Changing forest conservation and management paradigms: traditional ecological knowledge systems and sustainable forestry: Perspectives from Chile and India

Abstract

This paper first explores the shift now occurring in the science that provides the theoretical basis for forest conservation and management. The paper then presents the concepts of traditional ecological knowledge and traditional management systems and practise to provide background for two case studies that examine traditional knowledge and forest management practices of tribal communities in the Sariska region (Rajasthan, India) and of the indigenous Mapuche Pewenhce communities in the Andean mountains of southern Patagonia in Chile, underlining the special relationship these tribal and indigenous communities maintain with the forest and their usefulness in community-based native forest conservation. These examples of traditional ecological knowledge and traditional management systems suggest that it is important to focus on managing ecological processes, instead of products, and to use integrated ecosystem management. Recommendations to move forest management paradigms beyond the current view of ‘timber’ or ‘reserves’ and toward one of truly integrated use that adapt conservation approaches to local cultural representations of the environment are made.

Keywords:

• traditional ecological knowledge
• community-based forest management
• ethnoforestry

Acknowledgements

The authors are most grateful to the Mapuche Pewenche communities of Ikalma in Chile and the tribal communities of the Sariska Tiger Reserve in India, with whom they worked and lived. The authors thank all those in the communities for introducing them to their culture, language, and for having generously expressing their thoughts and feelings.

Notes

1. In Hinduism, sadhu is a common term for an ascetic or practitioner of yoga (yogi).