Presentation short abstract

Drawing on the holistic framework of Sacred Ecology, we examine how European modernity fragmented and delegitimized local ecological knowledge systems. We apply and extend Berkes’ approach to revalue communal, landscape-based, and popular practices in climate transitions.

Presentation long abstract

This presentation draws on the conceptual framework developed by Berkes (2018), particularly his understanding of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) as an “integrated body of knowledge, practice and belief, evolving through adaptive processes and handed down through cultural transmission, concerning the relationships of living beings with one another and with their environment.” We use this framework to analyze contexts in which TEK has been systematically invisibilized or delegitimized. This erosion is evident across numerous rural territories where urban expansion, the Green Revolution, or their treatment as sacrifice zones—alongside broader processes of neoliberal commodification—have pushed TEK to the brink of disappearance.

Berkes’ holistic perspective reveals how European modernity fragmented these systems, at times preserving or technifying their practical components (reflecting a scientistic orientation in Western knowledge since the sixteenth century) while eroding their ethical, communal, and cosmological dimensions. We structure our analysis around three axes. The first, invisibilized communalities and local governance, examines transhumance, irrigation commons, and communal forests as systems of knowledge-practice-belief relegated to mere “customs” by technocratic policies. The second axis, landscapes and climate resilience, explores traditional fire management, Mediterranean terraces, and peri-urban horticulture as adaptive landscapes whose ecological meaning has been reduced to cultural heritage. The third axis, marginalized popular epistemologies, analyzes artisanal fishing and weather lore as empirical observational knowledge displaced by abstract scientific models.

Berkes’ framework reveals TEK in Europe as eroded, not absent. Revitalizing it can reinforce environmental knowledge and enable more grounded climate transitions.