Indigenous Environmental Knowledge: Reappraisal

ISBN-13: 9783319873268 / Angielski / Miękka / 2018 / 263 str.

John Edington

Spis treści

1. PREFACE

2. FARMING
Origins
Responding to site and soil variations
Coping with seasonal variations
Maintaining soil fertility
Coping with weeds and pests
Cultural and religious factors
Pressures for change
3.  FOOD SUPPLIES AND NUTRITION
Traditional diets
Insights from nutritional science
Input patterns for different classes of nutrients
Starvation and malnutrition
The paradoxical efficacy of traditional diets
4. HOUSE DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION
Design criteria
The humid tropics
The tropical highlands 
The desert fringe
The temperate zone     
Pressures for change
A future for traditional designs?
5. FUEL SUPPLIES
Traditional wood harvesting
Disruptive influences
Alternative energy sources
Better ways of burning wood
Rehabilitating forests
Overall sustainability of firewood production systems
6. HERBAL MEDICINE
Mixed expectations
Patterns of village use
Residual difficulties
Remedial strategies
7. WATER SUPPLY AND WASTE DISPOSAL
Water use
Water quality issues
Other water and waste related hazards
Remedial strategies
8. PROSPECTS FOR VILLGE DEVELOPMENT
Quality of life shortfalls
External factors
Influences arising from within communities
Constructive interventions
Augmenting incomes
Comprehensive development plans
9. LESSONS FOR THE WORLD AT LARGE
Contemporary issues
Energy economies in agriculture and food distribution
Energy economies in architecture and household management
Protecting crop diversity
Lessons from traditional medicine
Improving dietary balance
Attitudes to wild species
REFERENCES

Blurb

This book examines comprehensively for the first time, the scope and accuracy of indigenous environmental knowledge. It shows that in some spheres, including agriculture, house design, fuel and water manipulation, the high reputation of local observers is well deserved and often sufficiently insightful to warrant wider imitation. However it also reveals that in certain matters, notably some aspects of health care and wild-species population management, local knowledge systems are conspicuously unsound. Not all the difficulties are of the communities own making, some stem from external factors outside their control. However in either case, remedial measures can be suggested and this book describes, especially for the benefit of practitioners, what steps might be taken in rural communities to improve the quality of life. The possibility of useful transfers of information from local settings to Western ones is not ignored and forms the subject of the book’s final chapter.    >