Ecological Indicators (Mar 2025)
A nature-based solutions assessment framework integrating indigenous biocultural and ecosystem services perspectives: An Australian example
Abstract
Assessing ecosystem services (ES) indicators has become vital to measuring the condition of ecosystems and their benefits, and informing policy and businesses for appropriate conservation and investment decisions. However, the ES indicators depending on ecosystem type, and the tools and measures developed to date mostly consider ecological attributes with little relevance to Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLC) contexts. Here, together with Australian Indigenous community participants, we assess and co-develop an integrated set of ecological and socio-cultural indicators, and associated assessment tools. We reviewed relevant global literature and conducted focus group meetings with three Indigenous groups, representing Traditional (Land) Owners, senior community members and rangers in northern Australia. Our literature review identified 30 ES indicators and associated assessment tools, addressing provisioning, regulating, biodiversity and cultural services, primarily across the forest, agriculture, wetland and grassland ecosystems. Largely, biodiversity and regulating services encompassed ecological indicators rather than provisioning and cultural services. Notably, the IPLC context was not captured within the reviewed literature on indicator frameworks. The results from focus group discussions with Indigenous participants addressed this gap, describing 16 appropriate indicators (and associated measurement tools) for assessing Indigenous people’s socio-cultural, ecological and economic experiences and aspirations. The proposed bottom-up, integrated biophysical and bio-cultural indicator framework empowers local communities and is useful for informing practitioners and emerging incentivising/Payment for ES schemes. Our conceptual framework is generic to adapt to any local context, and offers potential application in evolving Nature-based Solutions markets and for informing socio-economic, natural resource use management, and policy-related IPLC contexts in Australia and globally.
