Traditional people have a crucial role in conservation of biodiversity

Brazilian anthropologist, Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago’s Anthropology Department, affirms this principle.

By Elton Alisson

Agência FAPESP – Along the upper and lower reaches of the River Negro in Amazonas, there are more than 100 varieties of cassava, grown for generations in the indigenous communities that normally plant together and share crop experiences, experimenting with dozens of varieties at the same time on their small farms.

An example of conservation of agrobiodiversity by traditional populations, the River Negro agricultural system was registered in 2010 as a priceless heritage at the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage.

Based on the realization that these cultural practices generate diversity that is of great importance for food security, a pilot project has been launched as a collaboration between the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) and the indigenous organizations in the middle and upper River Negro communities.

The project will integrate an initiative created by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI) through the National Council on Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) with the objective of creating a program that stimulates collaboration between scientists and traditional knowledge holders and local populations.

The initiative was announced by Maria Manuela Ligeti Carneiro da Cunha, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago’s Anthropology Department and retired USP professor, at the opening of the Regional Meeting of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) on July 11, 2013, in São Paulo.

“The pilot project will be a good example of how collaboration is possible between science and traditional and local knowledge, capable of major contributions to the conservation of genetic diversity of plants – an extremely important problem,” said Carneiro da Cunha, coordinator of the project.

“In situ conservation of plant varieties can and should be done by traditional populations. By promulgating the FAO treaty on phytogenetic resources, Brazil obligated itself to stimulate this option,” she affirmed.

Carneiro da Cunha stresses that, contrary to popular opinion, traditional knowledge is not a treasure. It is not simply data that must be stored and made available for use when desired, such as ayurvedic medicine in India. According to anthropology, traditional wisdom is a living and ongoing process, comprised by ways of knowing nature, in addition to methods, models and “research protocols” that continuously generate new knowledge.

IPCC on biodiversity

Created officially in April 2012, after almost 10 years of international negotiations, the objective of the IPBES is to organize knowledge about the planet’s biodiversity to subsidize political decisions on the world stage, such as the work undertaken over the past 25 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“One of the most important actions of the IPBES should be the engagement of local and indigenous populations from the beginning of the program, calling them to participate in planning studies, identification of topics of common interest to be studied and dissemination of results,” said Carneiro da Cunha.

“The IPCC, which began its activities in 1988, only began to request the contributions of traditional and indigenous knowledge for the development of actions to reduce the impact of global climate changes after publication of their fourth report in 2007,” she said.

According to Carneiro da Cunha, traditional and indigenous people are very well informed about the local climate and biological diversity. For this reason, they can help scientists to better understand changes in climate and the problem of the loss of biodiversity.

These peoples tend to inhabit areas that are more vulnerable to climate and environmental changes, and they are very dependent on natural resources found in these regions. They are closely connected with the minute details that constitute and directly affect their lives and are capable of perceiving climate changes with greater accuracy, in agricultural productivity or reductions of the number of plant and animal species, for example, notes the anthropologist.

“This thorough knowledge is of fundamental importance, perhaps because one of the limitations that panels like IPPC, and now the IPBES, face is identifying problems and solutions to deal with global climate change on a local level. This is something that only someone who lives for many generations in these regions is capable of realizing,” she said.

According to data presented by Carneiro da Cunha and Zakri Abdul Hamid, president of IBPES, at the beginning of the meeting at FAPESP, approximately 30,000 species of plants are grown in the world, but only 30 plant cultures are responsible for providing 95% of the food consumed by human beings. Rice, wheat, corn, millet and sorghum provide 60% of this food.

The reason for this limitation is that, with the so-called “green revolution” soon after World War II, more productive and genetically uniform varieties were selected at the expense of plants that were better adapted to the specificities of different regions of the world. The differences in soil and climate were corrected by inputs and agrochemicals. With this process, the homogeneity of crops increased worldwide, resulting in the loss of local varieties.

“There was a process of erosion of the genetic diversity of world’s crops. This represents an enormous risk for food security because the plants are vulnerable to the attacks of agricultural plagues, for example, and each of the local varieties of cultures lost had developed special defenses for the type of environment where they were grown,” explained Carneiro da Cunha.

According to the researcher, despite the importance of a bridge between science and traditional and local knowledge, it only began to gain relevance beginning with the Convention on Biological Biodiversity in 1992, during ECO-92.

The regulation of access to traditional knowledge, under article 8j of the CDB, however, is still a nearly universal problem, affirmed the researcher. “Peru and the Philippines already have laws. But there are still few countries that have ratified their laws,” she said.

Brazil regulates access to genetic resources and the associated traditional knowledge through a provisional measure and has not reached a consensus about national legislation. “One can’t be on the defensive and accuse the world of biopiracy, in this country’s bioparanoia, which is a major impediment that we will have to overcome,” she evaluates.

One must establish trusting relationships, affirmed the anthropologist, something that one can only do over time. One of the ideal ways to do this, according to her, is to recognize when the traditional community has a problem for which it is seeking a solution and which is also of interest to scientists.

One example occurred recently under the auspices of the Arctic Council – an intergovernmental organization that makes strategic decisions about the Arctic regions, bringing together eight countries and 16 traditional populations, the majority of which are reindeer herders.

In partnership with traditional transhumant communities (who take their reindeer herds to sites in the Arctic that offer the best conditions during parts of the year), a group of researchers from Nordic countries, in addition to Russia, Canada and the United States, studied the impacts of climate changes on the region’s ecosystems, economy and society.

The fruit of collaboration with the U.S. space agency NASA and several universities and research institutions, the study resulted in a conclusive report, entitled Arctic Resilience Information, released in 2004.

“This perhaps has been the most successful experiment to date on collaboration in science and traditional and local knowledge,” evaluated Carneiro da Cunha. “It is important for scientists to know what traditional communities do and for traditional people to know what happens in scientific laboratories,” she said.