Biocultural approaches to Environmental Management (EM) and monitoring are an emerging strategy in sustainability planning. Unlike functional ecological approaches to EM, which exclude humans from ecological systems, biocultural EM approaches incorporate humans, communities and their values as integral part of ecological systems, and are grounded in collaborative processes that develop locally relevant management objectives and monitoring practices. Biocultural indicators are a key aspect of biocultural EM, providing links between worldviews, knowledge systems, agencies and institutions at various scales to guide and streamline implementation of management objectives. Although many Indigenous Peoples have been continually practicing biocultural approaches to EM for thousands of years, challenges exist in contemporary EM scenarios where multiple worldviews, political boundaries and knowledge systems collide. Some of the challenges or gaps in contemporary biocultural approaches are based in theory, and others are in practice. In Chapter One I highlight one of these gaps – the lack of guiding criteria to develop biocultural indicators in contemporary biocultural EM and monitoring. To address this gap, I propose a novel suite of six criteria (culturally salient, supportive of place-based relationships, inclusive, sensitive to impacts, perceptible, linked to human well-being) drawn from a case study in Kitasoo/Xai’xais Territory in the area now referred to as the North and Central Coast of British Columbia, Canada. In Chapter Two, I highlight a challenge in practice—the development of spatial models that incorporate a community-led approach. I show how this community-engaged approach benefitted the development and application of a landscape scale suitability model for culturally modified trees, a priority biocultural indicator. In conclusion, this theoretical and practical work identifies opportunities to amend existing Provincial and Federal legislation in order to support biocultural approaches to EM in Canada and shows how biocultural approaches may be applied in other social-ecological systems near and abroad. / Graduate

Rural areas in Sweden are often pointed out as key areas for development when it comes to industries such as forestry, agriculture, mining, energy, food security, tourism, leisure, and outdoor activities. However, these areas have seen a negative population trend for decades and, simultaneously, public service provision has declined. This development is not unique to Sweden and can be seen in rural areas across the world. Within scientific literature several approaches have been studied to find potential solutions and bring back prosperity to rural communities. Once such solution is Community Wealth Building (CWB), which is an economic framework designed to help circulate local resource within the local society. To date, CWB has primarily been implemented in urban contexts. This study has therefore investigated the potential for implementing the CWB framework in a rural context in Sweden, and what possibilities or barriers there are for such implementation. The study has been conducted as explorative case study in the municipality of Åre. Empirical data has been collected through a thematic analysis of municipal steering documents and through semi-structured interviews with actors from local public institutions, local third sector and local business. The findings suggest that there is potential to implement the CWB framework in a rural, Swedish context, taking into consideration the various possibilities and barriers that exist for doing so in practice.