A Systematic Review on the Local Wisdom of Indigenous People in Nature Conservation

Abstract

The local wisdom of indigenous people in nature conservation plays a critical part in protecting the planet’s biodiversity and the overall health of the ecosystems. However, at the same time, indigenous people and their lands are facing immense threats through modernization and globalization. This study aims to systematically review and analyze the local wisdom of the indigenous people in nature conservation. The present study integrated multiple research designs, and the review was based on the published standard, namely the PRISMA statement (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses). This study used Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus as the main databases in searching for the required articles. Through content analysis, this study can be divided into seven main categories: (a) forest management, (b) flora and fauna conservation, (c) food security, (d) water management, (e) land management, (f) weather forecasting, and (g) others. The findings offer some basics on how academics can adopt and adapt the existing local wisdom of indigenous people in nature conservation into the scientific framework and design to answer the Sustainable Development 2030 Agenda.

Getting ahead of the pandemic curve: A systematic review of critical determining factors for innovation adoption in ensuring food security

“…First, it enables the study to define clear research questions that permit systematic research. The PRISMA method has been used extensively for systematic review studies in social science (18)(19)(20)(21)(22). Second, the guidelines enable the identification of inclusion and exclusion criteria.…”

Exploring the relevance of engaging the Orang Asli in Malaysia’s forest management

“…The compatibility of local and indigenous peoples' knowledge and ways of life with the conservation of ecosystems and natural resource management has been recorded in many parts of the world (Joa et al, 2018;Abas et al, 2022;Jessen et al, 2022). As the environment is progressively being understood as a complex social-ecological system, such compatibility calls for more inclusive management, in which local and indigenous people are deemed capable of contributing to more desirable management in the face of unprecedented global change and uncertainty (Ban et al, 2018;Molnár and Babai, 2021;Ullah et al, 2021;Jessen et al, 2022).…”

“…This study is particularly concerned with indigenous forestdependent communities in the Malaysian context. While indigenous territories make up at least 36% of the world's intact forests and their significance in nature conservation has been recorded (Fa et al, 2020;Butler, 2021;Abas et al, 2022), the indigenous peoples in Malaysia are still struggling for the rights to their ancestral lands, and their significance in forest conservation and management continue to be undermined (Amnesty International, 2018;Fa et al, 2020;Mohd et al, 2021). A distinction between the notion of indigenous and local should be emphasized, whereby the former has a sense of the temporal dimension and cumulative cultural transmission that are not necessarily attributes of the latter (Berkes, 2012).…”

“…In Malaysia, the significance of indigenous people in forest management has yet to be formally recognized and is under-explored (Diansyah et al, 2021;Abas et al, 2022). Meanwhile, their forest-based lives do not develop in a vacuum and are subject to exogenous socio-economic pressures.…”

“…A further down decentralization has been recorded, whereby the locals are involved in a management project as part of Malaysia's commitment to community participation in forest conservation and development projects (Alam et al, 2021). The commitment, however, has not been adequately reflected with the scant involvement of forest-dependent communities in Malaysia's forest management, especially when compared with other countries in the surrounding region and considering the number of forest-dependent communities in Malaysia (Diansyah et al, 2021;Abas et al, 2022). Moreover, the indigenous people of the Malaysian Peninsular, the Orang Asli, who are notably close to the forest both in terms of culture and physical proximity, appear to be overlooked in forest management despite ample evidence pointing out their significant forest-related knowledge and continued dependence on the forest (Howell et al, 2010;Azliza et al, 2012;Ong et al, 2012a,b;Kardooni et al, 2014;Keat et al, 2018;Jamian and Mohd Ghazali, 2021).…”