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Paper short abstract:

At the interface between anthropology and ethnosciences, I discuss the relationships and coexistence between human and arboreal beings among the Bugun of Arunachal Pradesh (eastern Indian Himalayas).

Paper long abstract:

With an increasing demand for the decarbonization of the global economy to reach carbon neutrality in 2050, and the loss of biodiversity, forests represent a key lever for climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation. The eastern Indian Himalayas, listed as biodiversity hotspot by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) are characterized by a mountainous and rich forest environment, where trees play a fundamental role both in maintaining soils (thus helping to limit landslides) and in regulating the water cycle (helping to reduce flooding on the scale of the Brahmaputra basin).

The Bugun lifeworld is entangled in the Himalayan forest, a dynamic local knowledge system, and in modern forest management policies at several scales (from local to international). In this context, using ethnographic and ethnoscientific approaches, I question the ways in which the Bugun co-exist with different categories of trees (forest trees, isolated trees and cultivated trees). Within which local categorisation system trees are integrated? What are the roles attributed to these different arboreal beings and the dynamics of associated practices? And how are market economy and forest conservation policies transforming modes of co-existence between human and tree?

By providing some answers to these questions, I show how an anthropology of the living allow us to understand the complex socio-ecological dynamics of a mountain environment such as the eastern Indian Himalayas.