Erik Gomez-Baggethun & Victoria Reyes-Garcia, “Reinterpreting Change in Traditional Ecological Knowledge,” Human Ecology 41, no. 4 (August 2013), 643-647.
Focuses on the Donana region of Spain and the Tsimane’ hunter-horticulturalist society in the Bolivian Amazon.
Notes
- 643 – “Much research on traditional ecological knowledge has centred in 1) documenting fading knowledge, 2) understanding the parallel changes in biological and cultural diversity, and 3) assessing the processes and drivers of change that lead to the loss of TEK. The general argumentative thrust is to lament the loss of TEK among indigenous peoples and rural communities.”
- “In this paper we analyze some factors and conditions that maintain or undermine people’s ability to adapt and regenerate TEK in the face of changing environmental and socio-economic conditions. We attempt to thereby understand the factors underlying the loss of TEK and the mechanisms used by societies to regenerate and transmit such knowledge in the face of environmental change.”
- 645 – “Those results challenge the assumption that TeK should irremediably fade as indigenous people increase their interactions with national societies and the market economy.”
- [in the Donana case] Comparative advantages of TEK-driven resource systems such as their low impacts on soils, water, and biodiversity (and thereby their capacity to maintain long term ecological resilience) became less important in the emerging mode of production, where profits depend to a large extent on the ability to externalize environmental impacts from production costs.”
