9 However strong the reliance of human existence on biodiversity, its rapid decline due to human interventions is alarming. The millennium assessment report indicates that developed and fast developing regions with higher gross domestic product (GDP) have critical loss of biodiversity (MA 2005). Corresponding to the loss of diversity in traditional languages the world over, traditional knowledge practices are also eroding at a rapid pace. The loss of biota and associated traditional knowledge practices can have a significant negative impact on the livelihoods, production systems (bio-resource-based markets) and the health of local communities (TEEB 2010, Suneetha and Balakrishna 2010). The erosive trajectories here are compounded by the concern that there are no comprehensive approaches to valuing these ecosystems services as policy makers often have less conviction, compared to other sectors, regarding the need for national and subnational level efforts for conservation and development in the sector. While such dominant practices are rooted in the history of governance towards biodiversity (Box 1), assuring conservation and sustainable use of biological resources is increasingly becoming a high priority area in the sustainable development (SD) agenda. Whereas regulated, sensitive use is important for sustenance of biological diversity, augmented, active use as social traditions is vital for revitalising as well as protecting traditional knowledge practices. Increasing social and economic disparity and inequitable access to resources and benefits is an area which has been in active discussions both at international as well as national policy processes. Recognising the potential of local livelihoods through appropriate Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) mechanisms is an area which is still in nascent stages. These challenges are often dealt with individually and not in an integrated manner at the level of implementation. For instance, in the case of improving nutritional or health security, conservation programmes of local cultivars or varieties may not necessarily be based on the contextual nutritional needs or the knowledge or technical resources available within a region. The ecosystem services framework to a great extent addresses the issue by broadening the perspective of biological and cultural diversity. To be effective, local development approaches need integrated frameworks and strategies related to various resources such as biological, knowledge, human, social, economic, cultural as well as produced. Box 1 Development Context – Changes in Perspectives Policy, as a policed course of action in the governing of civil society for the common good, has seldom taken account of TK in environmental management practices for biodiversity conservation. Traditional ecological practices were most often seen as destructive, notably the use of fire to manage range lands or shifting agriculture where slash and burn methods were used. Traditional uses of plants by indigenous communities were noted and documented for commercial exploitation, most often without reference to the communities that were custodians of that knowledge. Prior to recent global conventions, policing regulations often encouraged the exploitative mining of cultural capital with the appropriation of local natural resources and natural resource areas. The early approach here was thus to protect natural resource areas, taking little account of local knowledge and practices in relation to their natural history. Here indigenous peoples were often seen as noble but primitive communities that needed to be rescued from their ignorance and destructive practices. These, imperial and, later, some of the post-imperial policies consequently reflected a double separation: people from nature and institutions of governance from people. These separations opened up specialist outsider and institutional imperatives to educate by communicating the conservation message so as to change their behaviour. The last 50 years has produced a slow shift in policy across the globe and the beginnings of socialecological perspectives being brought into community engaged policy development are emerging within new multilateral perspectives on cultural diversity and traditional knowledge. The attendant concern for traditional knowledge practice and the democratic inclusion of indigenous peoples in co-engaged land use management decisions is being found to have a natural affinity, with an integrative perspective that has long been central to TK practices. Here cultural knowledge and practices was the balancing facet between natural or ecological resources and human intervention and any development (Berkes and Folke 1994, Cochrane 2006). According to Breidlid
Traditional Knowledge and Biodiversity
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