1st Edition
The Routledge Handbook of Indigenous Environmental Knowledge
This volume provides an overview of key themes in Indigenous Environmental Knowledge (IEK) and anchors them with brief but well-grounded empirical case studies of relevance for each of these themes, drawn from bioculturally diverse areas around the world. It provides an incisive, cutting-edge overview of the conceptual and philosophical issues, while providing constructive examples of how IEK studies have been implemented to beneficial effect in ecological restoration, stewardship, and governance schemes.
Collectively, the chapters in the Routledge Handbook of Indigenous Environmental Knowledge cover Indigenous Knowledge not only in a wide range of cultures and livelihood contexts, but also in a wide range of environments, including drylands, savannah grassland, tropical forests, mountain landscapes, temperate and boreal forests, Pacific and Indian Ocean islands, and coastal environments. The chapters discuss the complexities and nuances of Indigenous cosmologies and ethno-metaphysics and the treatment and incorporation of IEK in local, national, and international environmental policies. Taken together, the chapters in this volume make a strong case for the potential of Indigenous Knowledge in addressing today’s local and global environmental challenges, especially when approached from a perspective of appreciative inquiry, using cross-cultural methods and ethical, collaborative approaches which limit bias and inappropriate extraction of IEK.
The book is a guide for graduate and advanced undergraduate teaching, and a key reference for academics in development studies, environmental studies, geography, anthropology, and beyond, as well as anyone with an interest in Indigenous Environmental Knowledge.
1 Introduction
Thomas F. Thornton and Shonil A. Bhagwat
PART I Concepts and context
2 Indigenous Ecological Knowledge: Why bother?
Eugene Hunn
3 Context matters: the holism and subjectivity of environmental knowledge
Chris S. Duvall
4 Cultivar diversity and management as traditional environmental knowledge
Roy Ellen
5 On serving salmon: an ethnography of hyperkeystone interactions in Interior Alaska
Shiaki Kondo
6 Performance knowledge: uncovering the dynamics of biocultural diversity of Borneo’s tropical forests through a Penan hunting technique
Rajindra K. Puri
7 Soil ethnoecology
Paul Sillitoe
8 Bridging paradigms: analyzing traditional Tsimane’ hunting with a double lens
Armando Medinaceli
PART II Issues of perspective, values, and engagement
9 Asian and Middle Eastern pastoralists
Ariell Ahearn and Dawn Chatty
10 Balance on every ledger: Kwakwaka’wakw resource values and traditional ecological management
Douglas Deur, Kim Recalma-Clutesi, and Chief Adam Dick
11 Challenges surrounding education and transmission of Ainu Indigenous Ecological Knowledge in Japan: disparate valuations of a people and their IEK
Jeff Gayman
12 Engaging with Indigenous Environmental Knowledge in the North American Arctic: moving from documentation to decisions in environmental governance
Henry P. Huntington
13 Taiga Forest reindeer herders and hunters, subsistence, stewardship
Nadezhda Mamontova
14 Tlingit engagement with salmon: the philosophy and practice of relational sustainability
Steve J. Langdon
15 Mātauranga as knowledge, process and practice in Aotearoa New Zealand
Priscilla Wehi, Hēmi Whaanga, Krushil Watene and Tammy Steeves
PART III Applications of IEK for adaptation, conservation, and coexistence
16 Integrating Amazigh cultural practices in Moroccan High Atlas biodiversity conservation
Irene Teixidor-Toneu, Gary Martin, Soufiane M’sou and Ugo D’Ambrosio
17 Sacred groves of Sierra Leone: preserving Indigenous Environmental Knowledge
Alison A. Ormsby
18 The role of biodiversity in the maintenance of ecosystem services in human-dominated landscapes: evidence from the Terai Plains of Nepal
Jessica P. R. Thorn, Thomas F. Thornton, Ariella Helfgott and Kathy J. Willis
19 Creating coexistence: traditional knowledge and institutions as a foundation for Maasai-wildlife coexistence in southern Kenya
Guy Western and Samantha Russell
20 Cultural keystone species as indicators of climatic changes
Victoria Wyllie de Echeverria
21 Living with elephants: indigenous world-views
Tarshish Thekaekara
22 Do dragons prevent deforestation?: The Gambia’s sacred forests
Ashley Massey Marks, Joshua B. Fisher and Shonil A. Bhagwat
23 Fire, native ecological knowledge, and the enduring anthropogenic landscapes of Yosemite Valley
Douglas Deur and Rochelle Bloom
PART IV Governance and equity
24 Who benefits? Indigenous Environmental Knowledge (IEK) in multilateral biodiversity agreements
Wendy Jackson and Phil Lyver
25 The use and misuse of IEK in conservation in Vietnam
Pamela McElwee
26 Including Indigenous and Local Knowledge in the work of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Global Assessment: outcomes and lessons for the future
Pamela McElwee, Hien T. Ngo, Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares, Victoria Reyes-García, Zsolt Molnár, Maximilien Guêze, Yildiz Aumeruddy-Thomas, Sandra Díaz and Eduardo Brondizio
27 Indigenous Knowledge, knowledge-holders and marine environmental governance
Suzanne von der Porten, Yoshitaka Ota and Devi Mucina
28 Incorporating social-ecological systems into protected area networks: indigenous and Community Conserved Areas (ICCAs) in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo
Ashley Massey Marks, Paul Porodong and Shonil A. Bhagwat
Biography
Thomas F. Thornton is Dean of Arts and Sciences and Vice-Provost for Research and Sponsored Programs at University of Alaska Southeast, USA, and Associate Professor (part-time) at the Environmental Change Institute, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, UK.
Shonil A. Bhagwat is Professor of Environment and Development, and Head of the School of Social Sciences and Global Studies at the Open University, UK. His research focuses on the links between environment and development in the context of global challenges.
