🌊 Celebrating the rich maritime heritage of Salento, PRO-Coast — led by our Italian partner, Prof. Maurizio Pinna of the Università del Salento — delivered an inspiring talk on the beauty and vulnerability of our coastal ecosystems. He emphasized the importance of sustainable management to preserve these vital environments for future generations.
@Pro_Coast #MarineConservation #StakeholderEngagement #ParticipatoryScience #CoastalEcosystems #Fishermen #LocalKnowledge #Salento #SustainableFuture

Nand Kishore Khabdwal, an apricot farmer, shares the pride of Satkhol in their naula.

With the summer tourist crush and water scarcity, having a permanent source is a blessing.

Locals maintain its sanctity, ensuring clean water from the springs.

#Community #LocalKnowledge

The next stage in #ReNaturing #HackneyMarshes. Building mega log piles for small mammals, invertebrates, fungi, etc in a new ride cut through #WickWoodland. More light, more decaying wood, more life.

#HabitatRestoration #LocalKnowledge
#NatureRecovery for wildlife, not headlines.

Why guidelines fail: on consequences of the false dichotomy between global and local knowledge in health systems

Global health continues to grapple with a persistent tension between standardized, evidence-based interventions developed by international experts and the contextual, experiential local knowledge held by local health workers. This dichotomy – between global expertise and local knowledge – has become increasingly problematic as health systems face unprecedented complexity in addressing challenges from climate change to emerging diseases.

The limitations of current approaches

The dominant approach privileges global technical expertise, viewing local knowledge primarily through the lens of “implementation barriers” to be overcome. This framework assumes that if only local practitioners would correctly apply global guidance, health outcomes would improve.

This assumption falls short in several critical ways:

1. It fails to recognize that local health workers often possess sophisticated understanding of how interventions need to be adapted to work in their contexts.
2. It overlooks the way that local knowledge, built through direct experience with communities, often anticipates problems that global guidance has yet to address.
3. It perpetuates power dynamics that systematically devalue knowledge generated outside academic and global health institutions.

The hidden costs of privileging global expertise

When we examine actual practice, we find that privileging global over local knowledge can actively harm health system performance:

• It creates a “capability trap” where local health workers become dependent on external expertise rather than developing their own problem-solving capabilities.
• It leads to the implementation of standardized solutions that may not address the real needs of communities.
• It demoralizes community-based staff who see their expertise and experience consistently undervalued.
• It slows the spread of innovative local solutions that could benefit other contexts.

Evidence from practice

Recent experiences from the COVID-19 pandemic provide compelling evidence for the importance of local knowledge. While global guidance struggled to keep pace with evolving challenges, local health workers had to figure out how to keep health services going:

• Community health workers in rural areas adapted strategies.
• District health teams created new approaches to maintain essential services during lockdowns.
• Facility staff developed creative solutions to manage PPE shortages.

These innovations emerged not from global technical assistance, but from local practitioners applying their deep understanding of community needs and system constraints, and by exploring new ways to connect with each other and contribute to global knowledge.

Towards a new synthesis

Rather than choosing between global and local knowledge, we need a new synthesis that recognizes their complementary strengths. This requires three fundamental shifts:

1. Reframing local knowledge

• Moving from viewing local knowledge as merely contextual to seeing it as a source of innovation.
• Recognizing frontline health workers as knowledge creators, not just knowledge recipients.
• Valuing experiential learning alongside formal evidence.

2. Rethinking technical assistance

• Shifting from knowledge transfer to knowledge co-creation.
• Building platforms for peer learning and exchange.
• Supporting local problem-solving capabilities.

3. Restructuring power relations

• Creating mechanisms for local knowledge to inform global guidance.
• Developing new metrics that value local innovation.
• Investing in local knowledge documentation and sharing.

Practical implications

This new synthesis has important practical implications for how we approach health system strengthening:

Investment priorities

• Funding mechanisms need to support local knowledge creation and sharing
• Technical assistance should focus on building local problem-solving capabilities
• Technology investments should enable peer learning and knowledge exchange

Capacity building

• Training should emphasize critical thinking and adaptation skills as constitutive of new forms of leadership
• Learning programmes should connect peers across contexts
• Evaluation should measure local innovation and problem-solving

Knowledge management (KM)

• Systems need to recognize that knowledge is found in the connections between humans (and increasingly machines), so that improving KM is about more ‘pipes’ (connections) and better quality-ones
• Platforms should therefore enable peer learning and exchange
• Evidence must include practitioner experience and insights

New paths forward

Moving beyond the false dichotomy between global and local knowledge opens new possibilities for strengthening health systems. By recognizing and valuing both forms of knowledge, we can create more effective, resilient, and equitable health systems.

The challenges facing health systems are too complex for any single source of knowledge to address alone. Only by bringing together global expertise and local knowledge can we develop the solutions needed to improve health outcomes for all.

References

Braithwaite, J., Churruca, K., Long, J.C., Ellis, L.A., Herkes, J., 2018. When complexity science meets implementation science: a theoretical and empirical analysis of systems change. BMC Med 16, 63. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-018-1057-z

Farsalinos, K., Poulas, K., Kouretas, D., Vantarakis, A., Leotsinidis, M., Kouvelas, D., Docea, A.O., Kostoff, R., Gerotziafas, G.T., Antoniou, M.N., Polosa, R., Barbouni, A., Yiakoumaki, V., Giannouchos, T.V., Bagos, P.G., Lazopoulos, G., Izotov, B.N., Tutelyan, V.A., Aschner, M., Hartung, T., Wallace, H.M., Carvalho, F., Domingo, J.L., Tsatsakis, A., 2021. Improved strategies to counter the COVID-19 pandemic: Lockdowns vs. primary and community healthcare. Toxicology Reports 8, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.toxrep.2020.12.001

Jerneck, A., Olsson, L., 2011. Breaking out of sustainability impasses: How to apply frame analysis, reframing and transition theory to global health challenges. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 1, 255–271. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2011.10.005

Salve, S., Raven, J., Das, P., Srinivasan, S., Khaled, A., Hayee, M., Olisenekwu, G., Gooding, K., 2023. Community health workers and Covid-19: Cross-country evidence on their roles, experiences, challenges and adaptive strategies. PLOS Glob Public Health 3, e0001447. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0001447

Yamey, G., 2012. What are the barriers to scaling up health interventions in low and middle income countries? A qualitative study of academic leaders in implementation science. Global Health 8, 11. https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-8603-8-11

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#climateChangeAndHealth #decolonization #evidenceBasedInterventions #expertise #globalHealth #healthSystems #implementationScience #localKnowledge

Critical evidence gaps in the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change

The 2024 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change “reveals the health threats of climate change have reached record-breaking levels” and provides “the most up-to-date assessment of the links between health and climate change”.

Yet its treatment of experiential knowledge – particularly the direct observations and understanding developed by frontline health workers and communities – reveals both progress and persistent gaps in how major global health assessments value different forms of knowing.

The fundamental tension appears right at the start.

The report notes a significant challenge: “A global scarcity of internationally standardised data hinders the capacity to optimally monitor the observed health impacts of climate change and evaluate the health-protective effect of implemented interventions.”

This framing privileges standardized, quantifiable data over other forms of knowledge.

Yet paradoxically, the report recognizes that “health workers are already intimate witnesses to the impacts of climate change on the health of the communities they serve, possessing valuable knowledge that should inform both science and policy.”

This recognition of frontline experience as a valid source of knowledge is significant, even if not fully integrated into the report’s methodology.

Health workers’ experiences are not merely anecdotal but represent a crucial form of evidence gathering and early warning that conventional research methods cannot match.

When a nurse in Bangladesh notices changing patterns of heat-related illness in specific neighborhoods, or when a community health worker in Kenya observes shifts in disease transmission seasons, they are detecting signals that might take epidemiological studies decades to formally document.

Can we afford to wait?

As the report acknowledges that we face “record-breaking threats to their wellbeing, health, and survival from the rapidly changing climate,” why wait for traditional longitudinal studies to validate what health workers are already seeing?

Explore the value of health workers’ experiential knowledge: Jones, I., Mbuh, C., Sadki, R., Eller, K., Rhoda, D., 2023. On the frontline of climate change and health: A health worker eyewitness report. The Geneva Learning Foundation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10204660

Their observations, if their significance and value were fully recognized, could provide vital early insights into emerging health threats and guide rapid, life-saving adaptations.

This is especially critical given the report’s call to alarm that climate change impacts are “increasingly claiming lives and livelihoods worldwide” and that “delays in climate change mitigation and adaptation have intensified these impacts.”

The humanitarian imperative to act quickly makes health workers’ experiential knowledge not just valuable but essential – they are the canaries in the coal mine of our climate crisis, and their insights could help bridge critical evidence gaps while more traditional research catches up.

The report’s most thoughtful engagement with alternative forms of knowledge comes in its treatment of Indigenous knowledge systems.

A panel titled “Indigenous knowledge for a healthy future” explicitly acknowledges that “Indigenous peoples maintain deep connections with the natural environment that are important for the social, livelihood, cultural, and spiritual practices that underpin their health and wellbeing.”

More importantly, it recognizes that “Indigenous knowledge has been shown to be the key to protect Indigenous health in times of health emergencies when official health systems and governments are unable to provide assistance to Indigenous communities.”

However, the report also acknowledges that “Indigenous medicine and worldviews are rarely considered within health care or health risk preparedness and response.”

This gap between recognizing the value of Indigenous knowledge and actually incorporating it into health systems and policies reflects a broader challenge.

A crucial observation comes in the report’s data discussion: available data are “rarely disaggregated by relevant groups (eg, gender, age, indigeneity, ethnicity, and socioeconomic level)” and “Indigenous knowledge is often overlooked, and Indigenous populations are seldom taken into consideration in the production and reporting of evidence and data.”

This gap in representation means that crucial experiential knowledge is systematically excluded from our understanding of climate change’s health impacts.

Perhaps most tellingly, while the report calls for “improved data” to evaluate progress on international commitments, it focuses primarily on standardized quantitative metrics rather than developing new frameworks that could better integrate experiential knowledge.

This reveals an underlying epistemological bias – while experiential knowledge is acknowledged as valuable, the report’s methodology remains firmly grounded in traditional scientific approaches.

Looking forward, truly leveraging experiential knowledge in understanding climate change’s health impacts will require more than just acknowledgment.

It will require developing new methodological frameworks that can systematically incorporate and validate different forms of knowing, while ensuring that frontline voices – whether from health workers, Indigenous communities, or other groups with direct experience – are centered rather than marginalized in our understanding of this global crisis.

For the Lancet Countdown to fully live up to its mission of tracking progress on health and climate change, future reports will need to more fundamentally rethink how they recognize, validate, and incorporate experiential knowledge.

The seeds of this transformation are present in the 2024 report.

Doing so is both necessary to improve science and consistent with The Lancet Countdown’s commitment to “operate an open and iterative process of indicator improvement, welcoming proposals for new indicators… from the world’s most vulnerable countries”.

References

Romanello, M., et al., 2024. The 2024 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: facing record-breaking threats from delayed action. The Lancet 404, 1847–1896. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)01822-1

Jones, I., Mbuh, C., Sadki, R., Eller, K., Rhoda, D., 2023. On the frontline of climate change and health: A health worker eyewitness report. The Geneva Learning Foundation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10204660

Jones, I., Mbuh, C., Sadki, R., Steed, I., 2024. Climate change and health: Health workers on climate, community, and the urgent need for action. The Geneva Learning Foundation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11194918

Sanchez, J.J. et al. (2025) ‘The climate crisis and human health: identifying grand challenges through participatory research’, The Lancet Global Health, p. S2214109X25000038. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(25)00003-8.

Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024

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#climateAndHealth #COP29 #CriticalEvidenceGapsInTheLancetCountdownOnHealthAndClimateChange #epistemology #experientialKnowledge #IndigenousKnowledge #localKnowledge #quantitativeData

the Decline of #LocalMedia is a Security Risk — not just in the US but everywhere https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/08/why-the-decline-of-local-media-could-be-a-security.html
#journalism #LocalKnowledge #media #news

RT by @EU_ScienceHub: 🏔️#LithiumMining, #Biodiversity #WaterManagementand #LocalKnowledge of the #Atacama #desert come together in @penelope_cain’s With Salt and Rocks in Our Veins
📍Visit the #NaturArchy exhibition🦩 by #JRCSciArt @EUScienceHub in partnership with @imalorg.
ℹ️ https://science-art-society.ec.europa.eu/naturarchy-exhibition

[2024-05-03 12:48 UTC]

Call for Papers for @RGS_IBG annual conference 2024

De- or re-colonising climate adaptation? Indigenous and local knowledge in the climate adaptation machine

Deadline: Feb 26

https://www.digitalclimatefutures.org.uk/index.php/rgs-ibg-2024-call-for-papers-de-or-re-colonising-climate-adaptation/

#adaptation #climateadaptation #decolonise #indigenous #localknowledge

its windy but im using #LocalKnowledge and sitting in my secret wind deadzone

I especially point out a comment, "These acequias are an example of hard won local knowledge being ideally suited to the task. New technologies are not a bad thing at all but we shouldn’t dismiss local knowledge developed over centuries"
#sustainability #Europe #water #technology #espana #Spain #LocalKnowledge #grounded #nuance #climate #acequia #old

The best and most accurate open map of the world is built WITH the community and FOR the community. #opendata #localknowledge #openstreetmap #openmapping #participatorymapping #mapping #opencommunity

In the last hour I have been offered several rare breed sheep and llama fleeces and also 80kg of mosaic tiles. Two phone calls and have rehomed the lot. Will keep a bit of fleece for us too. The random power of #LocalKnowledge and #Community #Connections 😃

Last week I mentioned here that I’d been having trouble with flats on my bike. I got a third flat and it prompted me to go see Pete at the local bike shop. He said that sounds like something in the tire.

He pulled the tyre off. Pulled out the tube, found the hole, and then looked at where along the circumference the puncture was vs the valve, we started searching the tire there for stuff.

This tiny piece of a staple(?) was stuck pointy side down in the rubber right at the base of a knob. Metal pulled, went for a 25k ride last night and had no problems. Problem fixed.

Massive shout out to Sebastian who totally called this on a reply. @ssamulczyk

#LocalKnowledge #biketooter #cycling

Today's post is on John Fisher.

Some of the previous posts have been about various aspects of John Fisher's life in Ōtautau, so here is a brief history. He did more than this too, such as sit on the local and Southland Dairy Board, School Board and give support to many other local and regional and community groups. But this is just a summary!
#SharingCommunityHeritage
#LocalKnowledge
#EarlyDistrictHistory
#Ōtautau
#Otautau
#Clifden
#WesternSouthland
#NewspaperOwners
#FisherFamily
#Aldersyde

Tūātapere Lioness Club Charter Night from 1982. Do you know anyone from this crowd of 33 women? See more about it here:

https://ehive.com/collections/202139/objects/1637807/tuatapere-history-tuatapere-district-lioness-club-charter-night

#Community #WorkingTogether
#SharingHeritage #LocalKnowledge
#Service #LionsAndLionesses #Clubs
#WaiauHistory #Tūātapere
#CentralAndWesternArchive

#OTD Looking back on this day to 22 January 1924.

This was the day that C. Aitchison of the Ōtautau Hotel, advertised that he had taken over the Ōtautau Livery Stables as well, and that he has a "new Dodge Sedan Car!"

Colin Aitchison was running the Ōtautau Hotel for four years from 1922 to 1925, he had taken over while Sarah Keith took a break. Her husband passed away & she had continued on for a time with daughter Nellie.

#SharingCommunityHistory
#LocalKnowledge
#EarlyŌtautau
#Ōtautau

"Inclusive engagement for #environmental #sustainability in small island states".
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2022.101253
With deepest appreciation to Kalim U. Shah, Ph.D. for inspiration and support.
 
#islands #islands #islandstudies #livelihoods #inclusivity #smallislands #islandstates #sustainable #participation #participatoryprocesses #development #participatorydevelopment #ConspicuousSustainability #Islandness #SustainableDevelopment #LocalKnowledge

📢 It's out !
@cmadruga and I are thrilled to announce the publication of our special issue on #SituatedNature!

If like us you wonder what collecting nature actually meant in the nineteenth century, and why it does _really_ matter ➡️ read more here ! https://journalhistoryknowledge.org/situated-nature

tl;dr : contains a lot #histodons #nature, #collections, #fieldwork #empire and #nation-building, #coloniality #LocalKnowledge !
@histodons #histSTM #histsci

#unspunworld provides an unvarnished version of week's major #global #news stories. #BBC’s world affairs editor, #JohnSimpson, brings his experience+expertise to bear on the most #important #international #stories. In discussion with the BBC's unparalleled range of #experts across the world, he uses their unique #LocalKnowledge to go beyond the headlines to get to the unspun #truth. Next #episode 7.12.22 #bbc2 23.15, then #BBCIplayer+#BBCNewsChannel, #BBCWorldService

@ketaminh
Comfort food. If you say you don’t like rosti they give you twice as much!
#localknowledge 😂