The importance of ethnobotany in environmental conservation

The widely employed and simplest definition of ethnobotany explains it as the study of the knowledge and use of plants in primitive societies in the past and present. In view of the many fast-developing specific subdivisions of this inter disciplinary field, it seems necessary to adopt a wider definition. A more inclusive definition might be: the study of the uses, technological manipulation, classification, agricultural systems, magico-religious concepts, conservation techniques and general economic and sociological importance of plants in primitive or pre-literate societies. Ethnobotany is certainly not new. The earliest humans must have been incipient ethnobotanists. It began when man first of necessity classified plants: those of little or no utility; those which were useful in many practical ways; those alleviating pain or otherwise ameliorating illness; and those that made him ill or killed him. He must have wondered at the unworldly effects of the few psychoactive species, and he could explain their extraordinary properties only by assuming that they were endowed with spiritual power from supernatural sources. It has been proposed that man's early experiences with hallucinogens were a principal factor leading to the origin of religious concepts.

It was not long before the knowledge and manipulation of the properties of plants became associated with certain individuals, and these early medicine men or shamans ultimately acquired great powers. This endowment continues to-day in most, if not all, primitive societies where this specialist is the repository of vast knowledge of plants and their properties and is privy to the secret and superstitious rituals connected with their use. However, many members of the general population in primitive societies are conversant with the properties of their food, medicinal and other plants of daily use. The loss of this knowledge, and of the natives themselves, will be a grave hindrance to progress in many aspects of environmental conservation. Realization of the seriousness of this impending loss has given rise in recent years to the need for ethnobotanical conservation. One example of the value to conservation of ethnobotanical knowledge of the natives lies in the study of their acquaintance with the properties of bioactive plants and their numerous sub specific variants or ecotypes. Although techniques of ethnobotanical research will differ according to the kind and condition of culture of the aboriginal people and the type of ecology in which they live, there seems to exist an underlying similarity in the relationship of ethnobotany to environmental conservation programmes directed towards environmental conservation. A major contribution that ethnobotanical research offers concerns biodiversity.

Human interaction with the environment is widely viewed as the source of ecological problems, and increasingly understood as the key to their solutions. In an increasingly globalized world, such human interaction is necessarily transcultural, presenting both a challenge and an opportunity. The environmentalist’s mantra, “think globally, act locally,” surely does contain some proletariat wisdom, but its popular application has more often than not been to justify exploitation. Technological advances add justification to the new global form of excessively abstract thinking. The trend is that through globalization we are gaining information while losing regional knowledge. When place is extinguished as a compelling concept, humans suffer tremendous loss. The elimination of place and the worldwide homogenization of diverse local peoples necessarily deplete human epistemologies. Contrary to popular notions, indigenous peoples traditionally and significantly manipulate natural resources. Many indigenous peoples engage in a practice of participation and reciprocity with the land.

The norm is that indigenous cultural ecologies are based on beliefs in the intrinsic value of the land and all that it contains. Romanticized notions of traditional ecological knowledge, however, will help neither the people themselves nor the lands they inhabit, and a realistic assessment of environmental knowledge is essential for effective conservation. Traditional ecological knowledge and indigenous resource management offer hope for collaborative problem solving in the global arena. The challenge of community-based conservation, though, is formidable, not simply because of the scale of our global political arena, but also because of the nature of the Western environmental movement. By stepping into indigenous territories, environmentalists abandon their accepted and familiar world of wilderness advocacy and enter a realm shunned by some ecologists as too humanized to merit serious attention. More often than not, local people are considered part of the problem, not part of the solution Indigenous perceptions of nature enrich environmentalism by providing regional specificity to global issues. Likewise, environmentalism can benefit indigenous peoples by helping them gain greater political and economic control over their lands. Indigenous ecological understandings can translate into resource management practices, including such activities as performing ceremonies to ensure the wellbeing of the land, enacting restrictions to ease the strain of resource exploitation, prescribing burns to “clean up the country,” and regulating access to environmental resources. The critical role of ethnoecology in conservation management has tremendous potential, and has gradually been winning the approval of non indigenous policymakers, activists, and scholars.

The immediate, uncritical application of traditional practices, however, is not necessarily the best environmental solution to local problems. In some extreme cases the retention of traditional ecological practices may be maladaptive, while in other cases a phase-in period may be required in areas where traditional resource management has ceased. Tremendous environmental information remains embodied in the minds and cultures of indigenous peoples inhabiting various regions of Earth. Likewise, indigenous ecological knowledge can enhance local autonomy through the continuation of traditional management strategies, the development of new projects, and the application of these strategies and projects to arising land and management issues. These kinds of approaches benefit indigenous communities by boosting levels of sovereignty and allowing the people themselves to direct cultural change. To be most successful, the management of protected areas must acknowledge indigenous rights, including land and water rights, subsistence rights, and rights to self-determination. This approach challenges the principles through which national parks and other protected areas have operated for over a century. However, it offers an ethical alternative to imposed conservation strategies that deny the rights of local inhabitants. Furthermore, these new conservation alliances promote more effective strategies for the protection of cultural and biological resources. This approach stresses that we should regard the knowledge, insights, and skills of local peoples as assets to environmental conservation. Community-based conservation is consequential not only in areas of statutory protection, but within the rural and outback regions that lie outside the boundaries of parks, refuges, and the like. To focus conservation efforts only within protected areas is to relinquish the majority of Earth’s land surface, much of which is still biologically rich. We do urgently need more land with statutory protection, but for these conservation areas to be most effective, indigenous people must have proprietary rights. An international conservation priority should be the creation of indigenously inhabited, co managed, and locally managed protected areas.

The very concept of “management” of natural resources must be applied with caution in traditionally oriented communities. While not all traditional practices result in sustainable management of resources (especially in our convoluted, global world), conventional indigenous knowledge is the basis of considerable behavior that results in the sustainable use and conservation of resources. The context and motivation for indigenous resource management, however, are often radically different from that of nonindigenous management.  Effective management acknowledges the inevitability of conflict, and evaluation should be based on the extent to which conflict is resolved to the satisfaction of the management partners. An applicable global ecology is built upon a partnership between local communities and outside peoples. Global ecology, while planetary in scope, prioritizes local communities; it reflects and respects local people’s rights to self-determination, while building self-reliance, strengthening local institutions, providing enduring benefits, and granting genuine incentives for cooperative conservation. Local communities can be revitalized partly through national and international sanctioning of their self-reliance, economic and political control, and environmental autonomy. National and international power elites, however, are unlikely to voluntarily recognize the sovereignty of indigenous peoples, or to relinquish control in favor of cooperation. This is why coalitions of indigenous peoples and conservationists are so critical; such coalitions will be better positioned to defend a view of sustainable resource use that is linked to local community empowerment. In culture—as in nature— the global must accede to the local. Despite the trend, globalization does not necessarily mean economic exploitation, cultural annihilation, and environmental despoliation. Globalization always involves the intersection of the local and the global, but the nature of this relationship is indeterminate. From a human rights and ecological perspective, however, the elimination of social oppression and environmental degradation is predicated upon the global blending with the local. While globalization has essentially entailed a top-down process, indigenous peoples have responded with their own brand of globalization-from-below. They have partially succeeded in this by shifting concerns from the national spectrum to the international arena. It is patronizing and paternalistic, perhaps, to allude only to how intercultural networks and information technology can aid indigenous peoples, because their ecological insights can benefit industrial societies immensely. Nature is more complex than we ever can know, and for environmentalists working in the global arena it behooves us to seek the information and wisdom of local traditions that might enhance and expand our understandings. Environmentalists should undertake an active search for partnerships that build on the enormous diversity of traditional ecological knowledge and local conservation solutions. This globalization, implanted in the local, will manifest a civil society that affirms bioregionalism and diversity, and embraces the particularities of indigenous cultures while promoting interconnected communities. It will be as plural as the cultures and ecosystems that constitute the planet. The challenge and opportunity of this globalized local is that we all must participate in our local communities and bioregions while sharing in the international responsibility of ecological stewardship. An ecological metaphor for this global/local environmentalism is the ecotone—the intersection between natural communities where diversity is enriched through the blending of the two. Here, natural elements coalesce, and species intermingle in heightened richness.

                                                                                

Subodh Khanal

Msc.Ag. (Conservation Ecology)