Importance of Indigenous Knowledge

Dear sir

Since emergence of human life on the surface of earth, the living style of human beings changes overtime because of its varying dynamism. Lives of people change from pastoral to agro- pastoral and rural to urban life and some time it gets reversed due to societal changes and natural calamities like economic and social deprivations, and severe droughts, storms,
earthquakes and floods. These forced and unforced changes disturb the whole ecosystem in different degrees.

Upland communities, who are the real custodians of ecosystem services living for centuries, using and conserving natural resources as per their traditional and customary laws.

The trans-human communities of Chitral have a long history of traditional natural resource management practices especially the management of pastures and rangelands. Pastures were and still have great value for pastoral communities of Chitral. They provide water and are a source of many streams and rivers. Second, they provide habitat for a wealth of flora and fauna. Numerous plants are of medicinal value and other species provide important genetic source for future economic use.

Before, the middle of nineteenth century, traditional pastures management practices were religiously followed by the communities and the then state rulers. The communities were the only people who used to develop and impose these rules on themselves and the state was providing every shelter to protect these indigenous rules and regulations. Shortly, pastures were protected and natural resources managed properly because of the ownership and indigenous knowledge and over the years community based tested methodologies.

The problems in pasture management in Chitral are both technical as well as social in nature. The technical issues are well understood and manageable and easy to solve for the development practitioners, but the social issues are more complex. After merger of Chitral State to Pakistan in as district of NWFP,1969. Government rules were made to regulate the natural resources, government functionaries were posted and departments were setup, which was totally opposite to the indigenous and traditional management practices. People were not made part of the policy formulation and thus community ownership was detached. Traditional practices and indigenous knowledge was not taken in account to understand the pasture management issues and problems. The discontinuation of traditional management system created a huge gap between the real custodian and users of the pastures and government authorities. Pastures were declared government property and
communities were given a vague status nor user neither owner.

As a consequence, over the years pastures degraded, flora and fauna disappeared, which resulted in huge torrential rain floods, land slides and water scarcity and increased down stream physical vulnerabilities. Thus, the lesson learnt for Government Agencies and NGOs are, before formulating and policy guidelines and recommendations, indigenous knowledge and practices should be assessed and analyzed thoroughly.

Muhammad Ismail
Kathmandu, Nepal
Ph: 00977-1-2220230/ 9803076728
email: [email protected]