what is
Ethnoforestry I want long Answers
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Answer:
Ethnoforestry
Author:
Deep Narayan Pandey
Contents:
Introduction to Ethnoforestry
Towards the Equity of Knowledge
Global Status of Ethnoforestry
Protection Ethnoforestry
Why Bother with Ethnoforestry?
Relevance of Ethnoforestry
Conclusions
Examples of Different Types of Indigenous Forest Management
References
About the Author
Original Source
Web links
Related Editions of The Overstory
Publisher notes
Introduction to Ethnoforestry
The effectiveness of traditional forest management practices has often been overlooked by the scientific community. This edition of The Overstory by special guest author Deep Narayan Pandey of the Indian Institute of Forest Management, Bhopal, India introduces the importance and application of ethnoforestry.
Towards the Equity of Knowledge
People throughout the world have effective traditional resource management systems including protection, production and conservation practices which they have validated over time. Many of these traditions have been incorporated into modern practices of scientific forestry by innovative foresters. We can define ethnoforestry as the creation, conservation, management and use of forest resources, through continued practice of customary ways by local communities. Thus, it is specific and appropriate to each community and environment.
Local knowledge on forests is a revolutionary way to recast our conventional approach to development. Virtual non-availability of written material in the subject is the result of long term neglect of local knowledge on forests by scientific forestry scholarship. Local knowledge, institutions, policy, empowerment, livelihood issues and forestry are inter-linked. We need to explore the operational part of sustainability of natural resources in association with these issues.
Global Status of Ethnoforestry
Ethnoforestry has mostly been neglected in global forest research and planning. Some pioneering studies, on various sub-disciplines of the subject, specifically from India (see, Pandey 1996, and, Singh and Pandey 1995), China (Menzies 1988), Brazil (Posey 1985), Ecuador (Irvine 1989) and Vietnam (Poffenberger personal communication) have appeared only recently. Recently, Asia Forest Network, based at University of California, has developed a pilot activity to assist minority Thai communities in the reestablishment of traditional "Yumpa" Forest Keeper system in Vietnam. In fact after Chambers (1979) drew attention to the importance of local knowledge little reference has ever been made to ethnoforestry.
However, the subject is important to local people, and development planners alike. We must realize that it enlarges people's range of choices. Environmental security now lies in integration of local knowledge and modern learning. Clifford Geertz (1993), in his famous book, Local Knowledge, demonstrates how local knowledge remains in dynamic tension with global knowledge. We cannot analyse policy developments and their implications if we do not have a more profound understanding of the meaning of forests for their societies.
This is not to say that all so-called prescientific societies lived in a state of ecological balance. Many pleistocene hunter-gatherer communities are believed to have caused the local extinction of a number of large mammals through over-exploitation (Joshi and Gadgil 1991).
Protection Ethnoforestry
Protection Ethnoforestry is also called conservation ethnoforestry. It includes the maintenance of sacred trees, sacred groves, temple forest and saffron-sprinkled forests or kesar chhanta forests and landscapes. Another category is closures or Beed, the wooded areas, near farmlands and dwelling houses, owned by private people. These practices have helped to maintain the biodiversity of natural forests and wild habitats.
Biodiversity conservation practices are as diverse as the cultural diversity in the world. Indigenous knowledge of local plants, animals, habitat preference, life-history and resource availability is socially transmitted from one individual to another within and across generations (Gadgil, Berkes and Folke 1993), though not necessarily in writings. In addition, there are examples where communities regulate the use of resource by restricting the access to resources, and enforcing compliance through religious belief, ritual and social convention. It is debatable whether these 'restraints' evolved after trial and error or as systematic prescriptions. However, it is certain that these restraints definitely contributed for the cause of biodiversity conservation.
Why Bother with Ethnoforestry?
The dynamics of social reciprocity in a poor and marginalised community is almost beyond the capacity of an outsider to imagine (Seeland 1997). The implementation of joint forest management with success in India has proved that those for whom the forests matter most can properly manage forests and sustainable livelihoods. And they may not be the so-called scientific foresters. They are the local people