Transmission of Local Ecological Knowledge in Coffee Agroforestry Systems in the Western Ghats

Abstract

Article 8j from the Convention on Biological Diversity specifically acknowledges the role played by local ecological knowledge in the sustainable management of natural resources. This project aims to understand how individuals acquire ecological knowledge under a context of new public policies and how development and exclusion from the forest might affect the transfer and thus its composition within the local communities.

The study area is located in Kodagu, in the Western Ghats, where the Jenu Kuruba community is traditionally associated with the forests and the collection of non-timber forest products, especially honey. As restrictions on harvesting resources in the forest increase, the Jenu Kuruba supplement subsistence on forest products with wage labour.

Katie Demps will study how individuals acquire traditional knowledge and how corresponding factors such as development, conservation management, or removal from the forest affect the depth and breadth of that knowledge. Katie is a Ph.D. student at UC Davis under Bruce Winterhalder (anthropology) with Drs. Victoria Reyes-Garcia (Autonomous University of Barcelona) and Claude Garcia (CIRAD) acting as co-advisers.

Speaker

Katie Demps, University of California at Davis

Organisers

Department of Ecology, French Institute of Pondicherry

Venue

Jawaharlal Nehru Conference Hall, French Institute of Pondicherry, 11, Saint Louis Street, Pondicherry - 605 001

Time

4.30 pm