traditional approaches to managing productive landscapes, not to support the marginalization or fossilizing of traditional lifestyles.Te designers of the indicator set developed a dedicated tool kit for facilitators to conduct resilience assessments, which consists of a preparation stage, an assessment workshop, and a follow-up stage.During the preparation stage, facilitators obtain information about the SEPLS and plan the community based-resilience assessment workshop.During the assessment workshop, 10 to 15 community members of mixed age and gender come together to score the 20 indicators and provide their perception on trends (i.e., improving, no change, worsening) over a time span of 5 to 20 years.Scoring is frst done individually and then as a group.Te group discussion is important to both identifying dif erent views within the community, and in reaching a common understanding of the SEPLS state,  ) have used the indicators to conduct community-driven, participatory landscape planning; building on this exercise, communities have implemented their own projects to achieve the improvements in the landscape they wish to see.Bioversity International and partners have compared indicators feld-tested in Kenya, Bolivia, and Nepal to identify the main drivers of change and resilience regarding the use and conservation of agricultural biodiversity in the context of climate change adaptation.T e indicators proved helpful in reaching a common understanding of threats and solutions, and def ning resilience-strengthening strategies.Tese examples from the feld show that the indicators f ll a gap in knowledge and that such tools at the local level are needed to enable communities to detect and monitor their social-ecological resilience.Te indicators also help identify priority issues and actions for sustaining SEPLS that beneft livelihoods and well-being and create a common language between "traditional, " "governmental, " and "scientifc" communities that addresses the complexity of human-environment interactions.

Melanesian Well-Being Indicators: A Biocultural Approach
Jamie Tanguay Te Melanesian Well-Being Indicators were developed in Vanuatu and designed for relevance across Melanesia, with outcomes focused on national-level assessments of human well-being.Te people of Melanesia continue to depend on a traditional model of economic development that is self-contained and ensures equitable distribution of wealth and opportunity within a society.Te "traditional economy, " as it has come to be called in Vanuatu, is governed by shared cultural values and rules that dictate control over available resources (Regenvanu 2010).Unlike the economy valued in monetary terms, there are imposed limits to growth and wealth and defned roles for resource management.Tere remains, however, the challenge of measurement.Policies developed with regard only to increasing per capita GDP can have negative, and potentially disastrous, impacts on other factors contributing to life quality.Te Melanesian Well-Being Indicators aim to assess and integrate consideration of this traditional economy with external indicators, enabling the island countries of Melanesia to develop in accordance with the shared values and expressed needs of their populations.

Context of the Project
Te UN classifes the world's most impoverished countries as Least Developed Countries (LDCs).LDCs share low gross national income (GNI), weak human assets, and a high degree of economic vulnerability.Vanuatu is listed as an LDC with low GNI, a relatively small and undereducated labor force, and a high level of vulnerability to natural disasters (UN CDP 2017).Generally, LDCs face extreme poverty, ongoing and widespread confict, extensive political corruption, and lack of political and social stability.However, this description generally does not apply to Oceania, where most LDCs are considered politically stable democracies that lack civil strife and have strong subsistence economies.
In 2006, the UK-based New Economics Foundation published Te Happy Planet Index: An Index of Human Well-Being and Environmental Impact, in which countries were ranked in relation to three indicators of well-being: life satisfaction, life expectancy, and ecological footprint (Marks et al. 2006).Te report declared Vanuatu to be the "happiest country in the world." T is fnding was in contrast with the country's LDC status and brought forth awareness in the region of the desire to develop new indicators that take into account the income-neutral factors contributing to Melanesian well-being.
Tree distinct dimensions of well-being were uncovered following social research undertaken by the Vanuatu National Statistics Ofce and the Vanuatu National Cultural Council involving focus groups and key informants.Tese dimensions include: (1) access to land and natural resources, (2) the skills to be productive with those resources, and (3) community vitality.Indicators were developed and piloted in Vanuatu in 2011 and 2012, and the Malvatumauri National Council of Chiefs launched the analysis report in 2012 (MNCC 2012).

Biocultural Indicators of Land and Natural Resource Access
Te self-reliance of the Melanesian family unit is maintained only when access to, and power and control over, the land and its resources rests in the hands of clan or tribal leaders.Registration of land to individuals would lead to taxation and potentially shif people's priorities for the development of their customary land from providing for the collective unit to providing the individual with money.Melanesian societies treat land not as a personal commodity but as a public good.No one "owns" land in Melanesia; rather, families and individuals within the family unit are custodians of the land (Regenvanu 2008;Simo 2010).A variety of highly evolved and complex traditional land tenure systems exist in the region, which makes the survey and registration of customary land potentially harmful to traditionally sustainable collective livelihoods.Te alternative biocultural indicators developed for land and natural resources do not focus on size or ownership but rather on accessibility and usage rights.
Te biocultural indicators complement existing indicators collected through instruments such as the Agriculture Census and Household Income and Expenditure Survey, which seek to measure the economic productivity of land in terms of both income generation and, to a lesser degree, subsistence contributions.Tese alternatives, when presented alongside the more prevalent land-as-a-commodity indicators, provide decision makers with a better understanding of land and natural resource access.Specifcally, they ascertain the proportion of Melanesians who enjoy free access to customary lands, how said access contributes to their livelihoods, and their assessment of the size of accessible land with respect to meeting basic needs.T e Vanuatu well-being study-using an international standard for subjective well-being measurement as practiced by the Gallup World Poll, which asks participants to imagine their life quality relative to positioning on a 10-rung ladder (i.e., the Cantil Scale)-showed that those with access to customary lands are, on average, happier than those without (MNCC 2012).

Biocultural Indicators of Traditional Knowledge and Production Skills
Access to customary lands and natural resources provides the people of Melanesia with a means for life's basic necessities and connects them with their past and future.Decision makers must, then, also consider traditional knowledge transfer and the productive skills that are passed from one generation to the next as the ways in which resource access translates into tangible gains to life quality.
Melanesia is extraordinarily rich in its cultural diversity, with more than one thousand distinct Indigenous languages (Landweer and Unseth 2012).Tese Indigenous languages act as the major vessel of information and skills transfer from one generation to the next.A good measure of traditional knowledge in Melanesia must therefore consider the transfer and use of Indigenous languages, through indicators such as proportion of people whose f rst language was Indigenous and proportion reporting strong comprehension of and ability to speak the language (MNCC 2012).Cultural diversity brings with it diversity in how Melanesian societies use their natural resources.A particular food source considered a staple in one part of the region might be considered a supplementary food item in another.Traditional knowledge also varies with diferent skills of interest for dif erent regions.
Composite indicators of traditional production skills reveal the proportion of the population that possesses some, all, or none of the elements chosen to comprise the indicators.In the Vanuatu study, for example, the fve basic production skills included skills for making walls and roofing for housing, for food production and preparation, and for production of basic medicines.Furthermore, it was determined that all members of a household would beneft from just one member possessing each skill.Two-thirds of all households in Vanuatu were found to possess all fve basic production skills (MNCC 2012).Providing decision makers with the proportion of the population that possesses the ways in which they can be productive with natural resources helps contextualize resource access in a meaningful way.

Biocultural Indicators of Community Vitality
Ofen in Melanesia, a village joins together for almost everything-from preparing land for planting, to repairing an old thatch roof, to nursing the sick and honoring the dead.T e community is bound by, and depends on, cultural rules of reciprocity and respect.Indeed, even if an individual or family unit were capable of doing everything for themselves, they would not be inclined to turn down an ofer of assistance out of respect, nor would they fnd it acceptable to be of no assistance to others in the community.A dimension of community vitality was included in the Melanesian Well-Being Indicators to capture the supportive role of the greater kinship networks and better refect development as a collective achievement.
A strong community in Melanesia is one that works together to support its members.Community meetings are a common aspect in Melanesian society, bringing members together to discuss issues of common concern on a regular basis or for issues of urgency, when necessary.A sparsely attended meeting can be a sign of fragmentation or disunity within the community or a sign of weak leadership.For this reason, frequency of meetings and attendance levels are important indicators of community cooperation and respect for leadership (MNCC 2012).
A strong community in Melanesia is also one with able leaders who command respect and support from all community members.Te symbiotic relationship between leaders and their communities is important, given that the majority of the region's population lives in rural villages governed by traditional leaders who represent the most efective means of information and service dissemination.It is important in Vanuatu that traditional leaders are good communicators, peacekeepers, resource managers, and vessels of culture and customary practices.
Finally, a strong community in Melanesia is one in which strong interpersonal networks thrive.Individuals with a strong social network have others they can rely on in times of need and neighbors they can trust.Strong families and kinship networks, built over generations, are also important considerations when determining the strength of social capital.Families-the single most important social alliance in Melanesia-are the building blocks of a strong community in the region.

Biocultural Indicators Add Value to the Information Used in Decision Making
Te Melanesian Well-Being Indicators add value to the information used by decision makers when developing and assessing the human impacts of national policies.Te value of these indicators can be realized only when they are ofcially recognized for their relevance to well-being in Melanesia and integrated alongside those indicators developed and adopted internationally.Tis integration has already taken place in Vanuatu, where the pilot report helped in creating a national development framework, which will inform national policy over the next 15 years.Additionally, some of the well-being indicators have been adopted as National Minimum Development Indicators by the Secretariat for the Pacif c Community.
Te purpose of these "alternatives" is not to establish a secondary set of measures but rather to incorporate Melanesian values-explicitly linked with their environments-into the indicators already in use by Melanesian decision makers.Te Melanesian Well-Being Indicators will assist in building vision and a notion of greater interdependence in the region.Biocultural well-being indicators will also provide constructive feedback on the ef ectiveness of existing policies and programs, as well as useful input into program design and implementation.T us, biocultural indicators, as evaluative tools, could be used not only to check whether programs are consistent with Melanesian well-being but also to foster a coherent relationship between professed values on the one hand and actual policies, programs, and projects on the other.If this process is done successfully, true Melanesian values will penetrate the region's economic, political, social, environmental, cultural, and technological development and bring a natural coherence to the region's policies.
In conclusion, the Melanesian Well-Being Indicators, once integrated in the region, promise to revive a broader understanding of an economy as a community managing its resources with a view to its productivity.Te improved set of indicators will also more accurately present the welfare status of the people in the South Pacifc.Access indicators for customary lands, forest and marine resources, and traditional wealth items, combined with indicators of traditional production skills and supportive social networks, form a uniquely Melanesian measure of self-reliance.

Te Cultural Basis of Well-Being in Peruvian Amazon Communities
Alaka Wali, Diana Alvira, and Ashwin Ravikumar Tis indicator set was developed in the Peruvian Amazon for application at the community level, with outcomes focused on well-being.An interdisciplinary team from the Field Museum in Chicago developed these indicators through an iterative action research process from 2001 to the present.Te indicators are currently being used by the Field Museum team as part of ongoing quality-of-life plan development and implementation with communities in the Peruvian Amazon.
Tis case study describes incorporating a "biocultural perspective" into conservation ef orts with Amazonian communities in Peru.Our data derives from rapid inventories (expert surveys of the geology and biodiversity of intact forests, paired with social assessments that identify natural resource use, social organization, cultural strengths, and the aspirations of local residents).Te Field Museum Action Science team has conducted a total of 28 inventories since 1999, with 14 conducted in Peru's Department of Loreto, one of the most megadiverse regions of the world.Te sites selected for inventories are determined through examining satellite images, conducting overfights, and organizing discussions with local conservation partners.T e selection of communities for the social assessment relies on examining available demographic data, determining feasibility of access, and consulting with Indigenous organizations.Communities are comprised of Indigenous and long-term traditional forest dwellers, ranging in size from approximately 50 to 1,000 people (see Field Museum 2016a for long-term community-based work and 2016b for Rapid Inventory or RI reports; below we cite specifc reports where the data can be accessed by report number).Additionally, we report here on data from longer-term ef orts in the Peruvian Amazon involving 38 communities in the bufer zones of (1) the Cordillera Azul National Park, (2) the Ampiyacu-Apayacu Regional Conservation Area, and (3) the Sierra del Divisor National Park.In these landscapes, we collaborated with local NGOs and community residents to create quality-of-life plans that act as road maps for prioritizing actions to meet the needs and expectations of the population.Te larger goal is to link the plans to local and regional stakeholders (Field Museum 2016a).Te indicators we have developed with communities in the Peruvian Amazon are context-dependent, and the specifc assets that emerged from this work describe the conditions of Amazonian communities.At the same time, the process that produced these indicators can be applied anywhere.For example, we have applied it in urban Chicago and the surrounding rural areas.Te methodology for producing these indicators was developed by Field Museum social scientists working with Peruvian conservation professionals and social scientists and was feld-tested with the participation of Indigenous organizations.
Te assessment of cultural practices and worldviews (called "social and cultural assets") is the principal technique used to determine the degree of retention of cultural practices and beliefs that defne the distinct Amazonian lifestyle (Wali 2016).Once the assessment, or "asset mapping" (Mapeo de Usos y Fortalezas, or MUF, in Spanish), is complete, it provides a rich data set from which indicators can be developed to measure well-being.Te MUF is adapted from urban planning (Kretzmann and McKnight 1993;Wali et al. 2003).It is a combination of diagnostic instruments such as resource sketch mapping and participatory rapid appraisal using focus groups, household surveys, photo elicitation, and community meetings.By combining these systematically, we can provide a more comprehensive place-based assessment that integrates the identifcation of ecological knowledge, forms of social organization, and local institutional capacities (del Campo and Wali 2007;Wali 2016).Additionally, we use an interactive exerciseel hombre/la mujer del buen vivir-that allows people to rate their perceptions (on a scale of 1 to 5) of quality of life in fve domains (natural resources, cultural practices, social relationships, governance or political processes, and household economics) and spurs discussion regarding the relationship between the environment and well-being (Wali et al. 2008).On this scale, a score of 1 represents the worst-case scenario (e.g., complete depletion of natural resources, total loss of Indigenous languages and cultural practices, paralyzing confict within the community, authoritarian and nontransparent governance, and inability to meet basic needs), while a 5 represents the best-case scenario (e.g., abundant natural resources, strongly maintained Indigenous languages and cultural practices, harmonious social relations within the community, ef ective and legitimate local governance, and basic needs are amply met).Methods such as the creation of community crests, natural and cultural resource use maps, and the rating of perceptions of quality of life are useful for developing biocultural indicators in each of the f ve domains.
Our participatory research showed that Amazonian communities have mechanisms in place to regulate and protect resources linked to the extractive and subsistence economy.Participants mapped salt licks, lakes, and sites of mythical importance, as well as places where timber, f bers, medicinal plants, and fruits were harvested or cultivated.Tey provided a detailed analysis of the spatial patterns of biodiversity distribution.Participants also documented more deeply rooted systems of natural resource control embedded in mythological beliefs.For example, the Shawi, who live in the Cordillera Escalera (RI 26), believe in the power of a'shins (mothers), spirits that protect aspects of the natural world (Gow 1991).During the Ere-Campuya inventory and Tapiche Blanco inventories (RIs 25, 27), participants noted that some lakes are protected by madres (mothers) in the form of large snakes (boas or anacondas, likely Eunectes sp.) that discourage fsher people from visiting those lakes frequently.In each of these cases, shared beliefs encourage people to avoid overharvesting.
Traditional forms of social support such as communal work parties and other kinship-based systems of reciprocity also function to increase group productivity and well-being while protecting against overexploitation of the animals and plants in the forest.Tese cultural practices have been found in virtually all communities participating in the Peruvian inventories (16)(17)(18)20,(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28).
Finally, these communities do not exist in isolation from other communities, broader Peruvian and global society, markets, and governance systems.Relationships that communities have with external actors also constitute key assets that they can leverage to improve their well-being, and these are documented and evaluated by communities and their allies.
In sum, our eforts in all these landscapes have demonstrated that both perceived and actual well-being status is relatively high.Only 9 of a total of 77 communities ranked their perception of quality of life at below a 3 during the el hombre/la mujer del buen vivir exercise.Generally, communities closer to healthier forest ecosystems rank their quality of life at a higher level (Figure 1).Perception correlates closely with actual well-being level measured in the integrated way of the MUF.While the indicators of well-being that emerge from the asset mapping process we have developed in the Peruvian Amazon fall into fve domains (natural, social, cultural, economic, and political), any number of specif c indicators can emerge in each of these domains.More important than the number of indicators identifed in each domain is the interrelationship between these diferent dimensions of well-being.For example, forest resource stewardship is linked to cultural knowledge and to social relations that promote collective management.
Te MUF-based measurement of well-being conficts with the national characterization of these communities as living in extreme poverty (see Figure 1).Ofen in national develop- ment discourses, "modernization" is equated as "progress" over forest-dwelling forms (Gasché Susess et al. 2010).Amazonian communities are constantly reminded of their "backward" status according to indicators such as per capita income, education level, and quality of infrastructure.Aforded the opportunity, they resist this characterization and retain values and practices that undergird their attachment to their homelands.As Peruvian anthropologist Alberto Chirif stated, "Tese indicators do not measure the quality of fresh foods Indigenous Peoples eat, the good air they breathe, the fresh water they drink from the streams, the happiness of the children playing in the rivers, or the control they feel over their own lives" (2007: 2-4).
Once people have used the indicators to refect on their level of well-being, they set actionable priorities to improve their quality of life.In almost all cases, communities prioritize sustainable natural resource management alongside the maintenance of traditional practices in order to improve their well-being.

Integrating Knowledge Systems to Innovate Community-Driven Approaches: Reestablishing Sustainable Relationships to Biocultural Land/Seascapes through Nā Kilo 'Āina, Hawai'i
Kanoe Morishige, Pelika Andrade, and Pua'ala Pascua Tis case study from Hawai'i encompasses the community level and can be applied crossculturally, with outcomes focused on social, cultural, and ecological health.Te indicator set stems from a Native Hawaiian worldview and integrates Western scientifc methods to characterize biocultural resilience in communities throughout Hawai'i.Te tools and techniques presented in this approach, including seasonal and ecological indicators, are applicable in placebased and Indigenous communities across the globe.
In 2009, a small group of Native Hawaiian scholars at the University of Hawai'i at Hilo developed the Nā Kilo 'Āina (NKA) program (Nā Kilo 'Āina 2014) and subsequent indicator set as a method to observe, internalize, and characterize biocultural systems.Understanding the essential role of Indigenous perspectives in conservation (Gadgil et al. 1993) NKA captures community-level indicators to support community-driven management.Customarily, local-level resource management in Hawai'i supported thriving social and ecological communities (Ayers and Kittinger 2014;Friedlander et al. 2013;Tanaka 2008;Vaughan and Vitousek 2013;Vaughan et al. 2016).T e term 'āina momona (literally: fat lands; f guratively: abundant and thriving sources of sustenance that support reciprocal relationships between people and place) is used to describe healthy and productive ecological, social, and cultural communities.Achieving 'āina momona is inherently a biocultural process involving local communities, scholars, and natural resource managers.
NKA engages participants in kilo (Native Hawaiian process of observation) by working through a series of seasonal indicators and numerous ecological indicators based on monitoring needs.Kilo is the act of observing but also refers to people who are adept observers and function as repositories of traditional and ecological knowledge to support a balanced and productive system (Maly and Pomroy-Maly 2003).Te goal of NKA is to build the capacity of community kilo to (1) continue traditional knowledge systems, (2) understand both social and ecological communities, and (3) incorporate that knowledge in local resource management.

Huli 'Ia: Seasonal Indicators
Huli 'Ia is a facilitated process in which groups of participants characterize approximately 30 predefned indicators according to weekly or monthly observations (varying by project duration).Te process has two main goals: (1) to identify dominant environmental patterns in the atmosphere, lands, and oceans-specifcally how these events coincide and what they indicate; and (2) to build the capacity of the kilo to recognize and internalize these environmental observations.Example indicators include characterizing dominant weather patterns and indicating the presence and size of juvenile f sh.Te process also incorporates more nuanced indicators like scents of upland and coastal environments and refections on physical and emotional wellness.Group observations are combed for dominant trends.At the conclusion, trends and linked occurrences are described through 'ōlelo no'eau, Hawaiian proverbs that serve as vessels of Hawaiian knowledge.For example, afer several years of monthly observations, participants in Ka'ūpūlehu noted that the beginning of Ho'oilo (wet season) is marked by the arrival of winter swells and upland rainfall, which forecasts the arrival of a highly prized seasonal intertidal algae, limu pāhe'e (Porphyra spp.).T e 'ōlelo no'eau composed to describe this relationship reads, "Ke pi'i nā nalu 'ulupā pōhaku, pulu ka papa a ulu ka pāhe'e.When the boulder-crashing waves arrive, the shelf becomes wet and limu pāhe'e grows."

Ecological Indicators
NKA includes marine ecological assessments in the kilo process.Knowledge of population health, life history, and reproductive life cycles are vital in the development of appropriate adaptive management tools (Poepoe et al. 2007).More importantly, sharing this knowledge may inform harvesting practices to avoid overharvesting and promote the long-term health of biocultural resources.Ecological indicators, including fsh abundance and diversity of algae, are assessed with standard nearshore/intertidal monitoring techniques.Spawning potential is also determined for select species such as hā'uke'uke (Colobocentrotus atratus) and 'opihi (Cellana spp.).Tese methods characterize intertidal communities and quantify population dynamics over time.Integrating Huli 'Ia and ecological monitoring methods characterizes times of peak spawning through the 'ōlelo no'eau, "Hō'ea mai o Lono i ka malu o ka lani, ho'opuehu 'ia ke koa pa'a pōhaku.At the arrival of Lono, god of fertility and peace, the rock-clinging invertebrates are spawning." Results are presented back to communities by a method of their choosing.One deliverable from NKA's longest community partnership captures the integration of Huli 'Ia and ecological indicators at the scale of ahupua'a (watershed unit, from ridge to reef), or traditional land division in a seasonal calendar for Ka'ūpūlehu (see McMillen et al. 2016).

Hawai'i Conservation Alliance Community Watershed Snapshot: A Case Study of Local Measures for Ahupua'a Health
Lihla Noori, Christian Giardina, Manuel Mejia, and John Parks Tis case study encompasses the community level, with watershed health outcomes def ned through a cultural lens and directed toward human well-being.Te indicator set was developed for application to watersheds and communities of Hawai'i, but we believe at least part of the set may be relevant across other locations and cultures, particularly within the Pacifc Islands and other Small Island Developing States (Parks and Noori 2016).
Native Hawaiian tradition interprets Hawai'i's natural environment through a cultural lens that recognizes the intimate physical, psychological, and spiritual relationship that Hawai'i's people have with their natural surroundings.Te archipelago's natural wealth is not only valued for the ecological services that are provided to the people; it is also considered spiritually and genealogically connected to Hawaiians.Even today it is common to hear local residents speak of their ancestral connections to specifc endemic fora and fauna, openly recognizing and behaving in ways that acknowledge and honor these connections.In this regard, it is the strength and the health of such biocultural connections between local families and their natural surroundings that are indicative of the health of the entire ecosystem, including humans.
Te Hawai'i Conservation Alliance (HCA) is a cooperative collaboration of 24 natural resource conservation-related organizations representing state and federal agencies, educational institutions, and nonproft organizations with a mission to provide unifed leadership and action on conservation issues critical to Hawai'i.HCA's Efective Conservation Program (ECP) was conceptualized in 2003 to facilitate conservation of Hawai'i's native ecosystems in terrestrial, aquatic, and marine realms.In 2012, HCA ECP compiled available government agency geospatial data on their newly developed data-sharing platform with the intention to evaluate the status of natural resource management eforts across the islands, from mauka to makai (mountain to sea, aka "ridge to reef ").Evaluation was proposed at the watershed scale using metrics developed in consultation with interested communities and residents to elevate capacity of their own local management ef orts.
Initiated in 2013, the Community Watershed Snapshot is an assessment-type status report on the health of watersheds, with twin goals of democratizing conservation and providing needed data for decision makers and communities.Te snapshot combines geospatial data from government agencies with specifc information gathered locally by volunteer communities and nongovernment partner organizations, including social-economic information and local kūpuna (elder) knowledge.Te goal is to generate relevant communication products on the current status of watershed health in support of local management eforts.A participatory process involving local communities and expert peer reviewers served to identify a set of high-priority biocultural indicators (Noori and Parks 2015).HCA consulted with local leaders and stakeholders from eight selected communities 2 across the main Hawaiian Islands regarding their perceptions on how to measure the health of their own watershed through time.Out of these consultations, 80 community representatives identifed a shared set of mauka (terrestrial), makai/wai (ocean/freshwater), and ka'ike (social-economic) factors that were important to the health of their ahupua'a and were to be used to evaluate change in the current status of their snapshot (Noori and Parks 2015).
As a result of the consultative and collaborative process, in 2014 a set of 14 watershed snapshot metrics was endorsed by HCA.Ten of these indicators are biophysically focused (related to the quantity and quality of water, plant, and animal resources on land and in the ocean), whereas four are social-culturally focused.Te latter include indicators of health, community involvement in natural resource management, and indicators of cultural well-being: number of and degree of respect for kūpuna; number of families that obtain at least a portion of their sustenance from natural resources harvested within the land/seascape that they reside within; presence of traditional agriculture; and presence of traditional fshing practices (Noori and Parks 2015).Te indicators are viewed through a social-ecological context.For example, "target food fsh" rather than "keystone fsh species, " and "availability of freshwater" (for human use) rather than "volume/abundance of freshwater." All 14 indicators are framed using language that appeals to local communities and is considered "of highest importance" to them in terms of their utility in measuring the health of the watershed and natural surroundings that they reside within.In this regard, the indicators have not simply been "translated" for local use but rather by design have been identifed and selected by Hawaiian communities as being of highest value, as validated through professional and scientifc peer review and collaboration.In particular, the social-cultural indicators (na'ike) serve an important function in the context of assessing the health and resilience of natural systems in the Hawaiian Islands, in part because of the indicators being grounded under a Native Hawaiian value system that is based on public recognition of the social-ecological system, and focusing on the stewardship and sustainability of the system.
Under a standardized set of indicators, volunteer communities and partner groups throughout the main islands are measuring the health of their watersheds using selected metrics (Parks andNoori 2015, 2016).Despite initial concerns from participating communities regarding standardization and comparison between watersheds, there is now growing local interest to apply the standardized indicators to compare and contrast the status and trends of social-ecological health between and across Hawaiian watersheds, particularly for the purpose of learning from those watersheds that are performing better or have lessons to share (Parks and Noori 2016).By design, the indicator set is focused on place-based application, which is of interest to placebased decision makers involved in local management and development planning.
During 2015 and 2016, three communities volunteered to implement selected watershed snapshot metrics within their watersheds with the aim of using the information captured to inform and advance their local natural resource management eforts (Parks and Noori 2015).Tey engaged in the development, design, and production of communication tools to share their snapshot results locally, including through community-friendly posters, infographics, fact sheets, and slide presentations for national and international audiences.Te three communities analyzed and documented their shared experiences and lessons in conducting their snapshots in order to begin engaging a long-term, community-based approach to assessing ef ective conservation of place, share lessons learned with other Hawaiian communities who also have an interest in initiating their own snapshot process, and integrate multiple knowledge systems and data sources in reactivating an intergenerational collaborative stewardship model that had def ned how Hawai'i resources were managed prior to the advent of Western management approaches (Parks and Noori 2016).
Since the completion of the watershed snapshot communication products, the three volunteer communities have used their products to advance local management and engage elected ofcials (Parks and Noori 2016).During 2016 and early 2017, they documented and shared the results of their measures locally across multiple watersheds, and with federal, state, and nongovernment partners.Increasing demand from interested communities on how to participate in the snapshot process has led to the production of a practical, community-friendly guidebook, which helps readers to measure, document, and share their watershed snapshot indicators.

Coming Together and Looking Forward in the Marshall Islands
Mark Stege, Tina Stege, and Jennifer Newell Tis case study encompasses the household and community levels and can be applied across the Marshall Islands, with outcomes focused on the health of landscape and seascape and community well-being.Te process was developed in the Marshall Islands for use there.T e barrier reefs that make up the Marshall Islands have been home for more than two millennia to a seafaring society and the site of intense challenges ranging from World War II battles, to decades of nuclear experiments, and now climate change.As dynamic and living geological features, the 29 atolls and fve reef islands of the Marshall Islands need conservation action and stewardship to be resilient against the existential threat climate change poses to Marshallese culture and livelihoods.In response to climate and nonclimate stressors including plantation development, pollution, land clearing, increasing impact of commercial fsheries, and population growth, a team of government, nongovernment, and academic organizations-all with a common interest in the conservation, development, and management of the natural resources of the Marshall Islands-have developed the Reimaanlok Framework.
Reimaanlok (which means "looking forward") is an eight-step, community-driven process that focuses on the health of land-and seascape and community well-being (see Table 3).It is facilitated by the Coastal Management Advisory Council (CMAC), a national consortium that incorporates members from government ministries, agencies, NGOs, and academia.T e Reimaanlok Framework is increasingly understood and practiced by CMAC members and has become mainstreamed within national government legislation, governance, and f nancing systems, most importantly within the Republic of Marshall Islands Protected Area Network and the Marshall Islands' commitment to achieve the Micronesia Challenge (MC) goal to ef ectively conserve no less than 30 percent of nearshore marine and 20 percent terrestrial areas in perpetuity.Te aim is to "develop principles, processes, and guidelines for the design, establishment, and management of conservation areas that are fully owned, led, and endorsed by local communities based on their needs, values, and cultural heritage" (CMAC 2012: ii).For community leaders, Reimaanlok provides local cohesion amid a dizzying array of international development goals, regional commitments, national policies, and action plans.
When the Reimaanlok process is initiated by an atoll community's leadership (Step 1), a scoping and budgeting exercise (Step 2) ensues, followed by site visits by CMAC facilitators to build mutual awareness with the target atoll community on their community's specif c needs for resource planning (Step 3) as well as the gathering and analysis of various parameters of social-economic, physical, and biological indicators of community well-being and ecosystem health (Step 4).During Steps 3 and 4, the CMAC consortium employs a mixture of tailor-made ).High-resolution GPS surveys are used to determine island height and food risk, complementing the VA-LEAP process (Appendices 13, "Developing Benchmarks Relative to Sea Level, " and 14, "Surveying Island Height Procedures").Quantitative surveys of natural resources are also conducted using standardized international protocols for marine and terrestrial resource assessments.Te information collected through Step 4 informs the development of a resource management plan (Step 5).Following on from the integrated, biocultural approach to data collection in Step 4, activities in this step include the development of both process and impact indicators to show, in the f rst case, the completion of processes/activities outlined in the resource management plan and, in the second case, the impact of management actions in a resource area.Impact indicators may be biological or social-economic (Appendix 23, "Developing Good Indicators").While indicator development is driven by local concerns, the process is linked to national and regional initiatives like the Micronesia Challenge Socioeconomic Working Group, which identifed the human well-being domains and attributes of the Micronesia Challenge and prioritized relevant indicators to measure the MC progress in achieving these attributes (Nevitt and Wongbusarakum 2013).
Steps 6 to 8 complete the process with sign-of on the management plan, monitoring and adaptive management of the plan's objectives (key to monitoring is the assessment of biological and social-economic indicators at regular intervals, as well as a review of the management plan every fve years), and fnally maintaining commitment to the plan through ongoing education, awareness, and capacity-building initiatives within the community.Te process thus looks toward long-term dynamics and success.
Reimaanlok is recognized internationally as being at the forefront of contemporary coastal zone management and climate adaptation, particularly among Small Island Developing States where there is a paucity of scientifc data and signifcant and increasing threats, and where decision making about the use of natural resources occurs primarily at the local level (Baker et al. 2011;Govan 2011;Grantham et al. 2011).Twenty-three atoll communities are currently engaged in some stage of the Reimaanlok process.Depending on where they are in the process, communities using this approach are experiencing various measures of success as they proceed in the step-by-step process of articulating threats and their needs and priorities, and codifying these into a management plan with various short-, medium-, and long-term measures, including enhancing their ecosystem and social-economic resilience to climate impacts.Six atoll communities are at Steps 6 or 7 of the process and thus have resource management plans in place to support informed conservation and sustainable development measures.For example, on Ailuk Atoll (Step 7) and Bikirin, Majuro Atoll (Step 6), these include windward vegetation planting projects, or jannar in Marshallese, to protect inland food sources and homesteads.Namdrik Atoll's (Step 6) engagement in the Reimaanlok process also informed planting projects, the establishment of a marine protected area, and the reactivation of a pearl farm.T e Namdrik Atoll Local Resources Committee, a community organization constituted as part of the Reimaanlok process, received global recognition for its outstanding eforts in sustainable development at the Rio +20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2012.T e Reimaanlok process allows these municipalities/communities to stay engaged in implementing and monitoring conservation and sustainable development measures as a unifying endeavor for their community.

Biocultural Approaches to Sustainability Indicators in Solomon Islands
Joe McCarter Tis case study reports on a biocultural approach to developing sustainability indicators in the Western Province of Solomon Islands (McCarter et al. forthcoming).Te goal of this work is to support community-based resource management of land-and seascapes through the identifcation, assessment, and discussion of locally relevant sustainability indicators.T e ongoing project seeks to link to provincial, national, and international sustainability assessments and to provide best practice lessons for using biocultural approaches in cross-cultural situations in Solomon Islands and elsewhere.Te resulting indicator set addresses the household and community levels, and its outcomes focus on local resource management of land-and seascapes.T e indicator set was developed for specifc communities in Solomon Islands; however, indicator categories and trends have the potential to inform monitoring and evaluation in other contexts.
Te Western Province of Solomon Islands is a unique mosaic of large lagoon systems and both high volcanic and small, coral-fringed islands.Nearly 80 percent of the population is rural, coastal, and relies on fshing and farming for nutrition and income (UN Data 2016).A number of pressures-from large-scale resource extraction to climatic variation-impact rural communities throughout the Western Province.While national legislation (e.g., the Protected Areas Act 2010) calls for environmental protection alongside appropriate "sustainable use, " there is limited knowledge of how to measure and monitor such trends.Tis project works in four communities that difer in their degrees of market integration and ecological transformation but are all part of a community network maintained by the Solomon Islands Community Conservation Partnership (SICCP) and seek to strengthen or maintain systems for natural resource management.
Te indicator set was developed to support sustainable community resource management around a range of social and ecological factors of importance to the communities.It explicitly sought to work across multiple domains and to make linkages between social and ecological components (e.g., between the success of gardens, health of community members, and degree of intactness of the terrestrial forest environment).We took a biocultural approach to indicator development, meaning we explicitly started with and built on place-based cultural perspectives-encompassing values, knowledge, and needs-and recognized the inextricable links between ecological and social realms (Sterling et al. forthcoming).Such approaches have the potential to strengthen the input of local voices in provincial, national, and regional forums, guide respectful engagement by NGOs and external researchers, and facilitate the development of multiple evidence-based approaches (cf.Tengö et al. 2014).
We began developing indicators by holding an initial set of workshops to explore community perceptions of current state, past trends, and ideal future visions.Te outputs of these work-shops helped to defne a set of domains that were important in each community.T ese domains included both ecological (e.g., integrity of forest) and social (e.g., degree of cooperation and unity) components, as well as linkages between them (e.g., maintaining vibrant vernacular language to communicate environmental information).
We used these domains to develop indicators, using an iterative process with communities.A draf indicator set was compared with regional and international examples and sorted according to theoretical frameworks (Folke et al. 2003).Tese various categorizing exercises underscored some diferences between externally derived frameworks and local interests and perceptions, and in some instances the comparison helped to identify themes that might have been missed in the visioning process.For example, knowledge of systems limits-including Indigenous and Western scientifc sources of information and practice-is critical to the ability to manage land and seascapes but did not explicitly emerge from the community visioning exercises and was added in (e.g., Foale 2006).
Tere are currently 68 indicators (62 quantitative and 6 qualitative) covering outcomes such as garden and ocean productivity, local knowledge regarding resource management, and state and trends of the environment, governance, and leadership.A subset of the indicators specifcally addresses the feedbacks between humans and their environment; however, quantif cation of those indicators has been dif cult.
We then worked with communities to collect data and assess the current state of the indicators.Data collection occurred over a period of 18 months.Data collection methods were designed and implemented in collaboration with community research assistants and comprised a variety of ecological and social science methods including structured interviews (e.g., dietary diversity, knowledge transmission), semistructured interviews (e.g., exploration of foodways and resilience), community surveys (e.g., catch per unit efort), and ecological survey methods (e.g., forest plotting, timed shellfsh counts).Partner organizations or individuals provided expertise as needed.Data collection at all stages centered around training and capacity building, with the aim that community research assistants will be able to continue to collect data over the medium term.Indicator data overlapped but were not standardized across sites.
Data from the indicators were supported by other activities designed to stimulate discussion of landscape change over time.For example, participants in mapping "studios" compared large format aerial photos dating from the 1940s and 1960s against current high-resolution satellite imagery.Participants were also able to use the images to plan future change and explore tradeofs (e.g., between agricultural expansion and village area).
Data were generally analyzed as they were collected, and reviewed with communities for comment and immediate discussion, sometimes in the context of targeted advice from expert advisers.For example, dietary diversity data were collected in November 2015 and May 2016, analyzed, and then discussed in communities with an expert team from the Ministry of Health and a local NGO (the Kastom Gaden Association).All data will be formed into two major products for use in communities: large-scale maps showing spatial and temporal aspects of landscape change and use, and indicator portfolios, or collections of stories and information from the various domains of data that have been collected.Tese products have been produced with a focus on durability and utility for planning and will feed directly into resource management planning at each site by partner organizations.Data analysis and production will be an iterative process; based on analyses and discussions with communities, there may be a call for further parsing or information collection.
Te biocultural approach to indicator development outlined here may allow for the collection of social and ecological information for use by community decision makers but, importantly, also follows a process that allows for discussions within communities of current state and future planning.Te outputs of this process can also of er place-based perspectives to policy makers in Solomon Islands, by highlighting components of resilience in the communities that are not commonly accounted for in national metrics.Te importance and utility of the indicators over time will depend on their being efectively integrated into community and NGO programs, and on continued support to discuss and monitor into the future.

Indicator Sets and Frameworks
Many of the indicator sets described above were framed using existing conceptual frameworks (e.g., DPSIR, SES) that indicate how to convert data from indicators into decisions.However, decisions on the relevance of information and the selection of indicators and their relative importance can unintentionally introduce bias before any evaluation is undertaken.T us, even when included through participatory processes, Indigenous indicators can be overwhelmed by the sheer scale of representation of other ways of knowing.Te following framework foregrounds and quantif es diferent stakeholder worldviews to allow for comparison.

Mauri Model Decision Making Framework
Tē Kipa Kepa Morgan Designed to be transparent, inclusive, and holistic, this framework identifes its ontological basis and provides an alternative Indigenous conceptual measure of sustainability.It is a unique approach to indicator set development that includes processes designed to ensure repeatability and objectivity in the evaluation being undertaken.T e Mauri Model is intended for use at the community level and the process can be applied in any community, with outcomes focused on sustainability.Decision making frameworks based on systems thinking can facilitate enhanced understandings of sustainability and potentially enlighten societies to behave dif erently.In community settings, these frameworks must be contextually relevant and based on epistemological concepts that are more strongly aligned with sustainability (Morgan 2006a) than contemporary neoliberal capitalism (Di Tella and MacCulloch 2008).T e epistemologies of Indigenous Peoples are commonly based on principles of interconnectedness, relevance over long periods of time, intergenerational equity, and uniqueness to place (Durie 2005).In the case of Aotearoa New Zealand, the Indigenous Māori have developed strategies to retain their values, beliefs, identity, and ways of being within a colonized societal context.For example, New Zealand law has been impacted by Māori claims relating to environmental degradation and retention of cultural values, knowledge, and language, ofen in terms of impacts on mauri, the life-supporting capacity of the ecosystem and its future potential (Morgan 2008).T e Resource Management Act of 1991 aims to promote sustainable development, taking into account the environmental, social, cultural, and economic well-being of society.While the groundbreaking law incorporated numerous Indigenous concepts, it stopped short of actually including mauri.
A holistic and inclusive way to understand the world other than in monetary terms exists (Morgan 2008).Raymond Firth (1929) observed that mauri appeared to be the economic currency of traditional Māori society.Mauri is the binding force between the physical and everything else that makes life possible.It is the life-supporting capacity within a thing or collection of things such as an ecosystem.Te concept can be likened to gravity, as while it may not be observable directly, it explains observable phenomena, being the force that when suf ciently diminished or denigrated defnes the loss of potential to support life, or the diference between life and death.T e Mauri Model Decision Making Framework was co-created with the Combined Tangata Whenua Forum and Ngāti Pikiao and Ngāi Tahu tribal entities (Morgan 2008), by inter-weaving Indigenous and scientif c understandings of sustainability, specif cally the Indigenous conceptualization of the mauri force and systems thinking (Morgan 2006a).As an expert-weighted decision matrix, the Mauri Model is holistic, simple to use, objective, and produces repeatable results.T e Mauri Model is unique, as it provides a culturally neutral template within which Indigenous values are explicitly empowered alongside scientifc data.Applications of the Mauri Model include many facets of impact assessment, encompassing treatment technologies, project sustainability, climate change adaptation, disaster response, and comparative studies.T e Mauri Model combines a stakeholder worldview analysis with an indicator measurement process (Mauri Meter) to determine the absolute sustainability of the scenario being assessed, using mauri as the base metric.Te concept of mauri is used to represent the potential of phenomena possessing physical and/or metaphysical characteristics.Te capability to measure both physical quantities and metaphysical qualities allows for a wide, inclusive range of sustainability indicators that better refect the physically, culturally, psychologically, and spiritually def ned reality of Indigenous Peoples.
T e Mauri Model has four constituent dimensions: mauri of the ecosystem, mauri of the Indigenous People, mauri of the community, and mauri of the base economic unit, the family or household.Adoption of these four dimensions facilitates more consistent comparison of impacts and efects across projects due to the ability to use the same metric to measure all indicators in a dimension and the constant groupings.Ecosystem indicators range from fertility of the land to water quality; cultural/ Indigenous indicators range from the use of traditional knowledge to heritage protection measures; community indicators range from access to community centers to life expectancy; and economic indicators range from employment availability to the price of energy.
T e Mauri Meter defnes the Likert scale used for measurement as f ve integers pivoting about zero (see Figure 2).Scores ranging from −2 to +2 depict possible states of mauri (negligible impact = 0, partial impact = 1, and full impact = 2).A positive result refects an impact that is sustainable.Te Likert scale ensures objective assessment (see Figure 3) of indicators, as once the tolerance for a negligible indicator impact is def ned (0 result), any other outcome is either sustainable (positive) or not (negative), and once the upper thresholds are defned for full impact (−2 and +2), the absolute determination of sustainability is possible for each indicator.T e combined result (arithmetic average) for a dimension refects the overall trend occurring for that particular dimension.Te combination of processes is shown in Figure 4. Dimension   (Morgan et. al. 2012).

Mauri Meter
Trends for Dimensions

Mauri Model
Quantifcation of Worldview

Threshold Defnition for Indicators
results can be depicted graphically as historic and future mauri trends when plotted against time on the horizontal axis (see Figure 5).T e Mauri Model also allows the quantif cation of diferent stakeholder worldviews, determining the relative priorities of the four mauri dimensions as percentage weightings using a pair-wise comparison technique 1980).Accurate representation of adversarial perspectives of a situation without the need to alter actual mauri dimension results is an indication that the analysis will have credibility with the stakeholders that are impacted.T e quantif ed priorities can reveal the inherent bias of stakeholders and also refect the dimensions most strongly infuencing a stakeholder's understanding of a situation.T e Mauri Model has now been in use for more than a decade, taught as an engineering postgraduate elective at the University of Auckland for seven years and then digitized as a Web tool in 2012, and is the basis for assessments that quantify the impacts of New Zealand's worst environmental disaster, the oil spill from the 2011 grounding of the MV Rena (Fa'aui and Morgan 2014).Independent research determined the Mauri Model Decision Making Framework to be an exemplar sustainability indicator set when benchmarked against the Bellagio STAMP principles for sustainability, and concluded that the Mauri Model is relevant regardless of community (Challenger 2013).
T e Mauri Model allows Indigenous Peoples to contribute understanding based on their own knowledge so that they can be efectively included in resource management decision making processes, with particular relevance to New Zealand law.Te transferability of the Mauri Model identifes it as a potential pathway to more sustainable decisions and actions.T us, through integrating systems techniques and the Indigenous concept of mauri, the Mauri Model creates a new approach to cross-cultural communication and action.As the Mauri Model is applied more broadly, some elements could be clarifed to enhance its transferability in terms of impact on decision making.Tese include community issues related to governance and land rights, the feedbacks between mauri dimensions, the ability of the framework to capture short-and Figure 5: 100-year pre-Rena dimension trends for state of mauri (y-axis) plotted against distorted time intervals (x-axis) (Morgan et. al. 2015).Te overall retrospective trend for mauri is presented as the equally weighted combination of the four dimensions.191819321953197519771991200020022004 Sep-11 Sep-11 Ecosystem mauri (Environmental) Community mauri (Social) Whanau mauri (Economic) Overall Mauri Hapu mauri (Cultural) longer-term dynamics, and how quantifed stakeholder worldviews can be weighted and translated into decisions.

Discussion
We present seven case studies and one framework to explore development of locally relevant and culturally grounded indicator sets assessing coupled social-ecological systems.Across case studies, we observe several common features that could help shape efective resilience indicator development and implementation (Table 4).We fnd that while the process of developing indicators varied among the case studies, all of them used an approach to developing indicators that can potentially be transferable to other places and/or cultural contexts, particularly within the geographic regions where they were developed.
Other commonalities include a reliance on multiple knowledge systems and mixed measurement systems (qualitative and quantitative), refecting the importance of diverse sources of information.Te case studies use a myriad of approaches for data collection, ranging from interviews to ecological survey methods.Tey include indicators that fall within four domains: social/cultural, economic, political/governance, and environmental.All of the approaches include indicators categorized as social/cultural, and well-being indicators that provide a more complex view of well-being than traditional metrics like GDP.A few case studies (Solomon Islands, SEPLS, NKA) also identif ed composite indicators that specif cally measure feedbacks between diferent domains of the system; going forward, we see development of indicators that measure feedbacks as an important area for investment.
All case studies include indicators intended to support community decision making while providing information to policy makers or others in diferent contexts.Indicators were mostly collected and analyzed at the community and/or household level, though Melanesian Well-Being Indicators were planned, implemented, and analyzed at the national level.Te case studies emphasize that insights provided by locally grounded approaches can be valuable to those  outside the community such as external researchers, policy makers, or NGOs.For instance, the indicators can help elucidate how communities contribute to the maintenance of biological diversity and ecosystems' ability to respond to stresses and change.In contributing to the development of a common language between local and external communities, the biocultural approach can enrich understanding of human-environment interactions.Policy makers can use the results as a decision support tool to identify benefts and consequences of actions, priorities, and sequences, and to develop strategies at the local and national level that are more consistent with local culture and values.While there is variation across case studies in the total number of indicators, all case studies rely on disaggregated information versus a single index number.Disaggregated information requires a larger investment in interpretation or sharing information, whereas aggregated information (e.g., the social-ecological vulnerability index for coral reef-associated communities; see Cinner et al. 2013) can be quickly shared.However, disaggregated information may provide clearer insights into the factors moving a system in one direction or another.A single number can indicate what is happening but not why it is happening and may also mask dif erent perspectives and viewpoints.
Scoring systems difer widely between case studies (though several cases score individual indicators on a fve-point scale: SEPLS, Peru, Mauri Model).All indicator sets identify culturally relevant criteria to benchmark or standardize indicator scores, but some are more specif c than others in setting these criteria.It is important to distinguish the process of developing indicators from the process of setting criteria used to determine where a community wants to be in relation to the indicator.Diferent communities might set diferent benchmarks and thresholds depending on their needs.Tus, standardization of indicators and related criteria for assessing the state of those indicators can inform action and policy and help communities to track changes through time, but the indicator and criteria do not have to be exactly the same across communities.Standardization can also help international agencies to identify where external input and resources can be useful to a community and facilitate allocation of resources across potential investments.Standardization of some form can allow for comparison across sites, giving communities access to potentially valuable information on how other communities react to similar situations.For example, the HCA case study describes how several communities have developed and shared communication products, such as posters and presentations, to facilitate exchange of lessons learned.
Te majority of indicators were developed for communities to track what they believe is important, and are therefore tailored to a particular region and culture.Tus, the development of indicators and criteria for use at broader temporal or spatial scales than the community they stem from leads to a double-edged challenge.On one side, the indicator sets need to be specif c enough to refect the cultural and ecological contexts (and their links) of a given community; on the other side, lessons learned should be generalizable enough to allow for comparison across communities to trigger appropriate decision making in other contexts (such as national and international arenas).We note that this challenge can be negotiated in a number of ways, for instance, by developing an overarching conceptual framework and complementary indicator measurement processes within which individual communities can choose specif c indicators and set locally relevant criteria (such as is done by the Mauri Model), by having general indicators whose criteria and specifcs can be tailored to local settings (like SEPLS, though some challenges remain with comparable thresholds across sites), or by identifying some indicators within a set that are explicitly oriented toward comparison while having others that are locally tailored (Solomon Islands, Melanesian Well-Being Indicators, and Peru).Indicators developed for specifc local contexts cannot be expected to serve as stable elements at other levels (Tsing 2012), yet it is feasible to nest locally tailored indicators within targets that are comparable across geographies and to share cross-context lessons and not precise indicator measurements.Combining locally tailored metrics and broadly accepted standardized domains like wealth, health, and well-being (Donatuto et al. 2014) may provide scafolding between locally tailored indicators and national or international metrics.
While all case studies illustrate the value and importance of using a biocultural approach to indicator development, there are many challenges, including those related to ensuring representation of diverse perspectives within heterogeneous communities when developing the indicators and/or ranking them; identifying ways to synthesize across results from the various indicators; potential costs, especially in terms of time commitments, which are of en extensive with such an approach; and the feasibility of monitoring multiple indicators and how of en they can or should be monitored to be meaningful.Te acknowledgment of the potential for bias in models and frameworks is important, as is attention to design of tools to ensure the highest level of transparency about representation of values.
A particular challenge remains in how to operationalize regular assessment and to translate data into action.While many of the indicator sets we review are intended to inf uence local decision making, it is not clear how successful they have been in bringing about change.Future studies could focus on assessing whether or not taking a biocultural approach directly inf uences local policy and/or human behavior in ways judged as improving sustainability.
Frameworks that depict relationships and processes within systems can help move toward action via informing decision support tools.T e Mauri Model weighs dimension outcomes within a matrix, allowing locally def ned indicators to be meaningful and useable in real-world decisions.T e Mauri Meter quantifes Indigenous values in a holistic and relatively simple way, thus making the indicators more useful than separate considerations that may be dif cult to act upon.Janet Stephenson and Henrik Moller (2009) suggest that recognizing that science and Indigenous knowledge are founded in very diferent belief systems may open the way to resolving some of the tensions between them.While translation between worldviews and contexts is fraught (West 2005) and care must be taken with the integrity and robustness of the approaches developed, many of the case studies above demonstrate that bringing disparate types of knowledge into conversation has led to efective coproduction of new ways of knowing.Despite remaining challenges, current biocultural work has advanced eforts to represent a range of worldviews and values in measurements that facilitate understanding and management of complex systems.

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: Map of quality-of-life rankings on a scale of 1 to 5 averaged across communities in each protected area, overlaid on national map of poverty zones in Loreto, Peru.
, the founding members-Native Hawaiians with strong cultural backgrounds and formal training in ecology-placed high value on integrating Indigenous and Western scientifc knowledge through the NKA program.Since the frst community partnership in Ka'ūpūlehu, Hawai'i Island, in 2009, NKA has expanded to communities across Hawai'i (including Kailapa, Hawai'i Island, and Hā'ena, Kaua'i) and beyond to Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands.At present, the NKA program is formally housed under a nonproft organization, Nā Maka o Papahānaumokuākea.

Table 1 :
Guiding Elements for Case Study and Framework Authors How is indicator set relevant to local decision makers?How has indicator set been used in decision making?

Table 2 :
Indicators of Resilience in Socio-Ecological Production Landscapes and Seascapes (SEPLS)

Table 3 :
Summary of the Eight-Step Process for Community-Based Fisheries and Resource Management Planning standardized tools based on evolving atoll science and best practices, which are generally contained within the Reimaanlok facilitator's guide(CMAC 2012).For instance, community knowledge and resource mapping is described under Appendix 8 of the guide, titled "Guidelines for the Collection of Local and Traditional Knowledge and mo in the Marshall Islands."T is community resource mapping efort can be further enhanced with information based on the visual observations of the project team walking along a straight line across a specif ed cross-section of nearshore environment, as described in Appendices 9 ("Rapid Ecological Assessment, Participatory Aquatic Resource Transect") and 10 ("Baseline Rapid Assessment of the Natural Resources Methodology").Te guide also includes a comprehensive household survey (Appendix 12, "Socio-economic Baseline Assessment and Monitoring Plan Worksheet") heavily modifed from the SEM-Pasifka(Wongbusakarum et al. 2008)to monitor well-being indicators including those on natural resource use, knowledge, and perceptions relevant to f shers, farmers, and handicraf trades, as well as overall climate change awareness and conservation efectiveness.Climate change impacts and adaptation are further assessed through a qualitative Vulnerability Assessment that relies on the knowledge of community members and subsequent development of a Local Early Action Plan (Appendix 35, "VA-LEAP" Source: CMAC (2012).and

Table 4 :
Characteristics of seven case studies and one framework: Socioecological Production Landscapes and Seascapes (SEPLS);