EPISTEMIC RESISTANCE: Local Knowledge, Autonomous Governance, and the Politics of Co-optation
Year: 2026
Type: article
Study design: Systematic Review
Abstract: Global environmental governance is overwhelmingly dictated by Western technocratic rationality, systematically marginalizing Indigenous and Local Knowledge (ILK) through structural epistemic violence. This study critically investigates how market-based climate regimes, voluntary carbon offset mechanisms, and state land formalization programs co-opt and transform localized, relational ecological knowledge into commodified instruments of green extraction. Following the PRISMA 2020 protocol, a systematic literature review was conducted across Scopus, Web of Science, and JSTOR (2005–2026), yielding a synthesis corpus of 110 peer-reviewed studies spanning Critical Political Ecology, Decolonial Philosophy, and Feminist Political Ecology. Findings reveal a structural paradox: shallow inclusion and carbon commodification via frameworks such as REDD+ sever ILK from its socio-spiritual contexts and territorial sovereignty, transforming customary stewards into administrative compliance officers. Conversely, subaltern communities actively operationalize epistemic resistance through digital counter-mapping, epistemic disobedience, the revitalization of customary legal governance (e.g., Tara-Bandu, Sasi), and multi-scalar solidarity networks. The study concludes that physical land reclamation is fundamentally insufficient without the concurrent reclamation of epistemic sovereignty. To bridge this critical governance gap, we propose an embodied eco-social contract that re-anchors global environmental governance in epistemological pluralism, direct climate finance decentralization, and substantive legal recognition of sovereign living territories (territorios de vida). Keywords: Epistemic Violence; Epistemic Resistance; Indigenous and Local Knowledge (ILK); Green Grabbing; Counter-Mapping; Autonomous Governance; Political Ecology.
Author: Soares, Edio Mariano Piedade
Institution: Hasanuddin University
Language: English
Subfield: Global and Planetary Change
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7214518873