A Synthesis of Current Approaches to Traps Is Useful But Needs Rethinking for Indigenous Disadvantage and Poverty Research

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Indigenous disadvantage and poverty have persisted and are set to continue into the future. Although a large amount of work describes the extent and nature of indigenous disadvantage and poverty, there is little evidence-based systems understanding of the mechanisms that keep many indigenous people in their current dire state. In such a vacuum, policy makers are left to make assumptions about the causal mechanisms. The persistence of inequality and poverty suffered by indigenous people is broadly consistent with the existence of dynamical traps as described in both the resilience and development literature. We reviewed and synthesized these bodies of literature on traps and found that although they give a good lead to a systemic and parsimonious way of exploring traps, the mechanisms suggested need significant rethinking for the indigenous context. Specifically, we recommend extending the concept of traps to encompass the possibility that they are highly resilient but undesirable states, in contrast to current notions of traps as low resilience states. We also highlight the need for close scrutiny of the boundaries of indigenous systems because of the historically public nature of indigenous lives as well as the possible conjoint existence and causal linkage between poverty-and rigidity-traps in the indigenous context.

Integrating Indigenous Ecological Knowledge and Science in Natural Resource Management: Perspectives from Australia

“…Australian indigenous communities continue to face great disadvantage arising from a complex web of historical and contemporary social and environmental pressures (Moran 2009, Sutton 2009, Wohling 2009). The conjunction of densely connected kinship networks, historical exclusion from access to resources, and coercive external interventions has generated codependent rigidity and poverty traps (Maru et al 2012). At a psychological level, structural and cultural violence (Galtung 1969(Galtung , 1990) from colonialism and its legacies has driven some Indigenous people to adopt disadvantage as part of their identity, and to fear that improvements in material circumstances will necessarily be accompanied by loss of culture or identity (Pholi 2012).…”

Adaptive Capacity as Cultural Practice

“…The Grand Ronde narrative history supports the endurance of the poverty trap that Maru et al (2012) note is common to many indigenous cultures. The Grand Ronde, however, pursued a process for escaping the poverty trap.…”

“…Historical examples can provide insights of how cultures get caught in and escape from the poverty and rigidity traps, how adaptability and transformability interact, and how experiences transcend scales. Narratives will not provide the empirical approaches in figures 3 and 4 in Maru et al (2012), but they can identify variables to include and hypotheses to test. Taking a cultural perspective to adaptive capacity, let hypotheses encompass the economic and ecological, social and political, and ideology and knowledge that cultures develop to be flexible, adaptive, continually learning, and transforming when facing changing and unknown futures.…”

“…Adaptive capacity is also part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Brooks et al 2005, Parry et al 2007, UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO 2006), The World Bank (2010), The World Resources Institute (2009), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP 2005), and other organization's dealing with social-ecological system dynamics. Maru et al (2012) discuss various forms of capital for escaping the poverty trap-human, financial, physical, and natural. Capital is discussed in association with the potential axis of http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss4/art13/ Adaptations and maladaptations occur in human history.…”

Governança ambiental urbana em face das mudanças climáticas

“…Em outras palavras, a combinação sinérgica entre elementos genéricos e específicos estabeleceria um círculo virtuoso para uma capacidade adaptativa sustentada de longo prazo (Lemos, 2007;Lemos & Tompkins, 2008), enquanto a tensão nessa relação poderia resultar em cenários negativos, como a promoção da pobreza, agravando e/ou perpetuando a má adaptação (Lemos, 2007;Nelson & Finan, 2009;Maru et al, 2012) e sufocando esforços endógenos na gestão de riscos específicos (Eakin et al, 2011;Murtinho, 2011).…”