Integrating Indigenous Knowledge And Western Scientific Knowledge In Community Based Resource Management PDF Download

This dissertation examines how Indigenous Knowledge (IK) and Traditional Knowledge (TK) systems interact with Western Scientific Knowledge (WSK) in contemporary efforts to reintroduce traditional agro ecosystems and build transnational collaborations among Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs). I focus on the role of education, broadly defined, in establishing political and practical conditions that foster equitable integration of knowledge systems in accordance with international treaties and binding agreements around biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. The context for this work is the rapidly evolving policy discourse of Indigenous Peoples' territorial, human, environmental and intellectual property rights, and the set of principles that are emerging from this discourse. Central among these is the principle of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC). The case studies presented herein trace how transactional models of education and scientific research replicate and reproduce the harms of colonialism, and identify promising alternatives in the form of educational, agroecological, and resource-exchange practices that emphasize Indigenous Peoples' governance over natural and genetic resource management. In particular, I describe the emergence of international coalition-based resistance by IPLCS to intensive cultivation, agrochemical practices, and the control of seed genomes by the western/neoliberal intellectual property system. Restoring Indigenous management of key genetic resources for health, nutrition, and ecosystem management emerges as the central theme across the dissertation. The dissertation strengthens the case for the biocultural governance capacity of IPLCs and for transnational IPLC networks as strategic partners in the pursuit of global sustainable development goals. At the same time, it highlights the legal, policy, and ethical obligations of mainstream educational and research institutions to obey the principles of FPIC in all collaborations with Indigenous Peoples as part of their commitment to national and international sustainable development goals. The higher education sector is undeniably complicit in the neocolonial project of integration and Indigenous erasure, as well as global systems of intensive cultivation and intellectual property that threaten the success of all sustainable development projects. Yet higher education can also claim a powerful and constructive new role by creating programmatic spaces that facilitate FPIC-based institutional relationships with IPLCs, supporting transnational indigenous networks, and advance equitable principles for consensually integrating the methods and findings of diverse knowledge systems.