What the Common People Know Best
30th. August, 1998.
By KAN YAW CHONG
AMONG the scientific circle, the People and Plants
Initiative has demonstrated a rare deference to
traditional knowledge among the common people.
Scientists and specialists had been
barking about biodiversity at times as though it's their
exclusive domain but history has shown that the common
people in humble communities living close to nature
indeed know more than they had been credited for.
These unsung common folk are
therefore crucial helpers in inventorying a largely
uncharted world of plants and their uses, as one of the
first main steps to further the cause of preserving
biodiversity for the sake of mankind.
For instance, a recently revised
estimate of the biodiversity of Sabah's world famous 734
sq. km Kinabalu Park came like a bombshell announcement.
It is now estimated the park has
6000 and not 4000 species of vascular plants as
originally thought.
"It's truly one of the areas
of highest biodiversity in the world but I have to say
that local collectors and communities living around the
park are responsible for a lot of these new
additions," pointed out Dr Gary Martin, Co-ordinator
of People and Plants Southeast Asia.
Tracing history, Dr Martin
illustrated this classic example how traditional
knowledge had decisively helped the cause of biodiversity
in general and in this particular case, gave the Park a
"top rank" status in the World Biodiversity
Map.
"This has turned out to be a
very interesting story," remarked Dr Martin.
"Professional botanists have
been coming to this mountain for about 145 years. I think
it was Sir Hugh Low who made the first plant collection
in 1851. Over those 145 years, hundreds of botanists had
come to collect plants. This is one of the better known
areas of Southeast Asia which is very attractive to
botanists."
"But just to give an example
of palms which is a very important family economically
such as rattan, sago and a whole series of useful palms.
You would think that over such a long time the botanists
which include a few palm specialists who collected
intensely, must have detected all the palms of Mt.
Kinabalu by will and by chance."
Reality proved otherwise.
"When I came here in 1992, the first goal of our
project was to survey the palms around Mt. Kinabalu and
learn about their ethnobotany, that is, how people use
using them and how people are classifying them."
"And I said, that was great,
because Dr Jamili Nais had done the first check list
which showed there were 10 genera of palms and 27
species. We (thought) knew what to do - easy." Dr
Martin recalled thinking.
'Then we got a group of community
collectors together, telling them just collect those
palms and information about them such as how they are
being used."
"You know how many palms there
l5 genera and 80 species!
"So, the botanists had missed
5 genera and 53 species over the course of 145
years!" Dr. Martin exposed the big miss.
"Why is that?"
There have been differences of
interpretation but my interpretation is that local people
know the flora. Local people use the flora. They know
those little species tucked away in hidden corners of the
community while botanists were visiting more frequently
visited areas," he postulated.
"So, with the help of local
communities, we were able to increase our knowledge of
the diversity of palms around Mt. Kinabalu by almost 60
to 70 per cent in the course of three years." Dr.
Martin pointed out.
"What is very important to
emphasize there is while we don't know most of the
estimated 270,000 species of plants in the world as they
haven't had all their names, even scientific names, local
people have a big role to play in finishing that
inventory."
"At the same time the
inventory is very enriched because we know how those
plants are used," he added.
Tying in this new found
biodiversity of Kinabalu Park, Dr Martin referred to
recent surveys done of all the areas around the world
that have high biodiversity.
"In fact, there was a general
survey of low to high diversity areas and from that they
had just created a kind of map which shows zones of
higher and higher diversity and it was like a worldwide
competition to determine what's the area of highest
biodiversity: Is it Papua New Guinea? Is it the Amazon?
We call these places biodiversity hot spots, in the sense
they embrace extremely high biodiversity and other
environmental crisis like forest fires, deforestation and
conversion to agriculture," He said.
"The question is if we were to
save 10 per cent of the world's natural heritage, what 10
per cent would we pick?"
"There was a recent study
where somebody model this with computers and Mt. Kinabalu
is top rank!"
"It's truly one of the areas
of highest biodiversity in the world. We are currently
thinking of about 6000 species. (of vascular plants) and
this estimate is based on figures which are an
underestimate (4000 species) of the flora of Mt.
Kinabalu." Dr Martin said.
The man behind these estimates is
well known Royal Botanical Garden, Kew, Professor John
Beaman.
"I studied botany back in
Michigan State University about 20 years ago where I took
a botany class from Prof. John Beaman and he got me
started in ethnobotany.
"We went to Mexico, Guatamalka
together on a university collecting trip and he was the
one who brought me to Sabah originally because he was a
visiting professor - a Fulbright Scholar at the then
University Kebangsaan Malaysia Sabah branch and he
started a project called the Flora of Mt. Kinabalu and
put together all the information of all collections of
plants from Mt. Kinabalu and the original estimate was
about 4000 but now, it's 6000," Dr Martin
emphasized.
"As a field of study,
Ethnobotany began in the in 1800's particularly when
people from Europe and the US began to explore tropical
areas in their colonies at that point of time, looking
for new sources of economic plants, new sources of food,
new sources of oil, new sources of industrial materials
such as rubber and quinin as medicines.
These were big discoveries
and this is a very important part of colonisation,"
Dr. Martin said.
"They were not just interested
in tapping into new plants they were finding but tapping
into what the local people knew about these plants."
Crediting traditional knowledge
once more for some of the world biggest discoveries in
medicine, he cited another classic example : That's
how we found things like quinin. It wasn't just a
researcher going out there and say hey : let's try this
tree for malaria. They were going into a community and
say what are you using for fever and the community says:
well, we are using this tree called quinin."
"Then the scientists tested it
and quinin became one of the main medicines for
malaria."
An issue that had emerged since the
1992 Rio Earth Summit is the question of intellectual
property rights of traditional knowledge (To be dealt
with in another article).
"But the crisis we are facing
in ethnobotany is another triangle (as opposed to the
resource triangle)," said Dr Martin.
"One corner of the triangle is
the fact that we are losing indigenous knowledge,
he warned.
"Social economic and cultural
changes, such as schooling being done in such a way that
people are moving out of community or stopped using
plants the way they had. As people and cultural practices
change the respect for traditional knowledge start to
disappear, he said.
"Most of this knowledge is not
written down like text books. They were traditions passed
down from generation to generation."
"Another crisis is the loss of
language. We now have 6000 languages in the world and
probably by mid 2000, we'll have only 600 and lose 90 per
cent of languages spoken, particularly in critical areas
like the Amazon where there are few speakers in each
language. Less of a crisis is Kadazandusun. Murut where
there are large number of speakers and efforts to get it
into schools," he pointed out.
"Another crisis is the loss of
biodiversity in domesticated plants and genetic
resources, loss of particular species through
over-harvesting."
"The whole triangle (resource)
is eroding because of deforestation, endangered species
and environmental problems and we don't know how many
species we are losing. But a recent report came out by
the World Conservation Monitoring at Cambridge estimates
up to 12 to 20 per cent of the world's plants are in
imminent danger," he said.
Dr Martin cited a capacity
crisis" in preserving biodiversity with reference to
a half Dutch half Indonesian botanist named Max Van
Bougoi who demonstrated how he could identify 1000 local
plants in four nights during their Certificate Training
Course on Applied Ethnobotany at Kinabalu Park in June,
We are losing the linguists the
botanists, the anthropologists and the environmentalists
who do field works, who do descriptive works, who could
really help in documenting this knowledge and applying
it," Dr Martin lamented.
"You look around universities,
are there botanists left? Yes, but they are all molecular
geneticists, all working on one species of plants. There
are no botanists under 50 years who can sit down like Max
Van Bougoi and identify 1000 plants in four nights - no
generalists left," he said.
"If you look at the linguists,
all are concerned with theoretical constructs which are
all very good of course, I have nothing against
biotechnology or linguistics at theoretical level. But
what we really need are people who know descriptive
linguistics, people who can go out and record languages,
grammar and syntax, make dictionaries, work with the
communities to hold on to the language" he said.
"Similarly plant genetics is
great since my brother is a professor of plant genetics
at Cornell University. The problem is we have only plant
geneticists who work on molecular levels.
"Who could work with
communities and survey 150 useful plants in a forest
park? We are losing that capacity."
"There are fewer ethnographer
- people who go out, live with people working on lost
languages, lost culture, lost biodiversity."
Hence, said Dr Martin, an important
mission of the UN backed People and Plants Southeast Asia
is focus on what can be done in upholding Community
knowledge, conservation and continued management of plant
resources and as he put it : " How we can build
capacity, skills and techniques by taking young dynamic
Southeast Asians involved in the field of communities and
look at tools - internet, community visit or whatever to
get results."
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