Disseminating environmental knowledge using local customs

Countries and the United Nations system should increase their interaction with and include, as appropriate, indigenous people in the management, planning and development of their local environment, and should promote dissemination of traditional and socially learned knowledge through means based on local customs, especially in rural areas, integrating these efforts with the electronic media, whenever appropriate.

This strategy features in the framework of Agenda 21 as formulated at UNCED (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), now coordinated by the UN Commission on Sustainable Development and implemented through national and local authorities.

Traditionally traditional ecological knowledge is transmited in many ways, but mostly by repeated practice in an apprenticeship under and elder. The information may be embedde in basketry, in stories, poems, or songs.

1. Local knowledge embraces information about location, movements and otehr factors explaining spatial patterns and timings in the ecosystem, including sequences of events, cycles and trends. Direct links with the land are fundamental, and obligations to maintain those connections form the core of individual and group identity for many indigenous peoples.

1. Increasing public awareness of sustainable development
2. Disseminating environmental information
3. Applying culture-based knowledge systems

1. Involving local communities in the conservation of plant genetic resources

1. Relating to place
2. Recognizing indigenous environmental rights
3. Integrating indigenous knowledge on natural resources

1. Nonlocal
2. Knowledge