Traditional Ecological Knowledge

The world’s habitats and ecosystem have been damaged by human activity and organic resource consumption, which has caused a great loss of biodiversity. If strong efforts are not made to restore and sustain conditions, our ecosystem will be destine for collapse. It is imperative that we use TEK (traditional ecological knowledge) as a source of environmental ethics to conserve the earth’s habitats and restore our ecosystem “TEK has a strong potential to contribute to more effective and sustainable approaches to forest management in particular and natural resources management in general (Menzies, 2).” To contribute to this approach, it is important that TEK has strong attributes. For instance, TEK is locally developed, which gives specific details to demonstrate sustainability in differing yet specific locales. In these differing locales, indigenous people have experienced and observed different plants and animals flourish, as well as understanding and gaining knowledge on why they flourish. Thus, TEK gives information on how to specifically manage and conserve the land so that plant and animal flourishing is possible in a specific place. Another important attribute that TEK portrays is that, “TEK is part of a particular cultural context” (Menzies, 9). Each culture has TEK embedded uniquely by local history and traditions. An example of a cultural tradition or rule is that there is no tolerance on natural resource waste, greed of natural resources, and there are also rules on how to use the resources. Also, there is a unique understanding of the world, which develops an intimacy and connection with the natural earth. The connections allows for spiritual relationships with the land and resources to form. Perhaps this connection is the basis of consideration when rules are made in certain cultures. This attitude towards the land would end many modern issues we are having today such as unnecessary amounts of destruction, pollution, and human consumption