ABSTRACT
Traditional knowledge and resource management practice have the potential to contribute to the current understanding and use of a wide variety of ecosystems. This chapter describes the workings of a sample of indigenous knowledge and resource management systems in a variety of ecosystem settings. The emphasis is on the traditional system, as a linked social-ecological system, rather than on local and traditional knowledge itself. The chapter discusses two themes. The first is about evolutionary ecology and cultural evolution: traditional knowledge represents the summation of millennia of ecological adaptations of human groups to their diverse environments. The second theme concerns the compatibility of traditional wisdom with some current ecological approaches to resource management, specifically Adaptive Management. The chapter provides some examples of resource management from tropical forest ecosystems, and then moves to semi-arid lands, uses of fire, island ecosystems, and coastal lagoons and wetlands.
