local knowledge
Traditional medicinal plant knowledge (TMK) helps meet the health needs of a large section of the world’s population, especially socially and economically disadvantaged and aboriginal communities of developing countries like India. However, there is little known about TMK skills and their intergenerational transfer and growing concerns over the erosion of TMK within these communities....
Historically, the Han Chinese forcibly displaced Kam people from the best agricultural land. Today, the Kam cultural landscape largely encompasses the border regions of Guizhou, Hunan and Guangxi Provinces, in which lie verdant riverine mountains and valleys. Sufficient water resources support Kam rice cultivation and the broadleaf and evergreen forests of the humid subtropical montane...
This study documents the use of uncultivated plants, their status and contribution to the livelihoods of Chepang people in the mid-hills of Nepal. Diversity fairs, key informant surveys, group discussions and individual household surveys were conducted. The plants identified were used as food, vegetables, medicine, and for cultural and economic reasons. The uses of 85 uncultivated plant...
Medicinal plant use in Peru can be tracked back for millennia, and although westernized medicine has become an important factor in the treatment of illnesses, many patients still frequent herbalist shops and retain some herbal knowledge of their own. The present study, undertaken at “Laboratorios Beal,” a herbalist practice in Trujillo, Peru, was conducted as a comparison to...
This paper examines the impact of two multisectoral highland development projects on ethnic minorities in northern Thailand. While social sector interventions were relatively successfully delivered and locally appreciated, strategies for agricultural development failed to take account of local cultural and production systems, and were fraught with a range of design and implementation...
In the eastern Himalayas, shifting cultivation is the most prominent farming system, providing a way of life for a large number of ethnic minorities and other poor and marginalised upland communities. The policy approach to deal with shifting cultivation is common across Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Myanmar, the countries in this study, and aims to replace it with permanent forms of...
Disasters associated with mountain hazards have had considerable impact throughout the world, especially in least favored regions such as Asia and Latin America — as illustrated by the case of Puebla Province in the Sierra Norte, Mexico, devastated by an extreme precipitation event in October 1999. The effect of disasters on mountain areas depends on the spatial and temporal distribution...
The Southeast Asian uplands provide livelihood opportunities for more than 100 million people. Many of these are poor smallholder farmers who are economically, socially and politically marginalised, suffer from tenure insecurity and have few options other than drawing on the uplands' natural resources to sustain their living. Forest conversion, inappropriate land use practices and timber...
Indonesia’s 1999–2004 decentralisation reforms created opportunities for land-use planning that reflected local conditions and local people’s needs. The authors report on seven years of work in the District of Malinau in Indonesian Borneo that attempted to reconnect government land-use plans to local people’s values, priorities and practices. Four principles are...
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