Local & Indigenous Knowledge

In all regions of the world are found local communities who have long histories of interaction with the natural environment. Associated with many of these communities is a cumulative body of knowledge, know-how, practices and representations. These sophisticated sets of understandings, interpretations and meanings are part and parcel of a cultural complex that encompasses language, naming and classification systems, resource use practices, ritual, spirituality and worldview. This local and indigenous knowledge is a key resource for empowering communities to combat marginalization, poverty and impoverishment.

Within such a context, what may be known as traditional or local or indigenous knowledge is being addressed in a range of UNESCO activities in the fields of education, science, culture and communication.

These activities include research on traditional resource use strategies and practices in land and water (including marine) ecosystems, initiatives to nurture new kinds of partnerships between indigenous peoples and multi-use protected areas, cultural dimensions of traditional knowledge and the possible creation of an international normative instrument on the protection of folklore and traditional culture, ethnobotany and the equitable and sustainable use of plant resources, synthesis and diffusion of information on local and traditional knowledge, and capacity building and the role of traditional knowledge within today’s knowledge society.

This work has received further attention in the last few years, in part because of discussions on different knowledge systems linked to the UNESCO-ICSU World Conference on Science (Budapest, June 1999) and of emerging interests in developing cross-cutting activities on traditional knowledge. One specific follow-up has been the launching by UNESCO in the 2002-2003 biennium of a new intersectoral project on "Local and Indigenous Knowledge Systems in a Global Society"(LINKS).

Within the broader United Nations context, at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, clear reference was made to traditional knowledge in the Rio Declaration and Agenda 21. Article 8 (j) of the Convention on Biological Diversity addresses the "knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities"while one of the intergovernmental committees of the World Intellectual Property Organization is concerned with "Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore".