Traditional ECOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE

1. Traditional ECOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE (TEK)

2. What is traditional knowledge? • Traditional knowledge is the knowledge people have gained over the years of the environment and the world around them. Traditional knowledge is gained both by personal experience and by the passing on of information from one generation to the next. • Traditional knowledge, also referred to as ‘indigenous’ or ‘local’ knowledge or Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ), is embedded in the community and is unique to a given culture, location or society.

3. What is traditional knowledge? • The term refers to the large body of knowledge and skills that has been developed outside the formal educational system, and that enables communities to survive • Because much of Traditional Knowledge has been gained though and intimate connection with the environment and it’s processes it is also often called “Traditional Ecological Knowledge” or TEK

4. TEK in Society • The dominance of the western knowledge system has largely led to a prevailing situation in which indigenous knowledge is ignored and neglected (now improving). • It is easy to forget that, over many centuries, human beings have been producing knowledge and strategies enabling them to survive in a balanced relation with their natural and social environment.

5. TEK in Society • TEK is closely related to survival and subsistence, it provides a basis for local-level decision making in: • food security • human and animal health • education • natural resource management • various other community-based activities

6. TEK in Society • TEK is closely related to survival and subsistence, it provides a basis for local-level decision making in: • food security • human and animal health • education • natural resource management • various other community-based activities

7. TEK in Society • TEK is dynamic, the result of a continuous process of experimentation, innovation, and adaptation. • It has the capacity to blend with knowledge based on science and technology, and should therefore be considered complementary to scientific and technological efforts to solve problems in social and economic development. • TEK has the disadvantage of not having been captured and stored in a systematic way. • The main reason for this constraint is that it is handed down orally from generation to generation. This creates an implicit danger that TEK may become lost or extinct.

8. Do you have to be old to have traditional knowledge? • Many experts in traditional knowledge happen to be old because younger generations no longer live "on the land" “…..they spend most of their days indoors in office jobs, so they don't have the intimate knowledge of the land and wildlife that their elders do….”

9. Do you have to be old to have traditional knowledge? • You don't have to be aboriginal to have traditional knowledge. • A white farmer in Arizona could have traditional knowledge of his farmlands, much as an Inuit hunter has traditional knowledge of the region where he lives. • Traditional knowledge is often associated with aboriginal culture because native people have retained closer bonds with the environment than other urbanised societies. ** Information summarised from UNESCO (MOST) and Nunavut Wildlife Management Board

10. TEK and Environmental Policy ‘...Governments should support cooperation between holders of traditional knowledge and scientists to explore the relationship between different knowledge systems, and to foster inter-linkages of mutual benefit...’ Science Agenda of the World Conference on Science (Budapest, 26 June -1 July 1999): • In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in interest in the role that TEK can play in truly participatory approaches to sustainable development and management of the environment

11. TEK and Environmental Policy • In many circumstances TEK is being recorded for use in schools, in planning and managing environmental projects, and is generally regarded by most countries as an “invaluable national resource”. • It is now law in many areas that TEK must be considered in addition to contemporary scientific research with respect to environmental decision-making.

12. TEK and Environmental Policy • Because TEK is so valuable, there has been a need to debate and set guidelines around who “owns” this knowledge. • It is generally agreed upon that TEK derived from indigenous peoples is the intellectual property of that group and any utilization of that information must be done with their explicit consent