Category Page: Conserving BCD

Local Knowledge and Self-Determination for Conservation: The Case of the Irular of Tamil Nadu, India

Project Contributor: C. Manjula Irular people inhabiting the southern part of India are one of the 635 Indigenous tribal communities of the country. The population of Indigenous tribal peoples in India, known collectively as Adivasis (original inhabitants), is estimated to be over 84 million people. Despite these high numbers, these communities usually live on the

Protection of an Indigenous Reserve: the Ka’apor People of Amazonian Brazil

Ka'apor, Brazil

Project Contributor: William Balée The Ka’apor emerged as a people with a distinctive identity about three hundred years ago, probably between the Tocantins and Xingu rivers in the Amazon basin. They later engaged in a long and slow migration that took them into Maranhão State, in eastern Amazonian Brazil, by the 1870s. One hundred years

Reconnecting with Natural and Cultural Heritage: Flora and Fauna of the Marshall Islands

Project Contributor: Nancy Vander Velde with Jorelik Tibon In the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, as is occurring in many other areas of the world, traditional lifestyles are being replaced by urbanized ones. This transformation, compounded by the occurrence of invasive species and other non-native species, is resulting in disconnection from local biodiverse surroundings. Much

Countering the Loss of Knowledge, Practices, and Species on Flores Island, Indonesia

Project Contributor: Jeanine Pfeiffer with the Tado Community, the Waerebo Community and Elizabeth Gish Tado and Waerebo are Manggarai ethnic communities located on Flores Island in East Nusa Tenggara province, eastern Indonesia. Despite being linguistically, culturally, and ecologically rich, East Nusa Tenggara is perhaps the most neglected region of Indonesia. Manggarai traditional knowledge and practices

Training Indigenous Agro-Forestry Agents in Acre, Brazil: Indigenous and Modern Technologies for Sustainability

Project Contributors: Giulia Pedone, Renato Gavazzi The Amazon region has largely been perceived as a boundless territory with unlimited resources to exploit. Due to its low population density, it has been viewed as an “empty space” to be colonized and to be integrated into the national economic landscape, and thus as a key to Brazil’s

Teaching and Learning from an Indigenous Perspective: Knowledge and Language Revitalization in Hawaii

Project Contributor: Chad Kälepa Baybayan A consortium of Native Hawaiian schools and education professionals is using the indigenous Hawaiian language as a medium for making connections between traditional and formal scientific knowledge within a Hawaiian paradigm – one that is grounded in practices that allow people to be self-sufficient by sustaining the environments that feed

Life with Crocodiles: Reintroducing Human-Wildlife Coexistence in the Philippines

Project Contributor: Jan van der Ploeg The Northern Sierra Madre on the island of Luzon, Philippines, is one of the most ecologically valuable areas in the world. The area is also under severe threat from logging, destructive fishing, agricultural conversion, infrastructure development, and hunting, all of which threaten biodiversity in the last forest frontier of

Re-establishing the inextricable link: Mbyá culture and biological diversity in the Atlantic Rainforest in Southeast Brazil

Project Contributors: Márcia Gomes de Oliveira and Norbert Suchanek The Mbyá are one of the last surviving indigenous peoples of the Atlantic Rainforest in the Southeast of Brazil, known as Mata Atlântica, which once covered part of Paraguay, Uruguay, the North of Argentina and the whole coastal areas all the way to the Brazilian Northeast.

The Kala Vernacular Education and Local Ecological Knowledge Project

Project Contributors: Christine Schreyer and John Wagner Tusi Nandang (on the right), research assistant, practicing his interviewing skills with Mathias Dagam. Kala is a language with four distinct dialects spoken by approximately 2000 individuals in six villages (from north to south Manidala, Lambu, Apoze, Kamiali, Alẽso and Kui) along the southern Huon Gulf coast in

Ancient Botanical Knowledge as Living Knowledge: Medicinal Plants of Antiquity

Project Contributor: Alain Touwaide The “Medicinal Plants of Antiquity” program is recovering the ancient therapeutic practices of healers recorded by physicians of Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages, such as Hippocrates, Galen, and Avicenna. This research, which is conducted at the National Library of Rome, Italy, is documenting and reviving part of the heritage of