This research looked at the role of social memory for adaptive natural resource management within indigenous communities of the North Rupununi social-ecological system (SES) in Guyana. Secondary data from historic texts and archives were first used to build a social and ecological history of the North Rupununi SES. Current social memory 'in use' was then surfaced through a Participatory Video (PV) process led by the indigenous community. From this, a compendium of key narratives of the communities' social memory was identified and modes of social memory creation, transmittance and modification were revealed. These highlighted the role of the social memory in identity formation and self representation, how the social memory maintains and reinforces community connectedness and collectiveness, and how PV supports indigenous ways of communication, especially the visual. The study provides some valuable insights into the dynamic nature of the North Rupununi SES social memory, how it is used to make sense of the world and how PV could potentially play a role.

AcknowledgementsWe would like to thank all the participants of the North Rupununi and Guyana scenario workshops and Dominique Laffly for his advice in carrying out statistical analysis. Thank you to the anonymous reviewers for their comments. This research has been funded by the Environment Programme, Management of Natural Resources, DG Research and Innovation, European Commission 7 th Framework. 2 AbstractScenarios help build a shared understanding of potential futures and allow us to engage with how interventions or activities may impact on people and the environment. There are many scenario sets that have been developed at the global and regional level, but to a lesser extent at the national and local levels. Yet fewer studies have explicitly linked imagined futures at different socialecological scales. In this paper, we discuss how scenario analysis was used with indigenous communities and national level stakeholders in Guyana, South America, to explore context specific futures in relation to linked socialecological systems. These futures were then analysed against published regional (Amazonian) and international scenarios using a qualitative coding approach and supported by quantitative factorial analysis. This allowed us to develop a matrix of multi-scalar scenarios, showing how scenarios at all scales interact. From this, we were able to identify virtuous and vicious cycles amongst the different scales where developments produced feedbacks to make situations worse, better or counteract change at other levels. Our results show that there is considerable mismatch between the different scales of analysis, with the national scale playing a key role as mediator. In addition, we highlight the importance of focusing on the root causes shaping futures as well as participatory forms of scenario development in order to provide better policy and decision support, and stimulate engagement at all levels of organisation in the process of change.

ABSTRACT. Policies and actions that come from higher scale structures, such as international bodies and national governments, are not always compatible with the realities and perspectives of smaller scale units including indigenous communities. Yet, it is at this local social-ecological scale that mechanisms and solutions for dealing with unpredictability and change can be increasingly seen emerging from across the world. Although there is a large body of knowledge specifying the conditions necessary to promote local governance of natural resources, there is a parallel need to develop practical methods for operationalizing the evaluation of local social-ecological systems. In this paper, we report on a systemic, participatory, and visual approach for engaging local communities in an exploration of their own social-ecological system. Working with indigenous communities of the North Rupununi, Guyana, this involved using participatory video and photography within a system viability framework to enable local participants to analyze their own situation by defining indicators of successful strategies that were meaningful to them. Participatory multicriteria analysis was then used to arrive at a short list of best practice strategies. We present six best practices and show how they are intimately linked through the themes of indigenous knowledge, local governance and values, and partnerships and networks. We highlight how developing shared narratives of community owned solutions can help communities to plan governance and management of land and resource systems, while reinforcing sustainable practices by discussing and showcasing them within communities, and by engendering a sense of pride in local solutions.

In an era of increasing access to digital technologies, Indigenous communities are progressively more able to present sophisticated and differentiated narratives in order to maximise their long-term survival. In this paper, we explore how Indigenous communities use participatory video and participatory photography as tools of Indigenous media to enhance, adapt, and/or reinforce their collective social memory.This social memory is key for identity formation and self-representation, and the ways in which Indigenous representations are performed promote particular interests and worldviews to the local, national and global scales. Working with the Makushi and Wapishana communities of the North Rupununi, Guyana, the current social memory 'in use' was surfaced through the participatory video and photography process led by the Indigenous community. Through an iterative process of analysing images (photos and video clips) and text (written material, narration and spoken word), we identified key narratives of the communities' social memory. We show how communities provide different messages to different actors through the way they use participatory video and participatory photography, revealing how self-conscious multiple identities shape differing purposes. We suggest that our ability, as non-Indigenous stakeholders, to perceive, appreciate and act upon these more complex and nuanced narratives is critical to help address environmental governance in a rapidly changing social-ecological context.

. 2016. Learning from one another: evaluating the impact of horizontal knowledge exchange for environmental management and governance. Ecology and Society 21 (2) ABSTRACT. There is increasing advocacy for inclusive community-based approaches to environmental management, and growing evidence that involving communities improves the sustainability of social-ecological systems. Most community-based approaches rely on partnerships and knowledge exchange between communities, civil society organizations, and professionals such as practitioners and/or scientists. However, few models have actively integrated more horizontal knowledge exchange from community to community. We reflect on the transferability of community owned solutions between indigenous communities by exploring challenges and achievements of community peer-to-peer knowledge exchange as a way of empowering communities to face up to local environmental and social challenges. Using participatory visual methods, indigenous communities of the North Rupununi (Guyana) identified and documented their community owned solutions through films and photostories. Indigenous researchers from this community then shared their solutions with six other communities that faced similar challenges within Guyana, Suriname, Venezuela, Colombia, French Guiana, and Brazil. They were supported by in-country civil society organizations and academics. We analyzed the impact of the knowledge exchange through interviews, field reports, and observations. Our results show that indigenous community members were significantly more receptive to solutions emerging from, and communicated by, other indigenous peoples, and that this approach was a significant motivating force for galvanizing communities to make changes in their community. We identified a range of enabling factors, such as building capacity for a shared conceptual and technical understanding, that strengthens the exchange between communities and contributes to a lasting impact. With national and international policy-makers mobilizing significant financial resources for biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation, we argue that the promotion of community owned solutions through community peer-to-peer exchange may deliver more long-lasting, socially and ecologically integrated, and investment-effective strategies compared to top-down, expert led, and/or foreign-led initiatives.