Ethnoecology for Ecosystem Management: Developing an Ethnoecology Curriculum at Southwest Forestry University.

Southwest China, including the provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan, Chongqing, Guizhou, Guangxi, and Tibet, is characterized by a high degree of cultural and biological diversity. More than half of China’s ethnic minority groups inhabit Yunnan alone, which, with its diverse ecosystem types, contains 15,000 species of seed plants and over 1,000 species of mammals and birds[1]. Each ethnic group maintains a unique system of ecological management based on traditional knowledge. It is likely that these management systems were sustained over thousands of years.  

In recent years, with the improvement of communication and transportation technologies, China’s Southwest has new market opportunities both within China and around the Southeast Asian region. These improvements, however, have a serious downside: there is potential for the deterioration of long-standing ecosystem management systems based on traditional knowledge, for the overexploitation of natural biological resources (such as medicinal plants used in Chinese medicine), and for the imposition of ecologically inappropriate centralized management schemes (e.g. reforestation using non-native invasive species.) With increased government control, land tenure systems have changed and rural communities are moving from a subsistence to a market economy. Meanwhile, population pressures have increased the demand for food and other products from the land, resulting in increased forest clearing.

The field of applied ethnoecology is potentially an important tool in helping Southwest China to face the challenges to the preservation of biocultural diversity and livelihood improvement during this transitional period. The diverse traditional management systems of China’s minority ethnic groups may not, in isolation, overcome the challenges they face. In addition, conventional forestry and agricultural development may not serve the long-term interests of biocultural preservation.

It is with this perspective that a group of Chinese and international institutions have come together to build the capacity of academic institutions in Southwest China in applied ethnoecology. The program outlined here is a pilot project designed to begin the process of building a long-term ethnoecology program at Southwest Forestry College in Kunming, Yunnan Province.

Goals and Objectives

The goal of the Ethnoecology for Ecosystem Management (EEM) project is to transform the field of ecosystem management in Southwest China by combining traditional knowledge systems with ecological and socioeconomic sciences and policy. During the first phase, we will:  

1)    provide practical in-class training to teachers in 4 key areas of applied ethnoecology for sustainable resource management (see Workshop Curriculum below);

2)    build a partnership between provincial institutions and local community resource managers and authorities in one of three long-term teaching sites;

3)    outline curriculum materials for ethnoecology and sustainable resource management courses to be launched in Phase 2 of the program;

4)    produce a report to be used to build a platform at the provincial and central government level for general support to the program, and to be used as the basis for fundraising; and

5)    translate the results of the workshop into a format accessible to resource managers and community members in teaching sites.

Workshop Curriculum and Activity Plan

The proposed EEM Preliminary Training Workshop for Teachers will be conducted in four 2- to 3-day in-class modules introducing the basics of applied ethnoecology for sustainable resource management. These are:

I.       Ecology and sustainable resource management;

II.     Species selection and field practices;

III.   Intellectual property and income generation;

IV.   Returning research results to local communities.

Following the in-class component of the workshop, trainers and participants will move to a teaching site to conduct exercises in each of the areas covered. In these exercises, local resource managers, partner institution members, and government authorities will be invited to participate.

The Working Group

The EEM project is an initiative of Southwest Forestry College and PPI. The key individuals on this project are:

Dr. Pei Shengji - Professor of the Department of Ethnobotany at Kunming Institute of Botany (Chinese Academy of Sciences) and International Technical Advisor to the WWF-UNESCO-Kew People & Plants Program, Dr. Pei has extensive field experience in Southeast Asia and the Hindu-Kush Himalayan regions. He has been working in botany, ethnobotany and mountain development and conservation for 37 years.

Dr. Yang Yuming - Vice President of SWFC, and leading scientist in biodiversity conservation and forest resources management in southwest China, received his Ph.D. from Qinghua University. After leading comprehensive surveys conducted in more than a dozen nature reserves at both national and provincial levels in Yunnan and other parts of China, Dr. Yang was awarded the prestigious Parker/Gentry Award for biodiversity preservation by Chicago’s Field Museum in 2004.

Dr. Wang Juan - Professor of Ethnobotany at SWFC since 1995, received her Ph.D. in Forest Resource Management from Beijing Forestry University. Since 1994, she has taught botany, plant ecology, ethnobotany, nature reserves management, natrual resource conservation, and non-timber forest products management.

PPI will provide technical support and workshop facilitators to the working group.