Advancing equity through the “capability to aspire” in ocean and coastal governance: centering indigenous and local values to shape social–ecological futures — a review

Calls for equity and justice are increasingly shaping ocean and coastal governance; however, a persistent challenge remains in centering how Indigenous Peoples’ and Local Communities’ (IPLCs) values are meaningfully recognized and enacted within decision-making processes, particularly under accelerating socioecological change. This review synthesizes interdisciplinary scholarship to examine how IPLCs mobilize their knowledge, values, and risk perspectives to influence marine governance and stewardship. Using a reflexive thematic analysis of 27 empirical studies published between 2015 and 2024, we analyze the conditions, practices, and governance arrangements that support or constrain the expression of IPLC values across diverse coastal and marine contexts. The review identifies three overarching insights. First, IPLC values are mobilized through mechanisms such as tenure, treaty-making, collaborative governance, and Indigenous-led research, which strengthen authority and support culturally grounded stewardship. Second, IPLC knowledge systems sustain relational, place-based practices of care that contribute to adaptive management. However, these local place-based practices are increasingly challenged by intersecting uncertainties including competing ocean uses, climate-driven environmental change, and limited transparency in decision-making. Third, pathways for more equitable governance are emerging through future-oriented stewardship, knowledge weaving, experimental management, collaborative monitoring, and collective action. These factors establish some of the foundations for building capabilities to enable governance transitions, in particular, the capability to aspire to create alternative futures to mobilize IPLC values to be better represented in coastal and ocean governance. Across the literature, however, our analysis finds that the agency-based capability to aspire for governance transitions vary and are uneven within contexts, potentially establishing the conditions for entrenched inequity for IPLCs into the future. Building the capability to aspire relies on inquiry that combines knowledge of the past, observations of current conditions and judgement of the past and present to assess plausible futures. We argue that IPLC-defined capability to aspire for plausible governance transitions, based on the ability to sustain and voice values, negotiate authority, mobilize resources and adapt stewardship practices within shifting governance and ecological conditions, represent a critical and underexamined dimension of ocean equity. This review advances an emerging future-oriented capability and dimension of equity.