Indigenous Knowledge
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Indigenous Knowledge Enhancing its Contribution to Natural Resources Management Indigenous Knowledge Enhancing its Contribution to Natural Resources Management Edited by Paul Sillitoe Durham University CABI is a trading name of CAB International CABI CABI Nosworthy Way 745 Atlantic Avenue Wallingford 8th Floor Oxfordshire OX10 8DE Boston, MA 02111 UK USA Tel: +44 (0)1491 832111 Tel: +1 (617)682 9015 Fax: +44 (0)1491 833508 E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.cabi.org © CAB International 2017. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronically, mechanically, by photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library, London, UK. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sillitoe, Paul, 1949- editor. Title: Indigenous knowledge : enhancing its contribution to natural resources management / edited by Paul Sillitoe. Other titles: Indigenous knowledge (C.A.B. International) Description: Wallingford, Oxfordshire : CABI, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017016224 (print) | LCCN 2017039849 (ebook) | ISBN 9781780648118 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781780647074 (ePub) | ISBN 9781780647050 (hbk : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Indigenous peoples--Ecology--Case studies. | Traditional ecological knowledge--Case studies. | Natural resources--Management--Developing counries--Case studies. | Conservation of natural resources--Developing countries--Case studies. Classification: LCC GF50 (ebook) | LCC GF50 .I527 2017 (print) | DDC 304.2--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017016224 ISBN-13: 978 1 78064 705 0 Commissioning editor: David Hemming Editorial assistant: Emma McCann Production editor: Marta Patiño Typeset by SPi, Pondicherry, India Printed and bound in the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Contents List of Figures vii List of Tables ix Contributors xi Preface xvii 1. Indigenous Knowledge and Natural Resources Management: An Introduction Featuring Wildlife 1 Paul Sillitoe PART I: CHANGE AND DYNAMISM 2. The Dynamic Nature of Indigenous Agricultural Knowledge. An Analysis of Change Among the Baka (Congo Basin) and the Tsimane’ (Amazon) 15 Victoria Reyes García, Isabel Díaz Reviriego, Romain Duda, Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares, Sandrine Gallois and Sascha Huditz 3. Contingency and Adaptation over Five Decades in Nuaulu Forest-Based Plant Knowledge 28 Roy Ellen 4. ‘Keeping Our Milpa’: Maize Production and Management of Trees by Nahuas of the Sierra de Zongolica, Mexico 40 Citlalli López Binnqüist, Rosalinda Hidalgo Ledesma and Fortunata Panzo Panzo 5. The Contested Space that Local Knowledge Occupies: Understanding the Veterinary Knowledges and Practices of Livestock Farmers in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa 51 Andrew Ainslie PART II: DIFFUSION AND EXTENSION 6. Integrating Indigenous Knowledge for Technology Adoption in Agriculture 63 Florencia G. Palis v vi Contents 7. Seeds of the Devil Weed: Local Knowledge and Learning from Videos in Mali 75 Jeffery Bentley, Paul Van Mele, Sidi Touré, Tom van Mourik, Samuel Guindo and Gérard Zoundji 8. ‘I Will Continue to Fight Them’: Local Knowledge, Everyday Resistance and Adaptation to Climate Change in Semi-Arid Tanzania 86 Lars Otto Naess PART III: CONSERVATION AND SUSTAINABILITY 9. Indigenous Soil Enrichment for Food Security and Climate Change in Africa and Asia: A Review 99 James Fairhead, James Angus Fraser, Kojo Amanor, Dawit Solomon, Johannes Lehman and Melissa Leach 10. Will the Real Raised-Field Agriculture Please Rise? Indigenous Knowledge and the Resolution of Competing Visions of One Way to Farm Wetlands 116 Doyle McKey, Delphine Renard and Marion Comptour 11. Andean Cultural Affirmation and Cultural Integration in Context: Reflections on Indigenous Knowledge for the In Situ Conservation of Agrobiodiversity 130 Christopher Shepherd 12. The Indigenous Knowledge of Crop Diversity and Evolution 147 Stephen B. Brush PART IV: COMPLEXITY AND VARIABILITY 13. Investigating Farmers’ Knowledge and Practice Regarding Crop Seeds: Beware Your Assumptions! 158 Daniela Soleri and David A. Cleveland 14. Traditional Domestic Knowledge and Skills in Post-Harvest Processes: A Focus on Food Crop Storage 174 Patricia L. Howard 15. The Local Wisdom of Balinese Subaks 190 Wayan Windia, Gede Sedana, Thérèse de Vet and J. Stephen Lansing 16. Indigenous Agriculture and the Politics of Knowledge 203 Alder Keleman Saxena, Samara Brock, Luisa Cortesi, Chris Hebdon, Amy Johnson, Francis M. Ludlow and Michael R. Dove Index 219 List of Figures 1.1. The global knowledge meridians model. 5 1.2. The duck–rabbit. 6 1.3. Scotland’s Moorland Forum Workshop held at Scottish Natural Heritage Headquarters, Great Glen House, Inverness on 3 November 2015. 7 1.4. Visit by Scotland’s Moorland Forum to Invermark Estate on 5 June 2015. 10 4.1. Sierra de Zongolica location. 42 4.2. Forest and tree management in the Sierra de Zongolica. 46 5.1. Map of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. 52 6.1. Bamboo perched tube and a metre stick. 69 6.2. Maintaining the water depth through bund reduction. 70 6.3. Plastic cola bottles used to monitor water level. 71 7.1. Farmers like field schools and, if given the chance, may participate for years, adding new, creative experiments along the way. 82 7.2. A farmer experimental field, with millet fertilized with a micro dose of compost on the right, and unfertilized millet intercropped with cowpea on the left. 83 7.3. Millet and cowpea. 84 7.4. In another plot, Koumba Daou intercropped two rows of millet with one of cowpea, fertilized with goat manure. 84 8.1. Farmer preparing land for sowing in accordance with government directives. 93 10.1. Platform raised fields, cuvette region of the Congo, near Mossaka, Congo Republic. 120 10.2. Round raised fields, cuvette region of the Congo, near Mossaka, Congo Republic. 120 10.3. Raised fields in the Lunga Bank, Bangweulu basin, Zambia. 121 10.4. Farmers convert termite mounds into raised fields. 125 11.1. A campesino family of the Q’enqomayo Valley in their potato chacra. 134 11.2. The director of CESA, Luís Revilla, emphasizes the importance of agrobiodiversity conservation in an information session with prospective ‘conservationists’. 135 11.3. Growing out tuberlets in the greenhouse. 140 11.4. The farmers extract pollen from the flowers to produce new offspring for seed multiplication. 141 11.5. A peasant examines the berries (fruit) from which sexual seed (or botanic seed, also known as True Potato Seed) will be derived. 141 11.6. Campesinos at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Norway. 142 12.1. Anthropological study of crop diversity. 155 vii viii List of Figures 12.2. Human components of crop evolution: indigenous knowledge and crop diversity. 155 13.1. Different experiences affect knowledge and practice. 161 13.2. Deconstructing transgenic maize for farmer assessment. 162 13.3. Components of selection practice and how we quantified them. 167 13.4. Seed selection scenario presented to farmers. 167 15.1. Why subak and village (desa) boundaries are not identical. 193 15.2. Subaks, rivers and irrigation systems along the Oos and Petanu rivers of southern Bali. 199 15.3. Reduction in variance of harvest yields as cooperation spreads in the simulation model of the Oos and Petanu watersheds. 200 15.4. Comparison of model predictions with actual rice harvests by subak in 1988–1989 for 72 (of 172) subaks in the Oos-Petanu watershed. 200 16.1. Art Mór Mac Murchadha Caomhánach rides out from what is depicted as a wild and undeveloped area to meet orderly Anglo-Norman knights on more civilized terrain. 207 List of Tables 2.1. Crop varieties used in knowledge tests. 17 2.2. Average (SD) Tsimane’ agriculture-related characteristics, total and by level of new (NAK) and local (LAK) agricultural knowledge. 19 2.3. Average (SD) Baka agriculture-related characteristics, total and by level of new (NAK) and local (LAK) agricultural knowledge. 23 3.1. Selected Nuaulu firewood species. 33 7.1. Screenings of ‘Fighting Striga’ videos in Mali, 2013. 77 7.2. Farmer experiments after watching ‘Fighting Striga’ videos. 79 7.3. Institutional change in the villages after watching the videos. 81 9.1. Exemplars of indigenous soil enrichment. 103 12.1. Folk species of Andean potatoes. 152 13.1. Farmers’ opinions and risk perceptions regarding transgenic maize: questions and responses. 163 13.2. What maize farmers accomplish and expect to accomplish with seed selection. 166 13.3. Some differences between seed selected for sowing and a random sample from the same population. 168 13.4. Early growth of farmer-selected and randomly sampled seeds from the same populations of four maize varieties. 168 13.5. Agreement in farmer classifications of Phaseolus bean species into varieties. 170 14.1. Women’s tests for checking seed dryness in two study villages in Bangladesh. 180 15.1. Payoffs for synchronized or unsynchronized irrigation schedules for upstream (U) and downstream (D) subaks. 197 15.2. Responses of 117 farmers in 10 subaks in the Gianyar Regency to the question, ‘Which is worse, pest damage or water shortages?’, according to the location of their fields within the subak. 198 ix Contributors Andrew Ainslie is currently a lecturer in International Rural Development in the School of Agriculture, Policy and Development at the University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6AR, UK (e-mail: [email protected]). His research interests include the study of system-wide drivers of agrarian change and ecosystem resilience, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. His research con- siders traditional/hybrid/modern innovations in resource governance; the food system, particu- larly in relation to global/local beef value chains; and contestations of value in knowledge systems. Kojo Amanor is Professor at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, PO Box LG 73, Legon, Ghana (e-mail: [email protected]). His research interests are in the land question, smallholder agriculture, agribusiness food chains, forestry policy, environment, and participatory methodologies for rural development.