Local technical knowledge and natural resource management in the humid tropics

Local technical knowledge and natural resource management in the humid tropics

Descripción

In 1990, within its Forestry for Community Development Programme, the FAO Forestry Department published Community Forestry Note 4, "Herders' Decision-Making in Natural Resources Management in Arid and Semi-Arid Africa". This was the first step in filling an information gap on what knowledge rural people have developed in the management of trees and forests in relation to their production systems. Dr. Katherine Warner, an anthropologist with a special focus on shifting cultivation systems, f ollows with this Community Forestry Note 8. "Shifting Cultivators" highlights the local technical knowledge applied by swidden/fallow farmers when making resource management decisions. This is an especially timely volume as it brings together data and provides valuable analysis of a practice that is currently in ill repute with forestry planners and environmentalists. Dr. Warner does not claim that shifting cultivators can continue with their systems, especially in the face of competing land and tree uses for their fallow areas. She does, however, point out valuable lessons that can be learned from the long-term swidden/fallow cultivators about sustainable use of tropical forests. She provides suggestions for the evolution of systems based on what these women and men farmers already know and use in providing a livelihood for their families in difficult tropical environments.