Forest degradation and human health: opportunities and challenges of traditional wisdom and knowledge (IUAES Commission on Human Rights).
Panel PE22 at conference IUAES2013 World Congress: Evolving humanity, emerging worlds.
Forest degradation and commercial afforestation may affect health, nutrition and survival of people particularly indigenous people. The opportunities and challenges of indigenous wisdom and knowledge need critical attention when an exiting body of knowledge is available.
Long Abstract:
Generally, when we talk or think about science, we refer to the western or industrial society. In the context of scientific development, we prefer to discuss more about the so called modern scientific innovations assuming that science is only there in those societies and quite often implying that scientific rigour or interest is absent in other societies. People have developed their own science and technologies based on the demands of the concerned societies, but quite often these are ignored. There is a need to look at indigenous science and technology particularly when an exiting body of knowledge is available.
The prevailing health and medical system, the western system, has unfortunately failed to meet the need of the world's majority. In most countries less and less emphasis is given to the social and welfare sectors. As such the financial allocation for health is going down and the condition of the poor, particularly the rural poor and indigenous people has become more critical and difficult.
The indigenous people mostly depend on forest resources to get food, nutrition and medicine. Naturally, forest degradation has affected their health and survival. Again, when commercial afforestation is promoted, in most cases, it has also not helped the indigenous people to get food or medicine. In this session, all these issues will be examined with cross cultural data.
Tribals are the children of the forest. Their traditional knowledge especially in the areas of health is centered on their ecological niche. Due to forest degradation and deforestation traditional knowledge especially in the areas of health, disease and treatment are disappear day by day. For the survival of this knowledge it is better to understand the situation and chalk out a proper programme.
Paper long abstract:
A holistic perspective on human knowledge would help us to understand the implications of traditional knowledge especially in the areas of health, disease and treatment. The tribals, particularly forest dwellers, depend on forest for their existence. Forest plays an essential part in their social, cultural, economical and health structure. They collect food from the forest, use the timber to construct their houses, making different types of implements, collect fuel wood for cooking and different other objects from the forests required by them for a variety of purposes. But presently forest is used commercially and due to deforestation it is degraded day by day. So, it is hard to collect medicinal plants and other food items. Tribal world of belief and practices has been constructed and surrounded by their parochial perception and action of natural and supernatural entity. They find themselves closely knit with the web of these two entities in every sphere of life. Perception about health and health seeking behaviour of the tribal people obviously is intertwined with the interaction of these two entities. The traditional healers act as the medium between man, nature and supernatural entity and provide spiritual security to the tribal people. The present paper focuses on the study of forest degradation, traditional knowledge and health among the Santal tribes of Puruliya district in West Bengal, India.
The diversity of therapeutic agencying among traditional people in the Island of Itaparica, in the Bay of Todos os Santos, Bahia, Brazil, involves, in one hand, a heterogeneity of mediators from public health system and religious therapeutic care, and in another hand, the high vulnerability of population segments who face the risks posed by partial insertion in processes of modernization and globalization.
Paper long abstract:
The approach which is taken in the ideas that we discuss in the paper are supported by the theoretical concept of agencying (agencement) by Gilles Deleuze and Bruno Latour and defends the idea that healing practices and performances are characterized for heterogeneity of mediators in everyday life. If we understand religious healing traditions as a rooted, but not frozen knowledge, we are able to pursuit the dynamic of relations between public health system and religious therapeutic care. In another hand, we have taken the concept of vulnerability as a main form of examining how the traditional people in the Island of Itaparica, face the contemporary changes and risks, and how they affect the health seeking behaviors. For this purpose, vulnerability is understood as the major or minor capacity of self-management of those populations affected by the processes of modernization, which will occur when exogenous transformations "turn into" endogenous transformations.
The paper will focus on status of tribal health and problems of the Gonds, Baigas and Bharias of Madhya Prdesh in India with their ethno-medicinal practices
Paper long abstract:
The health of indigenous or tribal people is the perceptions and conceptions in their own cultural system with less awareness of the modern health care and health sources. They identify the causes as natural made actions of some planets and believe in the doctrine of supernatural or evil spirits, or human agencies. They have the various procedures of treatment viz. folk treatment, religious or preventive procedure, magical or curative procedures and modern medical system. Tribal health treatment was developed through prolong time period out of the rich cultural heritage based on the Indigenous Knowledge system of the local communities. Due to large scale degradation of natural resources and unhygienic condition of their habitation the tribal communities are suffering from a large number of the communicable and parasitic diseases. Hence, the utility of the herbal medicinal species in curing the diseases and maintaining their sound health conditions is well known. Few species are considered to be endangered due to Injudicious and unscientific method of collecting the medicinal plant is reason of destruction. In Patalkot area it has been observed that the people destroy the plants by chipping of bark around. The climatic factor is another factor responsible for destruction of plant species.
The objective of the paper is to status of tribal health and problems of that among the Gonds & Baigas of Dindori district and Bharias of Patalkot ( Chhindwara District), two primitive tribal groups in Madhya Pradesh with their Ethno-medicinal practices.
Environment are degrading day-by-day due to the replacement of forest by agricultural field, fruit orchards, industry and specifically the people's indiscriminate habitat zone. Commercial Afforestation is also affecting the local people by destroying their cultural heritage.
Paper long abstract:
Forest degradation is categorically caused by indiscriminate agricultural practices, commercialisation, peoples unplanned habitation which emphatically enhancing the chance of desertification, top soil loss, flood and land slide. Moreover, commercial afforestation like JFM, agroforestry and social forestry is significantly decreasing the varieties of natural trees found in the forest. Along with the forest degradation the indigenous people are also affected by the above stated phenomena because there is an inextricable link between indigenous culture, ethnic diversity and biological diversity. Many of the indigenous societies are highly primitive and still live in pseudo phase of Stone Age culture virtually cut-off from the modern civilization. The so-called modern trend of 'development' is ruining traditional economic and social system of the indigenous population. Destruction of shrubs, herbs, medicinal plants are also affecting their nutrition and health also. The present article will decipher the above situation among some of the forest dwelling Indian Tribes.
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