Ways of World Knowing: Local Knowledge, Coastal Communities, and Equitable Ocean Governance

After decades of long and thorny negotiations at the United Nations, the High Seas Treaty was finalised in 2023, to protect marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. This treaty is just one of many instruments that have been introduced as part of global policy efforts to protect oceans amid a climate crisis that is having devastating effects on marine life. Despite the prevalence of ocean knowledge in coastal communities around the world, local ways of knowing have often been marginalised in scientific narratives and legal provisions.

Ways of World Knowing brings together philosophers of science, marine scientists, and lawyers to discuss the role and importance of local coastal community knowledge in order to better represent their voices in ocean governance. By analysing the epistemic value of varieties of local knowledges, this volume invites us to overcome the dichotomy often found in legal documents between marine scientific research and local knowledge. Here, the contributors use the term 'local knowledge' (rather than 'traditional knowledge') deliberately to refer to varieties of ways of knowing more broadly understood―spanning coastal communities from Scotland to Canada, from Brazil to New Zealand―whose distinctive features include their being non-written, artisanal and experiential in nature, and intergenerationally transmitted. Topics include the knowledge of Brazilian fishing communities and of past Hebridean kelpmakers, the cultural significance of herring spawning for the Squamish Nation in Canada, the Indigenous People's knowledge in Australian legal provisions, and arts-based research and practice in international governance spaces, among others.

By bringing a situated knowledge approach to ongoing, timely, and thorny governance questions about the ocean, this volume is an innovative contribution not just for the 'blue humanities' but for environmental studies at large at the intersection of philosophy of science, marine science, and environmental law.

Michela Massimi is Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Edinburgh. She has written extensively in the area of the history and philosophy of science on topics such as realism, pluralism in science, the right to participate in science, and the epistemic value of local knowledges. Professor Massimi was the Principal Investigator of a Royal Society of Edinburgh funded network entitled Ocean and Us, with Professor Brown and Professor Jaspars as Co-Investigators.

Abbe E.L. Brown is Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the University of Aberdeen. Before returning to academia, she practised as an intellectual property and commercial litigator at leading firms in London, Melbourne, and Edinburgh. Professor Brown has a strong interest in the ocean and in interdisciplinary research and is a member of the World Commission on Environmental Law and the Deep Ocean Stewardship Initiative.

Marcel Jaspars is Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Aberdeen where he leads the
Marine Biodiscovery Centre, which focusses on marine resources for novel pharmaceuticals, and investigates fundamental questions in marine chemical ecology and biosynthesis. He has advised the UK, EU, and UN for global policy processes on ocean conservation and digital sequence information and associated policy involved in marine biodiscovery and biotechnology.