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Respecting Indigenous Knowledge

I visited for the first time Australia in spring 2023. When the Qantas plane landed in Sydney, the first announcement acknowledged the First Nations peoples of Australia as the continuing custodians and traditional owners of the land. I was amazed and inspired because we had started to plan the next WGEA Assembly around the topic of indigenous knowledge. We also adopted it later as the main topic of a collaborative course with the University of Helsinki.

Indigenous knowledge is founded on centuries of wisdom, challenging what we consider as knowledge. It is often seen as opposed to scientific knowledge, but this is too simplistic. Empirical, experience-based, and tested in everyday practices, indigenous knowledge is also scientific. Such a deep understanding of the environment is expected to become increasingly important as we must adapt to a rapidly changing climate. However, utilizing indigenous knowledge includes questions of how to approach it respectfully and fairly.

Indigenous knowledge is a tough question for public authorities. For example, a Supreme Audit Institution can listen to the holders of indigenous knowledge while making their assessments. At the same time, from the historical perspective, they are part of the oppressive system. Thus, engaging with indigenous knowledge is most of all about building trust.

The main discussions of the Rovaniemi Assembly and indigenous knowledge are available here: INTOSAI WGEA Seminar Summaries 2024. At the University course, students conducted a comparative analysis between Australia and New Zealand, as well as Canada and Finland. This was pedagogically a good exercise as it helped to see the various contexts and histories of First Nations and how they affect the situation today. Students’ report is available here:  wgea-and-university-collaborative-course-2024_indigenous-knowledge.pdf

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Western stereotypes and small island realities

Recently, we organized a hybrid meeting in a small island developing nation. It was special occasion as we hadn’t had a chance to meet face-to-face in three years.

The main topic of the event was climate resilience. What could have been a more suitable location for such a topic! Small island developing states are low-lying islands and it is easy to anticipate what might happen to them with the sea level rise.  You would expect people to demonstrate their support for such a country.

What happened? Some Western organizations were uncomfortable sending their representatives to the meeting because of public image concerns: it would look too extravagant to travel to a touristic place that people associate with luxury resorts and dream holidays.

This is disturbing in two ways. First, the local reality and Western imagination are two different worlds. As the meeting took place on a local island, it did not match at all with Western stereotypes, whether it was about overwater villas, dress code, or alcohol policy. Sticking with stereotypes reveals geographic ignorance.

Second, by treating a nation through a Western imagination, you dismiss the right of the local voice to be heard. So-called dual injustice means that those countries least responsible for global warming bear the most severe consequences. And now, those countries that have historically benefited most from greenhouse gas emissions suddenly become droopy. To me, this sounds like environmental postcolonialism. In the context of dual injustice, saying it is unethical to travel to talk about climate resilience is simply hypocrisy.

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Humboldt’s advice

In the first Geography lectures our professor Aartolahti described the way a Geographer observes the world: by taking the globe in her hand.

This came very vividly into my mind as I read Andrea Wulf’s marvellous book “The Invention of Nature” on Alexander von Humboldt and his impact on science. She made it so easy to fall in love again with Humboldt, one of the founding fathers of Geography, explorer, a friend of Goethe and Bolívar, and a great source of inspiration for Darwin and many other scholars.

In 1799, Humboldt embarked for a five-year expedition to South America where he observed the nature “with head and heart”. He combined the nature and human in an unforeseen manner, stressing how everything is interconnected. He was so modern by explaining the fundamental functions of the forests for the ecosystems and climate and worrying about deforestation. He also related colonialism to the devastation of the environment and criticised violence against indigenous people and slavery.

Concerning methodology, Humboldt paid meticulous attention to details and painstakingly made measurements with his barometers and thermometers. But he was also able to connect details into the global context. He had a flexible perspective, both “telescopic and microscopic”. Moreover, Humboldt brought subjectivity into science by stressing how we interpret and understand the world and how senses and intellect are connected.

Humboldt was also a great visualiser as he invented isotherms, which replaced long tables by presenting “world of patterns that hugged the earth in belts”, as Wulf beautifully describes it.

System Der Isotherm-Kurven in Physikalischer Atlas. Heinrich Berghaus, 1845. Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress.
Source: The First Isothermic World Maps | Worlds Revealed: Geography & Maps at The Library Of Congress (loc.gov)

By popularising science, supporting young scholars and stressing the interdisciplinary collaboration, Humboldt feels so relevant in the current world. He even talked about human-induced climate change, in the 19th century!

Humboldt urged scientist to take their equipment and go to the field. “Scientists need to leave their garrets and travel the world”, as Wulf quotes him.

Leaving a garret has been difficult during pandemic. Even with the possibilities provided by modern technology, we lose something if we cannot make physical observations. I have some evidence on this from the environmental audit community. Pandemic has hampered the ability of auditors to do field visits or on the spot-checks. Environmental auditors are concerned about the impact that this might have on the quality of audits.

The latest WGEA environmental survey: Environmental and climate audits on the rise (wgea.org)

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Mining for renewables

Mining is a complex topic. People don’t want such nuisances nearby but instead somewhere else, preferably somewhere far away. A NIMBY phenomenon which isn’t about a backyard only but larger region or a whole country. At the same time, we need minerals for our phones and gadgets, not to mention the batteries for electric cars. If this is the case, shouldn’t we accept that mining might as well take place in our territories and demand for sustainable mining practices? The dependency on rare earth materials is making mining also increasingly a geopolitical question.

Interestingly, the fact that renewable energy needs minerals has shifted the image of dirty mining towards mining as a key enabler of energy transition. Meanwhile, the concept of circular economy has fundamentally challenged the identity of mining sector, from quarrying virgin materials to re-mining solutions.

Source: Case Studies – Dirty side of green technology (helsinki.fi)

I have familiarised myself with the topic of sustainable mining in 2021 in two projects: supervising a perspectives report (https://www.vtv.fi/en/publications/perspectives-on-sustainable-mining-in-finland/) and co-leading a collaborative Masters’ course with Pia Bäcklund at the University of Helsinki. It has been an interesting journey into understanding the complexity of the topic. Students did fantastic work which is documented in the blog: Dirty side of green technology – Geographies of Inequalities 2021 (helsinki.fi)

Above is one of the beautiful maps that students made. It illustrates the supply chain of one rare earth material, cobalt, essential for batteries’ production. While the Democratic Republic of Congo is world’s leading producer of raw cobalt, Finland is the second biggest refiner after China, relying heavily in imported cobalt. Picture also quite clearly shows that mining is global business and the Corporate Social Responsibility should include the whole supply chain.

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Cooperation in drainage basins

The Visual Capitalist just published a great map on the drainage basins of the World’s Longest Rivers. Drainage basin for geomorphology, or catchment area for hydrology, means the area where the water flows downstream and finally reaches the sea.

It is clear from the map that many drainage basis do not follow the country boarders. For example the Nile River systems covers as many as 11 countries.  Therefore, if you wish to protect the river or negotiate about the use of water resources or building dams, you need international cooperation. If one wishes to assess the water protection polices, in some cases assessing the international cooperation mechanisms might be an important precondition of the protection.

Government external auditors not only audit their governments actions but sometimes do also cooperative audits with their peers.  Environmental topics are very fruitful for such a cooperation because environmental problems don’t respect country boarders. One good starting point for cooperation is a shared ecosystem or a river catchment area.

Cooperative audit on the protection of Lake Chad is a powerful example of a cooperative audit. The marvelous video visualizes in an engaging way how the intensified use of natural resources and environmental, social and economic problems are deeply intertwined and sow seeds for conflict. Audit Offices of Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon audited their countries’ actions as well as the Lake Chad Basin Commission overseeing water and other natural resource usage in the basin. Cooperative audit found that the Commission does not fully discharge its duties due to the fact of clear mandate, inadequate organization and poor optimization of resources. The audit pointed out that if no action is made, the whole lake might disappear.

By the way, Lake Chad is an endorheic basin and does not have an outlet to the sea.

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Global cooperation across time zones

Exactly a year ago we didn’t go to the office anymore. One thing that pandemic has taught us by now, on an anniversary of the WHO’s declaration of pandemic, is to sit in endless zooms and teams and meets. It has been amazing to see how the international cooperation has kept on going in digital platforms. It is also fantastic to estimate the amount of avoided greenhouse gas emissions that has been saved. But for those who anticipate there won’t be any need for any face-to-face get-togethers in the future, I have one geographical news to tell.

Organizing a meeting with Europe and Africa is like a dream with those same beautiful meridians crossing our continents. Combining one with either Americas or Asia is fine, but if you want to do both, forget the office hours. Include the Pacific and someone has to stay awake in the middle of the night. Anyone working on a truly global business must puzzle how to execute power on someone’s bedtime.

Only a year ago the currency converter was one of my favorite apps. Now it is the time zone converter. Or as a matter of fact, I only rarely need it anymore since by now I know the mathematics by heart. I’ve also learned that it is easier to keep people involved late in the evening than to get them out of bed very early in the morning. So, if it is 7 a.m. in Ottawa, it is 7 p.m. in Jakarta. That’s not bad at all, but 6 and 6 is already worse. Add Wellington, and the meeting starts there in the middle of the night, at 1 a.m. It would be unfair to expect sharp comments or innovative brainstorming in such an hour. 

No matter how digital we get and how fancy tools and gadgets we have, our planet is still a round one and the sun does not shine everywhere at the same time. We keep on having the time zones.

Die Erde wall map

Die Erde – a school map, which I bought from a market place in a small municipality of Mettlach in Saarland, Germany. It is now on our kitchen wall and I simply don’t get bored marveling at it. Mettlach is close to the boarders of Luxembourg and France. A reason to go there is the headquarters of ceramics factory Villeroy & Boch – and random impulse purchasing of big maps. I still regret I did not buy the massive one on Pacific Ocean. Such a huge blue map! But the Pacific was simply too big. The largest and deepest of all.