WP4 will concentrate on reframing Indigenous cosmo-ecologies and scientific ecological knowledge in the context of the planetary crisis. It will ask how the frictions between Indigenous knowledges and scientific knowledge, critical for understanding environmental elements and dynamics, may be brought into a symmetrical discourse to include plural epistemologies and ontologies and move beyond the pitfalls of multicultural recognition.

This WP will focus on the distinctly relational Indigenous conception of environmental relations, the resulting socio-ecological epistemologies and practices, and their entanglements with scientific ecological knowledge. We will ask how the land, the territory, and its components like forests, lakes, mountains, animals, plants, wind, rain, etc., are conceptualised and on what basis relations with and interventions into these components are undertaken. In what ways are these relations and conceptions memorised, transformed, revitalised, transmitted and applied to translocally emerging ecological issues; used to face critical environmental transformations and to develop strategies to adapt to and mitigate climate change; to enact biodiversity conservation and landscape regeneration; and to develop new and more inclusive relational, transdisciplinary, and intercultural approaches for the current planetary crisis, including the reduction of carbon emissions, deforestation, and global warming, as well as the potentials and consequences of the energy transition.