The Moku System: Managing Biocultural Resources for Abundance within Social-Ecological Regions in Hawaiʻi

Abstract

Through research, restoration of agro-ecological sites, and a renaissance of cultural awareness in Hawaiʻi, there has been a growing recognition of the ingenuity of the Hawaiian biocultural resource management system. The contemporary term for this system, “the ahupuaʻa system”, does not accurately convey the nuances of system function, and it inhibits an understanding about the complexity of the system’s management. We examined six aspects of the Hawaiian biocultural resource management system to understand its framework for systematic management. Based on a more holistic understanding of this system’s structure and function, we introduce the term, “the moku system”, to describe the Hawaiian biocultural resource management system, which divided large islands into social-ecological regions and further into interrelated social-ecological communities. This system had several social-ecological zones running horizontally across each region, which divided individual communities vertically while connecting them to adjacent communities horizontally; and, thus, created a mosaic that contained forested landscapes, cultural landscapes, and seascapes, which synergistically harnessed a diversity of ecosystem services to facilitate an abundance of biocultural resources. “The moku system”, is a term that is more conducive to large-scale biocultural restoration in the contemporary period, while being inclusive of the smaller-scale divisions that allowed for a highly functional system.

Linking Land and Sea through Collaborative Research to Inform Contemporary applications of Traditional Resource Management in Hawai‘i

“…Among the richest set of ridge-to-reef, social-ecological system approaches to natural resources management is found in Oceania [8,65]. Examples include the tambak in Indonesia [66], the puava in the Solomon Islands, the tabinau in Yap, the vanua in Fiji [67] and the moku in Hawai'i [27]. Through this research, we show that place-based solutions that integrate land and sea processes are critical for addressing local environmental threats.…”

“…After nearly two centuries of decline of the Hawaiian biocultural resource management system, there has been a resurgence of interest-from within academia and the policy realm, as well as at the community level-in reviving that system to restore biocultural resource abundance [27]. This renaissance has inspired an attempt to align traditional Hawaiian biocultural resource management with contemporary frameworks of ecosystem-based management that re-establish the cohesive links between terrestrial and marine systems, encompassing integrated ecological and social processes from ridge-to-reef [28][29][30].…”

“…There has been a growing focus on a land-division scale known as moku to revive traditional resource management in a localized context as a means for communities to engage in biocultural restoration. Ahupua'a are social-ecological communities nested within moku, which are delineated as land-divisions that often extend from the mountains to the sea and exist within the context of the Hawaiian system of governance and biocultural resource management [27]. Motivations by Hawaiian communities to employ contemporary ICCAs include access to and restoration of biocultural resources, security of land and resource tenure, security from outside threats, financial benefit from resources or social-ecological system functions, participation in management, empowerment, capacity building and cultural identity and cohesiveness [8,11,31].…”

The Social-Ecological Keystone Concept: A Quantifiable Metaphor for Understanding the Structure, Function, and Resilience of a Biocultural System

“…In the pre-contact era-prior to contact with Europeans in 1778-the social-ecological system in Hawai'i was intensively managed to maximize resource abundance by attaining a stable state known in Hawaiian as "'āina momona". 'Āina momona is descriptive of a stable state that can exist in alternative forms in Hawai'i, and is associated with both flooded-field and rain-fed agriculture [25]. This is a stable state that was brought about via a regime shift (originally from an ecosystem into a social-ecological system that maximized ecosystem services).…”

Improving Representation of Human Well-Being and Cultural Importance in Conceptualizing the West Hawai‘i Ecosystem

“…Some SES models add people as beneficiaries of positive ecosystem goods and services to represent reciprocity (e.g., Kittinger et al, 2012; Figure 3A), however, this relationship only represents one dimension of reciprocity. Similar to other studies (e.g., Rissman and Gillon, 2017;Vaughan et al, 2017;Winter et al, 2018), participants in our research instead described a system where people could be both environmental stressors and stewards, and experience both benefits and risks from the ecosystems (Figure 3B). Examples of ecosystem risks in West Hawai'i include king tides, storm surges, vog (air pollution from volcanic gasses), and lava flows.…”