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By focusing on medicinal species used by the people of Boca Tapada, this paper highlights the importance of secondary forests culturally, ecologically and economically as a means to conserve these rich ecosystems in Costa Rica's Northern Zone.

Paper long abstract

Conservation efforts are often taken from a singular angle, without recognizing the connections between local communities, biodiversity, ecological services, and economics. Yet, as the world continues to experience high tropical deforestation rates, community-based conservation offers perhaps the best and arguably the only effective strategy to protect secondary forests. Comprising over 50% of the tropical forests globally, secondary forests serve great ecological and cultural functions. In the Northern Zone of Costa Rica, many tree, understory, and liana species in the secondary forests provide medicinal value to the rural communities where western medical care is difficult to access. Recent research, however, has shown that secondary forests in Costa Rica are re-cleared before they have accumulated the previously lost biomass and biodiversity, many only given 20 years to recover. This paper highlights the importance of secondary forests to a community called Boca Tapada, in Costa Rica culturally, ecologically and economically. Some species with medicinal attributes are highlighted for their cultural and ecological roles in the forests, and economic aspects of conserving the forests instead of clearing them are evaluated.

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Grassroots organizers in semi-urban Mexico work for food sovereignty and health sovereignty. Sustainable approaches to food and health become the focus on their community workshops, but their message is also part of a larger political movement.

Paper long abstract

Global changes encompass the political, ecological, economic, and cultural exchanges of resources and ideas. In Mexico, the impacts of global changes are felt at local levels in all manners: politically, environmentally, economically, and culturally. The Food Sovereignty movement is a grassroots effort that aims to restructure the Mexican food system such that the local economy and traditional foods and natural environment can all be sustained (or, in some cases, revitalized). One critical component of achieving this goal is supporting local producers in agricultural practices that are less dependent on industrial inputs and international markets. The Food Sovereignty model can be used to approach the health needs of communities in Mexico, also. The local Health Sovereignty movement challenges capitalist-based systems of health promotion and maintenance. Health Sovereigntists in Autlán, Jalisco, seek to empower themselves, their families, and community members, with access to the resources, knowledge, and skills necessary to live healthy lives through prevention and curing. Ethnographic research based on participant-observation, interviews, and material analysis of the engagement with the philosophies embodied by anti-globalization, Food Sovereignty, Health Sovereignty, or other related efforts, is used to contextualize the ways that communities in the region of Autlán, Jalisco, are coping with global changes.

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This presentation will describe the challenges of a symmetrical effort of promoting dialogues among multiple knowledge-practices between local people and an interdisciplinary team in an educational and environmental project realized in the Brazilian northeast seaside.

Paper long abstract

The aim of this presentation is to discuss how to promote dialogues between knowledge-practices related to environmental experiences. Empirically we will describe a process of multiple engagements in a research, educational and environmental interdisciplinary and international project realized in two communities living on the Itapicuru estuary area in the State of Bahia, north-east Brazil. This project intends to promote a collaborative inclusion of local expertises in school activities, associated with the inhabitants’ inclusion in the planning of a patch of protected areas in the region. The most part of the local people dedicate their efforts to fishing activities, harboring a wide knowledge of local biodiversity and related skills. This implies the necessity to promote a symmetrization of local and academic knowledge-practices in order to make the dialogues between the local people and researchers engaged in the project effective. Meanwhile, this project, due to its focuses, is composed by a interdisciplinary team, demanding a complementary symmetrization of the relative knowledge-practices involved. Starting from this panorama, the presentation will discuss how effective dialogues between these diverse subjects, both between local people and researchers, and among the researchers are being attempted and developed. The thesis is that taking into account “controlled equivocations” emerging in the encounters as well as an attention to situated practices of subjects involved are crucial for both empowering local people in the educational and environmental project and concomitantly pluralizing the subjects involved.

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Paper short abstract

Researchers including ethnobiologists participate in framing local communities as biodiversity custodians. This framing can be seen however as reductive of peoples’ experience. This paper draws on an ethnography of the French Peasant Seeds movement, to reflect on "strategic reductionism".

Paper long abstract

This presentation (based on a paper published in Anthropologie et Sociétés in 2019) analyzes some aspects of the French movement for a farmers’ seed reappropriation (so-called "peasant seeds" movement), in particular its strategic choice to present itself as an actor in the conservation of cultivated genetic resources. I discuss the involvement of researchers (including myself) in the construction of such a framework. History shows that this framing has been politically productive on certain scenes and at given times. Its pitfall though is that it reduces peasant seeds to their genetic dimension and the farmers involved to biodiversity custodians. The evolution of the movement and the regulatory context show that repositioning is possible, and that it is even ongoing.

I draw on this case study to defend a good use of reductionism by researchers, in particular ethnobiologists and anthropologists working on conservation issues. Drawing on Olivier de Sardan, I distinguish two approaches to reductionism among researchers—methodological and ideological—and I defend the first. As a counterpoint, I propose to call strategic reductionism (in reference to Spivak) "the strategic choice of the actors to put forward only a limited aspect of their practices and their project". Researchers become the intellectual allies of social movements when their own methodological reductionism aligns with the strategic reductionism of the actors.

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Paper short abstract

We examine trends in TEK usage in contemporary scientific literature. We note tendencies towards essentialism to minimising power relationships. Drawing on anthropological literature, we suggest a mode of partnering and a set of questions for natural scientists seeking to employ TEK to discuss.

Paper long abstract

Culture and tradition have long been the domains of social science, particularly social/cultural anthropology and various forms of heritage studies. More recently, many natural scientists whose research addresses environmental management have also become interested in traditional ecological knowledge, indigenous and local knowledge, and local environmental knowledge (hereafter TEK), not least because policy-makers and international institutions promote the incorporation of TEK in environmental research, conservation, and management. In this article, we examine trends in TEK usage in contemporary peer-reviewed articles by natural scientists. We identify two patterns within the literature: a tendency towards essentialism and a tendency to minimise power relationships. We argue that scientists whose work reflects these trends might better address these issues by engaging with knowledge from the scientific fields that traditionally are interested in culture and tradition. We suggest a mode of partnering (productive complicity) and a set of questions for natural scientists seeking to employ TEK to discuss: What and/or who is this TEK for? Who and what will benefit from this TEK deployment? How is compensation/credit shared? Does this work give back and/or forward to all those involved?

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Botanic species conservation is fundamental to think in conservation of earthen building techniques since they have a principal role as raw material. This article focusses on the relation between local community and state institutions sustainability criteria and the use of available sources.

Paper long abstract

Earthen construction techniques have a high historic and contemporary relevance in the highland of Jujuy province, Argentina. This constructive culture involves a complex of practices and knowledge intrinsically linked with a whole local epistemology and community life. These technics included a very specialized use and central role of botanic species, not only for their structural role, but also for the way to choose, obtain, process, and use the sources. Moreover, plants have social functions inside the architecture. This paper seeks to focus on the importance of botanic species sustainability and discuss around the local and institutional criteria for conservation. We use an ethnobotanical approach, based on ethnographic methodology. Since there is not a dialogue between environmental control institutions and local communities, we notice the protectionist laws do not consider traditional inhabitant-natural sources relationship. Local communities have a special connection with Pachamama (mother earth) that strengthen a respectfully relationship with natural sources. Collection of materials is an ongoing task, with different practices related to sustainable use. However, modern life changes and marginality situation for local communities impacts on this logic of use and could result in overexploitation of the sources. The local institutions challenge is to guarantee a regulation and rational use of natural assets, taking account on local perspective and uses, and avoiding the creation of restrictive politics that affect other activities or social activities.