Traditional ecological knowledge

Lesson 5 of 5 in "Language and knowledge", about 6 minutes

Traditional ecological knowledge is what a people knows about its environment from long experience: the plants, animals, soils, waters, weather and seasons of its homeland, and how to live among them. It is built up by observation and trial over many generations and handed on by practice and word of mouth. It also includes rules for behaviour, such as when hunting must stop or which groves may not be cut.

What makes it different

• Local: it concerns one landscape in fine detail.
• Long-term: it draws on observations stretching back many lifetimes.
• Practical: it is tested daily by people whose food depends on it.
• Holistic: it treats land, animals, people and spirit as connected.
• Carried in language: place names and plant names store much of it.

Fire

Aboriginal Australians have used fire to manage land for a very long time. Small, cool fires are lit early in the dry season, patch by patch. They clear undergrowth, bring on fresh grass for game and leave a patchwork that stops later wildfires from spreading. When this burning was halted after colonisation, fuel built up, and fires became larger and hotter.

Reading the sea and the sky

When the Indian Ocean tsunami struck in December 2004, Moken communities on islands off Thailand recognised the warning signs, including the sea drawing far back from the shore. Their oral tradition tells of a devouring wave. They moved to high ground, and reports at the time noted that almost all survived. On India's Andaman Islands, the indigenous peoples of the forest were likewise reported to have largely escaped.

In the Andes, farmers have long watched the Pleiades star cluster in June to forecast the rains. If the stars look dim, they expect a poor season and delay planting potatoes. In 2000 scientists showed why this works: in El Niño years, thin high cloud blurs the stars, and El Niño also brings drought to the region some months later.

Medicine from plants

Many modern drugs began with indigenous knowledge. Quinine, for centuries the main treatment for malaria, comes from the bark of the cinchona tree of the Andes, whose use against fever was learnt in Peru. Healers in many communities know hundreds of medicinal plants. This raises a hard question: when a company turns such knowledge into a product, who should be paid?

Taking biological material or knowledge without consent or payment is called biopiracy. An international agreement, the Nagoya Protocol, adopted in 2010, requires that benefits from genetic resources and the traditional knowledge linked to them be shared fairly with the communities that provide them.

• In Kerala, India, a scientific institute developed a tonic from a plant called arogyapacha, used by the Kani people, and in the 1990s agreed to share income with them.
• In southern Africa, San communities won a share of royalties from products based on Hoodia, a plant they chew to dull hunger.
• In 2019 the South African rooibos tea industry agreed to pay a levy to Khoi and San organisations.

Knowledge and science together

Traditional knowledge and science are different ways of knowing. Each has strengths. Science measures precisely and compares across the world. Traditional knowledge offers a long, continuous record of one place and notices things instruments miss. Inuit hunters reported thinning sea ice and changing animal behaviour early on, and now work with climate scientists as partners.

A caution

It is a mistake to romanticise. No people is perfectly in balance with nature, and communities have at times overhunted or overgrazed. The fair claim is narrower and well supported: people who depend directly on a place over many generations tend to build knowledge and rules that keep it productive. That knowledge is worth learning from, and it belongs to them.

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