Knowra Sacred natural sites Sacred natural sites Sacred natural sites are natural places that communities regard as spiritually significant and protect through customary practices, including restrictions on access or resource use.
Indigenous peoples : Distinct peoples with historical continuity to pre-colonial societies and enduring social, cultural, or political institutions. Many sacred natural sites are embedded in Indigenous relationships to ancestral lands and cultural continuity.
Community-based conservation : Conservation that involves local communities in managing natural resources and shaping decisions. Customary protection makes community authority central to conserving many sacred places.
Customary law : Rules and practices treated as binding within a community through long-standing use and social recognition. Customary law can govern access, harvesting, and conduct at sacred natural sites.
Fortress conservation : A conservation approach that excludes or restricts human settlement and resource use within protected areas. Its exclusionary model can conflict with communities already protecting and using sacred landscapes.
Traditional ecological knowledge : Knowledge, practices, and beliefs about ecosystems developed and transmitted across generations. Customary care of sacred places often draws on accumulated knowledge of local species and landscapes.
Protected area : A geographically defined area managed to achieve long-term conservation of nature and associated cultural values. Some sacred natural sites receive formal recognition within broader protected-area systems.
Common-pool resource : A resource that is difficult to exclude people from using and whose use by one person reduces availability to others. Forests, fisheries, and water around sacred places may require shared rules to prevent overuse.
National park : A large protected area established by a state to conserve nature and often provide public access. State rules and visitor access may differ from locally defined sacred-site boundaries and practices.
Animism : A way of understanding the world in which nonhuman beings or places possess agency or spiritual presence. Some communities understand mountains, forests, or waters as spiritual beings or relations.
Indigenous and community conserved areas : Natural areas conserved through Indigenous peoples’ or local communities’ governance and management. This framework recognizes conservation achieved through community rules, including customary protection.
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