Agriculture Reference
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knowledge, but it might overlook knowledge from populations who are not officially
recognized as indigenous (Nakashima and Roué 2002). There is a general under-
standing as to what constitutes indigenous knowledge. Accordingly, it refers to a set
of truths, beliefs, values, perspectives, concepts, judgments, expectations, method-
ologies, and know-how that people in a given community possess based on experi-
ence and adaptation to a local culture and environment and has developed over time
and continues to develop (Berkes 1999). Warren et al. (1995) defines it as the intimate
everyday knowledge of the local environment held by indigenous people or a local
knowledge unique to a given culture or society. “Indigenous knowledge represents
the accumulated experience, wisdom and know-how unique to cultures, societies,
and for communities of people, living even before colonization in an intimate rela-
tionship of balance and harmony with their local environments” (Emery 2000). It
serves as the basis for community-level decision making in areas pertaining to gov-
ernance, food security, human and animal health, childhood development and edu-
cation, natural resource management, and other vital socioeconomic activities (Aoki
2003). The word “local” can be applied to different geographic contexts, but it lacks
specificity. Critchley and Mutunga (2003) define local knowledge as a dynamic and
continuously evolving combination of pristine indigenous knowledge and external
knowledge including SK.
A common weakness in TK management is the overemphasis on introduced
technology at the expense of TK (Briggs 2005). Typically, research & development
(R&D) does not address either knowledge management or the cross-functional,
cross-organizational process by which knowledge is created, shared, and applied
(acquisition through use). Understanding these relationships is fundamental to
understanding land use and management decisions and thereby influencing them
toward improved resilience. In many cases, past R&D approaches actually interfered
with sustainable resource use, by taking the access and decision-making power away
from those who understand best both the resources and what they need from those
resources. Climate change is likely to be the dominant driver of ecological change
in the twenty-first century, and removing local stressors may not be enough to main-
tain soil quality (Graham et al. 2008); focus should be placed on finding ways and
means for protecting soil ecosystems in a changing climate. Moreover, TK systems
interpret reality not on the basis of a linear conception of cause and effect but, rather,
as a world made up of constantly forming multidimensional cycles in which all ele-
ments are parts of an entangled and complex web of interactions (Freeman 1992). Of
course, there is always the risk of oversimplifying by reducing the things of interest
to essentials and/or dichotomies. However, from this brief overview of the dissimi-
larities, we can gain an understanding of how hard it is to compare two systems of
knowledge that are so profoundly different. At the same time, we cannot extract just
those parts of TK that seem to measure up to scientific criteria and ignore the rest.
This process of cognitive mining would atomize the overall system and threaten TK
with dispossession (Nakashima and Roué 2002).
What is lacking is the capacity to effectively utilize the TK system and ways of
knowing that are embedded in TK communities to enrich school curriculum and
enhance teaching and learning of students, that is, making TK “policy relevant.”
The traditional ecological knowledge has been compromised by the erosion of the
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