Synergy Between Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Conservation Science Supports Forest Preservation in Ecuador

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Meeting the desires of individuals while sustaining ecological "public goods" is a central challenge in natural resources conservation. Indigenous communities routinely make common property decisions balancing benefits to individuals with benefits to their communities. Such traditional knowledge offers insight for conservation. Using surveys and field observations, this case study examines aspects of indigenous institutions and ecological knowledge used by rural Ecuadorians to manage a forest commons before and after interacting with two U.S.-based conservation NGOs: Earthwatch Institute and People Allied for Nature. The rural farming community of Loma Alta has legal property rights to a 6842-ha watershed in western Ecuador. This selfgoverning community curtailed destruction of their moist forest commons, but not without the influence of modern scientific ecological knowledge. When Earthwatch Institute scientists provided evidence that forest clearing would reduce water supply to the community, villagers quickly modified land allocation patterns and set rules of use in the forest establishing the first community-owned forest reserve in western Ecuador. This case demonstrates that synergy between traditional knowledge and western knowledge can result in sustaining both ecosystem services and biodiversity in a forest commons.

Adaptive Governance of Social-Ecological Systems

“…For example, in the Solomon Islands, indigenous knowledge, practice, and sea tenure systems were used in combination with scientific knowledge to establish marine protected areas for bumphead parrotfish conservation (91). A self-governing community in Ecuador changed their unsustainable forest management practice by incorporating scientific knowledge about the interplay between freshwater and forest dynamics into their traditional knowledge system and thereby curtailed destruction of their moist forest commons (92). It has been argued that such self-organized local responses for active adaptation to environmental change have emerged among communities and societies that have survived over long periods of time (75).…”

Discursive barriers and cross-scale forest governance in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia

“…Discursive divides have been noted in the governance of many social-ecological systems (Schmelzkopf 2002, Trainor 2006, Li 2007, Jessup 2010. Studies from a variety of perspectives have noted the challenge of bridging technical and local knowledge systems to produce hybrid knowledge systems (Nygren 1999, Berkes and Folke 2002, Becker and Ghimire 2003, Moller et al 2004, Thomas and Twyman 2004, Drew 2005, Dove 2006, Li 2007. Bridging this divide can be of crucial importance to the governance of social-ecological systems, because local discourses frame and coevolve with sophisticated local institutions (Ostrom 1990, North 2005.…”

A Etnoecologia Em Perspectiva: Origens, Interfaces E Correntes Atuais De Um Campo Em Ascensão

“…In addition to the aspects mentioned previously, a number of studies conducted over the last two decades have contributed to a better understanding of the central features of local knowledge systems and their potential ways of interacting with normative scientific knowledge, both in theory (AGRAWAL, 1995;HUNN, 2006;DAVIS and RUDDLE, 2010) and in the practice of conservation and natural resource management (POSEY et al, 1984;PRANCE et al, 1987;MACKINSON and NOTTESTAD, 1998;BERKES et al, 2000;BECKER and GHIMIRE, 2003;MOLLER et al, 2004;NAZAREA, 2006;DAVIS and RUDDLE, 2010).…”