The Future is Behind Us: Raising Indigenous Knowledge through Multifunctional Urban Agricultural Practices in Honolulu, HI
Datum
2021-06-13
Autor:innen
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Zusammenfassung
With the closest port of call approximately 2,400 miles away, the Hawaiian Islands are one
of the most geographically isolated and food-import dependent populations in the world.
The Hawaiian Islands imports approximately 90-percent of its food and energy making
it vulnerable to any natural or human-caused disaster that could disrupt shipping and
supplies. Urbanization practices in Honolulu allow for limited space for urban agricultural
practices, higher concentrations of people, and an increase in high-rise condominiums and
hotels. Most importantly, Honolulu faces an even greater loss in its historical agricultural
identity. Understanding the indigenous agricultural practices of the Native Hawaiians
along with what remains today is essential to charting a pathway forward.
The Native Hawaiians coevolved with their landscape and engineered a social-ecological
system, called the ahupua’a unit, that maximized ecosystem services. The ahupua’a
was a multifunctional land division that separated agroforestry practices in the forest
zone, urban agricultural practices in the lowland or plains, and aquaculture practices in
the coastal zone. Reflecting on the richness of this past system with the current design
and planning of Honolulu’s Ala Wai watershed challenges us to rethink new strategies
of implementing urban agricultural practices that raise indigenous knowledge while
enhancing Honolulu’s resiliency.
This research project is motivated by the ahupua’a model due to its multifunctionality
and importance within Traditional Ecological Knowledge. The three zones of the ahupua’a
model are examined using four selected precedent studies, ranging within the Pacific
Rim. Each precedent study is examined based on its use of Traditional Ecological
Knowledge (TEK) composed of local knowledge, resource management, and worldview,
and multifunctionality composed of production, ecological, and cultural functions. These
studies will help formulate a design framework that can be applied towards spatial
typologies within the Ala Wai watershed.
Beschreibung
127 pages. Committee chair: Yekang Ko
Schlagwörter
urban agriculture, Honolulu, Hawaii, multifunctionality, indigenous knowledge, traditional ecological knowledge