Unit 8: Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Traditional Environmental Management

13 Mile Lake with fringe of Labrador tea, dwarf birch, and sphagnum moss. Campbell Highway north of Watson Lake, Yukon. Photograph by Leslie Main Johnson [research funded by Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, standard research grant; and Canadian Circumpolar Institute, boreal area research grant].

Human knowledge of plants and animals, their nature and how to use them, is integrated into a larger domain of knowledge, which can be called “ethnoecology” or “traditional ecological knowledge.” This is the cultural understanding of relationships of plants and animals and humans to one another, and to what we usually think of as the environment (soils, landforms, climate, and weather). As we shall see in our readings, people in most cultures and environments take an active role in directing ecological processes through traditional environmental management. Tools for such management may include burning, cultivation, land clearing, selective harvesting, planting and transplanting, pruning, and fallowing. More intensive management of agricultural systems may also include terracing, paddy construction, wetland drainage or mounding, and irrigation works. Ecological systems in many parts of the world bear the stamp of the traditional harvesting and management activities of their inhabitants; indeed, some have argued that few ecosystems on earth are truly natural, in the sense that these ecosystems have evolved without the active influence of humans.

Objectives

By the end of this unit you should be able to

1. discuss the nature of ethnoecology and traditional ecological knowledge.
2. describe different systems of traditional environmental management including landscape burning, incipient cultivation, and shifting cultivation (also called slash and burn agriculture).
3. discuss the impact of traditional cultures on biodiversity.