Monitoring and evaluation are central to ensuring that innovative, multi-scale, and interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability are effective. The development of relevant indicators for local sustainable management outcomes, and the ability to link these to broader national and international policy targets, are key challenges for resource managers, policymakers, and scientists. Sets of indicators that capture both ecological and social-cultural factors, and the feedbacks between them, can underpin cross-scale linkages that help bridge local and global scale initiatives to increase resilience of both humans and ecosystems. Here we argue that biocultural approaches, in combination with methods for synthesizing across evidence from multiple sources, are critical to developing metrics that facilitate linkages across scales and dimensions. Biocultural approaches explicitly start with and build on local cultural perspectives - encompassing values, knowledges, and needs - and recognize feedbacks between ecosystems and human well-being. Adoption of these approaches can encourage exchange between local and global actors, and facilitate identification of crucial problems and solutions that are missing from many regional and international framings of sustainability. Resource managers, scientists, and policymakers need to be thoughtful about not only what kinds of indicators are measured, but also how indicators are designed, implemented, measured, and ultimately combined to evaluate resource use and well-being. We conclude by providing suggestions for translating between local and global indicator efforts.

River flows connect people, places, and other forms of life, inspiring and sustaining diverse cultural beliefs, values, and ways of life. The concept of environmental flows provides a framework for improving understanding of relationships between river flows and people, and for supporting those that are mutually beneficial. Nevertheless, most approaches to determining environmental flows remain grounded in the biophysical sciences. The newly revised Brisbane Declaration and Global Action Agenda on Environmental Flows (2018) represents a new phase in environmental flow science and an opportunity to better consider the co-constitution of river flows, ecosystems, and society, and to more explicitly incorporate these relationships into river management. We synthesize understanding of relationships between people and rivers as conceived under the renewed definition of environmental flows. We present case studies from Honduras, India, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia that illustrate multidisciplinary, collaborative efforts where recognizing and meeting diverse flow needs of human populations was central to establishing environmental flow recommendations. We also review a small body of literature to highlight examples of the diversity and interdependencies of human-flow relationships—such as the linkages between river flow and human well-being, spiritual needs, cultural identity, and sense of place—that are typically overlooked when environmental flows are assessed and negotiated. Finally, we call for scientists and water managers to recognize the diversity of ways of knowing, relating to, and utilizing rivers, and to place this recognition at the center of future environmental flow assessments.This article is categorized under:Water and Life > Conservation, Management, and AwarenessHuman Water > Water GovernanceHuman Water > Water as Imagined and Represented

n AbstrAct: Measuring progress toward sustainability goals is a multifaceted task. International, regional, and national organizations and agencies seek to promote resilience and capacity for adaptation at local levels. However, their measurement systems may be poorly aligned with local contexts, cultures, and needs. Understanding how to build effective, culturally grounded measurement systems is a fundamental step toward supporting adaptive management and resilience in the face of environmental, social, and economic change. To identify patterns and inform future efforts, we review seven case studies and one framework regarding the development of culturally grounded indicator sets. Additionally, we explore ways to bridge locally relevant indicators and those of use at national and international levels. The process of identifying and setting criteria for appropriate indicators of resilience in social-ecological systems needs further documentation, discussion, and refinement, particularly regarding capturing feedbacks between biological and social-cultural elements of systems.n Keywords: biocultural indicators, indicator sets, Indigenous Peoples, local communities, resilience, sustainability, well-being Indigenous and other place-based, local communities increasingly face an assortment of externally codified 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 (Béné et al. 2013). Identifying and setting criteria for the underlying factors that confer resilience to a community are the first steps toward effectively aligning external sustainability-seeking processes, often 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).

ABSTRACT. The global environmental conservation community recognizes that the participation of local communities is essential for the success of conservation initiatives; however, much work remains to be done on how to integrate conservation and human wellbeing. We propose that an assets-based approach to environmental conservation and human well-being, which is grounded in a biocultural framework, can support sustainable and adaptive management of natural resources by communities in regions adjacent to protected areas. We present evidence from conservation and quality of life initiatives led by the Field Museum of Natural History over the past 17 years in the Peruvian Amazon. Data were derived from asset mapping in 37 communities where rapid inventories were conducted and from 38 communities that participated in longer term quality of life planning. Our main findings are that Amazonian communities have many characteristics, or assets, that recent scholarship has linked to environmental sustainability and good natural resource stewardship, and that quality of life plans that are based on these assets tend to produce priorities that are more consistent with environmental conservation. Importantly, we found that validating social and ecological assets through our approach can contribute to the creation of protected areas and to their long-term management. As strategies to engage local communities in conservation expand, research on how particular methodologies, such as an assets-based approach, is needed to determine how these initiatives can best empower local communities, how they can be improved, and how they can most effectively be linked to broader conservation and development processes.

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Participatory conservation efforts are now common throughout regions of high biodiversity in the developing world. Standard approaches to participatory conservation begin with need-based assessments that identify humaninduced ecological threats and livelihood deficiencies, but this focus on "threats" and "needs" tends to reinforce perceptions of rural people as predatory, poor and dependent. We examine the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological application of an alternative, "assets-based" approach to participatory conservation and the co-management of natural resources in areas of high cultural and biological diversity. As a case study, we report on the implementation of an asset-mapping activity applied in the buffer zone of the Cordillera Azul National Park in north-central Peru. Data were collected by community facilitators in 53 communities within the park's buffer zone. These data encompass local knowledge systems, community visions for the future, and innovative livelihood strategies compatible with conservation goals. By focusing on these social assets, this approach demonstrates the ways in which positive, pre-existing cultural characteristics may be used to plan and guide the management of a protected area. We describe how this approach has helped to empower local communities and to improve dialogue and transparency between disparate stakeholders. We also include a discussion of the challenges and limitations of this assetmapping activity. IntroductionDebates about the role of local people in protected areas abound, both in terms of impact upon protected areas and the participation of local people in protected area management. While some argue that protected areas and local participation share fundamentally incompatible objectives (e.g., Redford & Sanderson 2000), and that protected areas with human influence are less able to improve forest integrity than those without human influence (Brandon et al. 1998, Bruner 2001, other research shows that humans have aided in the protection of plants and other natural resources therein, leading to more diversity and similar or better percentage forest cover than in uninhabited protected areas (Nepstad et al. 2006, Tuxill & Nabhan 2001.In general, participatory approaches have become nearly ubiquitous in conservation programs (Agrawal & Gibson 1999), but challenges persist in the management and comanagement of protected areas with local participation (Barrett et al. 2001). Furthermore, it is clear that threats to biodiversity have occurred in tandem with the disappearance of indigenous languages and traditional ecological knowledge (Maffi 2005), yet a divergence persists between those who advocate the preservation of biodiversity without human intervention (e.g. Terborgh 1999, Redford & Stearman 1993, and those who feel that biological diversity and cultural diversity do not exist in isolation but are linked (Allegretti 1999, Maffi 2005, Schwartzman 1989

What do anthropologists have to say about happiness? For some contributors in this Vital Topics Forum, happiness is a sensory force that colors and shapes human evolution and experience. Others consider happiness, or the lack thereof, to be a faceted reflection of the arrangements in society. All recognize the potential power of human happiness, where a distant memory, fleeting experience, or idealized vision can serve as a driving force in transformative change, prompting individual and collective desire and action to give new meaning, sustain life and livelihood, restore dignity, make peace … to dream again. [trouble, happiness, well‐being, engaged anthropology]