The biodiversity convention was signed more than a decade ago at the 1992 earth summit in Rio, Brazil and has since been ratified by the governments of 188 countries. Biological diversity is a collective term used to describe the totality and variety of life on earth. The term also covers the various ways in which species interact both with each other and with their surrounding environment. This term has brought to prominence the characteristic ways in which biological organisms and processes are increasingly threatened by human activities.

Humans rely on the existence of biodiversity for food, clothing, building materials and medicines. Furthermore, the biodiversity that surrounds all human societies is an important source of cultural and spiritual values. Indeed there is a growing realization that many of the changes brought about by human demand on biodiversity are irreversible. This realization that humanity pays a prize for the loss of biodiversity has led governments to put up measures that could curb the negative effects of social activity on natural environment. While these measures have been welcomed by the developed societies of the northern hemisphere, elsewhere however, especially in the so-called developing societies where livelihoods are intricately tied to culture and nature, the very core of human existence may be jeopardized by these measures. For example, forbidding the cutting down of forests in areas where these are the only source of fuel for cooking or the only source of economic income could prove disastrous for the communities that depend on forests for livelihood. Thus reconciling the need to protect global biodiversity with the much stronger-in my view- need to promote social and economic growth, particularly in the developing world, is a major challenge of the modern era. This challenge in itself has thrown up the concept of sustainable development, which is a loose term used to express the idea that development strategies are only acceptable if they are achieved in an ‘environmentally sustainable’ way.

This assay ague that for current global programmes on conserving biological diversity and achieving sustainable development to succeed, they should not be based solely on western formal knowledge systems but should also include concepts gleaned from indigenous knowledge (IK) practices and worldviews of the different indigenous peoples of the world. Researched information from these knowledge systems can also be incorporating into development programmes designed to solve both global and local or context-specific problems.

Livelihoods and conservation of biodiversity
In many ways biodiversity provides the welfare system of last resort for many poor people and communities in the developing countries of the world. For example, medicines based on natural products provide the primary health care needs of over 80% of people in developing countries. Again, wild sources and non-timber forest products provide between 20 and 50% of rural household incomes in some developing countries. Forests, wetland and grasslands also provide clean water, soil fertility, pollution control and protection from floods and regulation of diseases in these regions.

It is equally clear that the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity is central to many of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) enumerated recently by world governments. For example, the goal of eradicating hunger depends on sustainable and productive agriculture, which in turn relies on conserving and maintaining agricultural soils, water, genetic resources and ecological processes. Again, the capacity of fisheries to meet the bulk of animal protein intake of the world’s human population depends on maintaining ecosystems like mangroves and coral reefs that provide fish with habitat and sustenance. Furthermore, MDGs aimed at improving health and sanitation require healthy, functioning freshwater ecosystems to provide adequate supplies of clean water, and a sustainable supply of genetic resources for both modern and traditional medicine.

Achieving these goals may however throw up potential conflicts that must be addressed. For example, the goal of eradicating huger could cause a dramatic increase in agriculture, which could in turn cause extensive clearing of natural forests. The later on the other hand, may result in an increase in soil erosion, the silting up of rivers leading to reduction in fish stock downstream, in addition to the degradation of water quality. These throw ups may on their own or in combination with other extraneous factors, significantly reduce the value of such lands to society over long, and short, term periods.

The fact that current global biodiversity conservation and sustainable development efforts are based on ideas derived from western-based formal knowledge systems may be responsible for some of these crises, at least in the developing countries. Definitions of conservation and development based on western knowledge systems are often inappropriate when applied to developing countries and have often failed to address local peoples needs in these countries. Sometimes they have even had detrimental effects on the people’s livelihood sources. These western ideas have been used in instances where indigenous peoples knowledge (IK) could have provided a better response but because of the dominance of western knowledge system over other knowledge systems, these IKs were not considered as viable options.

For example, exotic plants such as Leucaena and Gliricida have received extensive research attention over many years now as viable forage plants that could also improve crop/livestock production in Nigeria. Nigerian researchers and their foreign partners however have found it extremely difficult to convince local farmers to adopt these plants and the ‘fanciful’ notions such as alley farming that accompany their adoption. Recent research reports by the author and his team however show that in southern Nigeria alone, over 200 indigenous plants are being utilized in ruminant feeding and that the local people have already domesticated some of these plants for used in both crop/animal production and ethno-veterinary practice.

Indigenous knowledge In A Changing Global Environment
The concept of indigenous knowledge refers to the bodies of knowledge, know-how, practices and representations that are maintained and developed by peoples with long history of close interaction with the natural environment. It includes a collection of understandings, interpretations and meanings that form part of a cultural complex that encompasses language, naming and classification systems, ways of using resources, rituals, spirituality and a worldview. IK has been transferred orally from generation to generation and still forms the basis of local decision-making on fundamental issues of day-to-day life for a significant percentage of the world’s people. Such life issues may include hunting and gathering, fishing, agriculture and animal husbandry, food production, water, health and adaptation to environmental and social change.

Global, awareness of the potential contribution of IK to sustainable development and poverty alleviation has recently heightened. Information originating from developing countries suggest that IK is playing important roles in many sectors, such as agriculture (intercropping techniques, animal production, pest control, pest control, crop diversity, animal healthcare, seed verities), biology (botany, fish breeding techniques), human healthcare (through traditional medicine), the use and management of natural recourses (soil conservation, irrigation and other forms of natural management), education (oral tradition, local languages) and poverty alleviation in general.

As a result of this increased awareness and flow of information, academics, policy makers and development practitioners have shown increasing interest in IK. For example, through the use of modern ethno-botanical research, the author and his team recently studied the diversity of ruminant browses in southeastern Nigeria and further combined the information residing in indigenous ruminant farmers from the region and modern nutritional research techniques to select and characterize indigenous browses of scientific promise in the region. Using similar techniques, we were also able to document plants of ethno-veterinary importance in the region.

Furthermore, governments, non-governmental organizations in many countries as well as international organizations such as the World Bank, International Labor Office, Food and Agricultural Organization etc, are explicitly acknowledging the contributions local knowledge can make to sustainable development. This however coincides also with a period when such knowledge is being increasingly eroded by global processes of rapid change. The symbiotic relationship developed by traditional societies between nature and natural resources are more and more being altered by external pressures especially those emanating from human dimensions of global environmental change. Global environmental change has been defined as the set of global-scale transformation, driven by both natural and human induced processes, of the earth’s landscapes and ecosystems. The human dimensions aspect of this change highlights the causes and consequences of both individual and collective actions of people, and usually include changes which lead to modifications of the earth’s physical and biological systems and those that affect the quality of human life and sustainable development in different parts of the world. For example, a growing body of evidence shows that modern agriculture and industrial development as practiced in the west and some emerging countries combined with large increases in population and changing consumption patterns are important agents of this change.

This perhaps is the reason why intensification of research on IK as a viable alternative and plausible agent of slowing down the negative aspects of human dimensions of environmental change is most imperative at this time. Furthermore, since the capacities to research, document and disseminate such knowledge in the developing countries is lacking, research funding for IK should be brought into mainstream global science research funding. Innovative curricula and new approaches to the transfer of knowledge that take local knowledge systems into account need to be developed in the south in place of those based solely on western formal knowledge systems.

Conclusion
For global biodiversity conservation efforts to succeed in the developing economies of the world, we need to respect as well as promote viable knowledge systems of human societies that live in close proximity with nature in these regions. This means promoting research and development policies that not only preserve biodiversity but also enrich the livelihoods of these societies. Since IK is an indispensable vehicle of this intervention, it is important to address protocols for understanding and linking it with global knowledge systems.

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