Indigenous Knowledge: Enhancing its Contribution to Natural Resources Management

Indigenous Knowledge (IK) reviews cutting-edge research and links theory with practice to further our understanding of this important approach's contribution to natural resource management. It addresses IK's potential in solving issues such as coping with change, ensuring global food supply for a growing population, reversing environmental degradation and promoting sustainable practices. It is increasingly recognised that IK, which has featured centrally in resource management for millennia, should play a significant part in today's programmes that seek to increase land productivity and food security while ensuring environmental conservation. By drawing together strands of biocultural diversity research into natural resources management, this book: - Provides an overview of conceptual issues around IK and its contributions to sustainable agriculture and environmental conservation; - Addresses key themes via case studies from bioculturally diverse regions of the world; - Displays a wide range of methodologies and outlines a possible agenda to guide future work. An invaluable resource for researchers and postgraduate students in environmental science and natural resources management, this book is also an informative read for development practitioners and undergraduates in agriculture, forestry, geography, anthropology and environmental studies.

Table of Contents:
1: Indigenous Knowledge and Natural Resources Management: An Introduction Featuring Wildlife PART I: CHANGE AND DYNAMISM 2: The Dynamic Nature of Indigenous Agricultural Knowledge. An Analysis of Change Among the Baka (Congo Basin) and the Tsimane’ (Amazon) 3: Contingency and Adaptation over Five Decades in Nuaulu Forest-Based Plant Knowledge 4: ‘Keeping Our Milpa’: Maize Production and Management of Trees by Nahuas of the Sierra de Zongolica, Mexico 5: The Contested Space that Local Knowledge Occupies: Understanding the Veterinary Knowledges and Practices of Livestock Farmers in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa PART II: DIFFUSION AND EXTENSION 6: Integrating Indigenous Knowledge for Technology Adoption in Agriculture 7: Seeds of the Devil Weed: Local Knowledge and Learning from Videos in Mali 8: ‘I Will Continue to Fight Them’: Local Knowledge, Everyday Resistance and Adaptation to Climate Change in Semi-Arid Tanzania PART III: CONSERVATION AND SUSTAINABILITY 9: Indigenous Soil Enrichment for Food Security and Climate Change in Africa and Asia: a Review 10: Will the Real Raised-Field Agriculture Please Rise? Indigenous Knowledge and the Resolution of Competing Visions of One Way to Farm Wetlands 11: Andean Cultural Affirmation and Cultural Integration in Context: Reflections on Indigenous Knowledge for the In Situ Conservation of Agrobiodiversity 12: The Indigenous Knowledge of Crop Diversity and Evolution PART IV: COMPLEXITY AND VARIABILITY 13: Investigating Farmers’ Knowledge and Practice Regarding Crop Seeds: Beware Your Assumptions! 14: Traditional Domestic Knowledge and Skills in Post-Harvest Processes: a Focus on Food Crop Storage 15: The Local Wisdom of Balinese Subaks 16: Indigenous Agriculture and the Politics of

About the Author :
Jeffery W. Bentley (Ph.D., University of Arizona) is an agricultural anthropologist with a lifelong interest in farmer creativity, and language. He has worked extensively with farmers and agricultural scientists in Latin America, Africa, South Asia, and Portugal. Previously at New Mexico State and Zamorano Universities, he currently works at Agro-Insight. Jeff has consulted for CABI, CIP, CIMMYT, and the CGIAR Research Program on Roots, Tubers and Bananas (RTB), among others. In the early 2000s he played a key role setting up the CABI plant clinics. He lives in Cochabamba, Bolivia. David A. Cleveland is a human ecologist who has done research and development project work on sustainable agrifood systems with farmers and gardeners around the world. His research and teaching have focused on sustainable, small-scale agrifood systems, including plant breeding and conservation of crop genetic diversity, and local and scientific knowledge and collaboration between farmers and scientists. His current research and teaching focus is on food system localization and diet change to improve health, mitigate anthropogenic climate change and environmental degradation, and promote food and climate justice, including at the University of California, in California, and globally. Paul Van Mele (PhD, Wageningen University) is an agricultural scientist who has managed agricultural R&D projects dealing with sustainable agriculture across the global South for over three decades. Since 2002, Paul has spearheaded farmer-to-farmer training video, coordinated research on video-mediated learning and taken it to scale. He runs his own company, Agro-Insight, and co-founded the non-profit organisation Access Agriculture to support South-South learning on agroecological transformation. Daniela Soleri is an ethnoecologist whose research is on local and scientific knowledge systems in small scale agriculture and gardens, and collaboration between formal scientists and gardeners and farmers. This includes research with communities around the world in quantifying farmer practices, documenting risk assessment and cultural identity related to seeds, and investigating new semi-formal seed systems. She teaches a class at UCSB on "citizen" and community science, and is currently working with seed and garden activists and scientists to investigate crop diversity and adaptation in California food gardens.