The volcanic Molucca islands have provided the world with their precious cloves, which have been highly valued in medicinal properties for millennia. Cloves have antibacterial, antiviral, and analgesic characteristics. They were considered silver bullet cures in medieval epidemics and the early COVID-19 pandemic response. Cloves originated from Ternate Island, the center and regional trade hub of the Molucca Islands. Its cloves had reached Babylonia 4,000 years ago, marking its importance in global trade. Qualitative research was conducted on the 1775 Mount Gamalama eruption’s impact on indigenous knowledge development. To confirm the findings, I conducted field visits, key informant interviews, field observations, and a literature review. Tolire Lake is an apparent landmark in Takome village, which has a sacred white crocodile, a java plum hill, a lush forest, stunning landscapes, and an underwater mythical village. The residents are testaments to human resilience, preserving indigenous knowledge and turning it into disaster risk reduction tools. They built settlements on safer ground and designated parts areas for conservation-based tourism. In addition, modern science introduction enhances disaster early warning and alert systems and empowers indigenous communities. Understanding indigenous knowledge and wisdom is critical to building resilience and sustainability through disaster risk reduction (DRR) efforts. Indigenous knowledge produces lessons in environmental protection, social justice, and economic growth. The world can learn from indigenous and scientific knowledge combined to sustain the island, its people, and its prosperity.

Research in human ecology and sustainability holds significant importance in addressing global challenges related to the environment, society, and the well-being of the current and future generations. There is an urgent need for a platform to inform new knowledge, practices, policies, and behaviors that contribute toward a more sustainable, resilient, and harmonious coexistence between humans and their environment. The Journal of Human Ecology and Sustainability (JHES) aims to publish interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary research on all aspects of human-environment interactions, community development, and other fields of social science that link with the people, organizations, and government to achieve human-ecological security. This note, which summarizes the contributions in the first volume of the journal, provides a brief background of the transformation of the Journal of Human Ecology to JHES, the official academic publication of the College of Human Ecology, University of the Philippines Los Baños.