For some translation assistance,
copy URL and paste in
translation space

A fundamental distinction is often made between the science of the natural world and traditional or ethnobiological systems of knowledge. We question the validity of this distinction. Both systems share a common origin and arise from our innate human behaviour of exploring, characterising and communicating about the world around us. Both have equal validity. However, even when the importance of traditional knowledge is explicitly recognised, as it is in Article 8 of the Convention on Biological Diversity, it is rarely given the attention it deserves and must always defer to science. One of the most important advantages of taxonomy, the scientific system of naming and classifying biological diversity, is that it aims to provide a unique, distinctive name for each species. It has long been recognised that the "international language" of taxonomy enables scientists around the world to communicate and share information about species. Nevertheless, the common language of taxonomic names has generally been seen as superior to, or more correct than, traditional names. This attitude tends to marginalize traditional knowledge and misses the point that it is only through taxonomic nomenclature that we connect together all that we have learnt about biodiversity.

The dazzling diversity of species found on Earth is the result of millions of years of evolution. This biological diversity underpins the economic wealth of our planet providing all of our food, many medicines and numerous other materials. The range of species used by people continues to increase as our exploration of biodiversity progresses. Not only is biodiversity a repository for genetic information gained through the long and incompletely understood processes of biological evolution, it provides vital ecological services and it enriches the aesthetics of our environment.

Culture and language are also repositories for information gained through social development and diversification in ways that are broadly analogous to biological evolution. Like biological diversity, linguistic and cultural diversity have incalculable value to present and future generations. Just as human lives are impoverished by the loss of species, so too are they diminished by the erosion and loss of culture and language. This loss depletes the store of information as surely as the loss of biological diversity. And just as biodiversity research can lead to the identification of useful, species, genes or compounds, so can local knowledge about tropical forest plants or crop varieties. Human cultures and languages are disappearing rapidly, and this loss is as grave as the loss of biological diversity it parallels. Frequently, both losses are inter-related, especially when habitat conversion impacts both on landscape and indigenous peoples.

The Convention on Biological Diversity embodies a world wide consensus on the need to respond to the loss of biological diversity. The corresponding challenge of conserving cultural and linguistic diversity has yet to be adequately addressed and neither have the links to biodiversity been fully appreciated. Although indigenous people, their advocates, and social scientists are acutely aware of the losses, there is as yet no political consensus on how to address this problem or how to conserve cultural knowledge. The dynamics of political and social systems make it far more difficult to design programmes of cultural conservation than it is to establish protected areas or to achieve ex situ conservation in botanical gardens, zoos or seed banks. Cultural knowledge cannot adequately be conserved by setting it aside in a museum or by recording it, whether on a paper or electronically. Like biological diversity, traditional, ethnobiological knowledge can only be conserved by keeping it alive and in use.

Traditional knowledge of biodiversity concerns plants and animals and their uses as perceived by the local and or indigenous people of a given area. Having evolved over the millennia it encapsulates accumulated experience, abstracted in the form of appropriate systems of local names and folklore. Such indigenous systems include the botanical or pharmaceutical lexicons of peasants and tribal people, the farmer’s knowledge of soils, they hunter’s knowledge of animals, the baker’s knowledge of yeast and dough and the shaman’s ability to read oracle bones. Two definitions of indigenous knowledge have been proposed by Brush (1996): (i) Broadly defined, indigenous knowledge is the systematic information that remains in the diverse social structures. It is usually unwritten and preserved only through oral tradition; (ii) Narrowly defined, it refers to the knowledge system of indigenous people and minority cultures.

Some ancient records concerning knowledge of biological diversity have been preserved, for example, the Indian Vedas, the ancient Chinese herbal Pen ts’ao kang m, and Egyptian scrolls concerning medicinal and other plant uses (Schultes and von Reis, 1995). In one sense this is hardly surprising, the oldest and fundamental knowledge for human survival concerns the characteristics and properties of organisms. Knowing which species are beneficial and which are harmful is now, and always has been, a matter of life and death. These ancient insights into medical knowledge are carefully studied by the ethnobiologist. The pre-requisite of all these studies is diligent gathering and pooling of knowledge existing with indigenous folks and traditional groups of people. Important written sources include works of sacred scriptures (eg., Vedic texts and Ayurvedic treatises) and other indigenous medical systems. But much such knowledge is not written down and survives only in the oral culture of local people. Even in ancient times, sages, including Charak and Susruta, mentioned that medical herbs and plants should be recognised and identified with the help of cowherds, hermits, huntsmen, forest dwellers and those who cull the fruits and edible roots of the forest.

Botany, the scientific study of plants, has been approached from two divergent viewpoints; the philosophical and the utilitarian. From the first point of view, botany stands on its own merit as an integral branch of natural philosophy, but when regarded from the second it is the source of origin for medicine, agriculture and industry. It is possible to trace the development of these two lines of enquiry from classical times and to see how one or the other has predominated and that although they have converged they have often, to their detriment, followed unconnected routes (Arber, 1986).

To the ancient Greek authors Dioscorides, Theophrastus and Aristotle each plant had a soul or psyche, an idea which later European thinking inherited. The science of ethnobotany developed by Western scientists built on these classical Greek writings on the therapeutic efficacy of plants. Indeed, formal systems such as Linnean binomial nomenclature and western pharmacology originated in the indigenous knowledge system (Atran, 1987).

Other cultures have developed ethnobotanical knowledge by different routes. The discovery, enumeration, and evaluations of uses of plants in primitive societies has been described by Shultes and Von Reis (1995). Anthropologists and linguists have documented the breadth, complexity, regularities, and usefulness of indigenous knowledge (Berlin, 1992). Although different concepts are often employed, indigenous knowledge shares these attributes with formal scientific knowledge systems. The Mayan folk classification of plants, for example, is no less systematic than the latest scientific classifications based largely on analyses of DNA sequences. Typically, however, indigenous knowledge is more accessible and freely shared within local communities (Berlin, Raven, and Breedlove, 1974), providing that their cultural traditions persist..

Unfortunately, there remains little interaction between the scientific classification of biodiversity and traditional cultural knowledge. Taxonomy has now provided names for about 1.7 million species out of an estimated total that might be as many as 13 million species. No doubt there are many species recognised and named in traditional systems of classification that have not yet been described by science. In many cases even when a species has been formally described under the internationally agreed rules of scientific nomenclature, science knows nothing more about it than the time and place where it was collected.

We see the opportunity, created by the Convention on Biological Diversity, for a new and vital rapprochement and synthesis between scientific classification and traditional knowledge of plants and animals as captured in myriads of cultural practices, folklore, and indigenous language systems. There is a direct relationship between knowledge and classification based on folklore and taxonomy. Bulmer (1969) pointed out that, "If folk taxonomy bore no relation to scientific taxonomy, but was entirely based on biologically arbitrary but culturally relevant discrimination, there would be no point in obtaining biological identification for the creatures and plants concerned, no way of relating biological information about them to ethnographic information about the uses to which they were put or the manner in which men conceptualised them". Berlin(1992) has indicated a strong need for linking the scientific and folk systems of classification. Example of such links have been quoted by Berlin(1992) who has looked at the relationship between folk names and scientific names. Thus in this relationship Berlin has observed that Lantana, a genus in Verbenaceae can be identified by local Tzeltal Maya people, but the local name given ‘ch’ilwet’ actually is for five different species of Lantana. Similar studies made by Kapoor( 1978) and Pratap and Kapoor(1985) on Chenopodium species in India have shown that several species of Chenopodium including C. album and C. murale are known as bithu or bathu by the local rural communities in northern India especially North West Himalayas. Himalayan cultivated forms of C. album are referred to by hilly communities called kauna. Interestingly this name is closer to C. quinoa a native food crop in Latin American countries Mexico, Bolivia, Peru etc.

The opportunity exits for connecting up all human experiences and knowledge of the diversity of the natural world through the medium of scientific names for species. This is particularly timely given the increasing use of computerised information systems as a means of accessing information about species. In many cases it would not be possible to provide a direct one to one correspondence between culturally important organisms and scientific names. The units recognised in cultural classifications do necessarily correspond to a particular species, or to units, such as genera or families in the higher classification. In fact, scientific concepts of what constitutes a species are not precisely fixed. In practise many species have been given more than one scientific (synonyms) and rules of nomenclature exist to establish which should be correctly applied. Furthermore, scientists differ in their circumscription of genera, families and more inclusive groups. These complexities requires computerised information systems to accommodate different systems of classification and to provide links between the known synonyms of species. Thus, establishing the correspondences between cultural information about species and their scientific names merely extends an existing challenge for such systems. Given the recently announced intention of the OECD nations to create a Global Biodiversity Information Facility, it is important that emphasis be placed on the inclusion of traditional names in this system. In the long run this will contribute to the empowerment of all people to access scientific information about species via whatever names they are familiar with. Furthermore, it will be one contribution to the ex situ preservation of endangered cultural knowledge. By including such information the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, and related projects, can be important components in achieving the kind of benefit sharing envisaged under the Convention on Biological Diversity.

References

Atran,S. 1987. "Origins of the Species and Genus concepts: An Anthropological Perspective." Journal of the History of Biology. 20.195-279.

Berlin,B. 1992 Ethnobiological Classification: Principles of Categorization of Plants and Animals in Traditional Societies. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.

Berlin,B, D.E. Breedlove and P.H.Raven 1973 General Principles of Classification and Nomenclature in Folk Biology. Amer. Anthro. 75: 214-42.

Berlin,B., P. Raven., and D. Breedlove .1974. Principles of Tzeltal Plant Classification: An Introduction to Botanical Ethnography of a Mayan Speaking Community in Highland Ciapas. New York: Academic Press.

Brush,S.B. and Stabinsky,D.1996. Valuing Local Knowledge. Island Press.

Schultes, R.A. and Siri von Reis 1995. Ethnobotany Evolution of a Discipline. Chapman and Hall.