Traditional Ecological Knowledge

This forum serves to exchange views about the Traditional Ecological knowledge relevant to current environmental management ideas and programs.​

What is traditional ecological knowledge?

(An excerpt from Oxford Bioscience Journal : http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/52/5/432.full)

Traditional ecological knowledge refers to the knowledge, practice, and belief concerning the relationship of living beings to one another and to the physical environment, which is held by peoples in relatively nontechnological societies with a direct dependence upon local resources (Berkes 1993). Traditional ecological knowledge is not unique to Native American culture but exists all over the world, independent of ethnicity. It is born of long intimacy and attentiveness to a homeland and can arise wherever people are materially and spiritually integrated with their landscape (Kimmerer 2000). TEK is rational and reliable knowledge that has been developed through generations of intimate contact by native peoples with their lands (Mauro and Hardison 2000). TEK is being recognized as having equal status with scientific knowledge (UNEP 1998) and has been termed the “intellectual twin to science” (Deloria 1995). This long intellectual tradition exists in parallel to Western science, yet has been historically marginalized by the scientific community (Salmon 1996).

Another definition is provided by the "A Teacher’s Guide for the Video Sila Alangotok—Inuit Observations on Climate Change".