Paper short abstract:

For India's Adivasi communities, conserving local biodiversity is deeply rooted in cultural traditions rather than a scientific practice. Through their customs, beliefs, rituals, knowledge, and worldviews, they serve as stewards of their environment.

Paper long abstract:

Adivasi cultures in India possess a built-in adaptive system that aligns them with the physical environment, ensuring their survival and continuity even under challenging conditions. Through their interaction with the environment, each Adivasi community develops a knowledge base, which is reflected in traditions, customs, belief systems, rituals, cognitive perceptions, and worldviews—together forming an ideological framework for the Adivasi-Nature relationship. Consequently, Adivasi culture not only directs the sustainable use of local natural resources but also prevents overexploitation. This is largely due to the subsistence-oriented nature of their economies, which, with limited technology, avoid exploitative practices in resource utilization. In adapting to their local environment, Adivasi communities engage directly with the forest, land, water, and wildlife that make up their habitat. The interaction between these human groups and their environment is regulated and perpetuated through cultural practices, thereby forming the cultural ecology of forest communities. This paper aims to contribute to the ethnography of biodiversity conservation among India's Adivasis, highlighting several case studies.