Traditional knowledge

About: Traditional knowledge is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 10825 publications have been published within this topic receiving 202790 citations. The topic is also known as: indigenous knowledge & indigenous knowledge system.

Traditional Agricultural Knowledge: Past Performance, Future Prospects, and Institutional Implications

Abstract: Whether as economists concerned with agricultural development or conservationists concerned with sustaining the services of environmental systems, we have been of multiple minds with respect to traditional agricultural practices and their supporting cultural systems. Traditional knowledge has been viewed as part of a romantic past, as the major obstacle to development, as a nonissue, as a necessary starting point, and as a critical component of a cultural alternative to modernization. Only very rarely, however, is traditional knowledge treated as knowledge per se in the mainstream of the agricultural development and environmental management literature, as knowledge that contributes to our understanding of agricultural production and the maintenance and use of environmental systems. Our views have an extended romantic antecedent. But with modernization we rather

Using Traditional Knowledge to Adapt to Ecological Change: Denésôåiné Monitoring of Caribou Movements

Abstract: The Chipewyan Dene or Denesoaine have long been dealing with variability in the movements of barren-ground caribou (Rangifer tarandus). Many generations ago, Denesoaine hunters learned that by observing caribou at key water crossings during the fall migration, they could obtain critical information about caribou health, population, and movement patterns. Systematic observation of these indicators by hunters strategically organized along the tree line enabled the Denesoaine to adapt their harvesting practices, including the location of family camps, to maximize harvest success. While this system of observation was developed for traditional subsistence harvesting, its techniques could be usefully applied today to other natural resource management contexts. In particular, such monitoring might help us understand how new bifurcation points created by mineral resource development may be affecting the Bathurst caribou herd. As governments, communities, and academics search for ways to include traditional knowledge in decision making for resource management, this paper recognizes that the Denesoaine and other indigenous peoples have their own systems of watching, listening, learning, understanding, and adapting to ecological change.

The Public and Private Domains: Intellectual Property Rights in Traditional Knowledge

Abstract: This article argues that intellectual property law contains an in-built bias that protects the intangible assets of companies while failing to recognize traditional knowledge as protectable subject matter. The rapid globalization of high-level intellectual property rights (IPRs) minimum standards is certain to exacerbate the situation. The main reason why IPRs are unfair is not that they are explicitly discriminatory but that they treat all knowledge in the world as the intellectual commons except that which is protected under patent or other mainstream IPRs. This situation is unjust to indigenous people and contrary to the interests of everybody except those who profit from exploiting traditional knowledge unfairly.