Presented at the conference
SCIENCE AND TRADITION:
ROOTS AND WINGS FOR DEVELOPMENT
Brussels, April 2001
LOCAL AND INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS (LINKS) IN A
GLOBAL SOCIETY
by
Douglas NAKASHIMA
Scientists involved in biodiversity conservation and renewable resource management
underline the utility of integrating scientific and traditional knowledge. Integration, in their
view, requires the validation of traditional knowledge through a process that separates ‘useful’
from ‘useless’, indigenous ‘science’ from indigenous ‘belief’. While the end result may be
profitable to science, it leads local and indigenous knowledge systems towards fragmentation
and dismemberment. Even scientists with the best of intentions may accelerate the demise of
these knowledge systems by valorising certain components, judged worthy of scientific
recognition, while casting aspersions on others, rejected as superstition and belief. Traditional
knowledge does not need to be validated by science, any more than science needs to be
defined in relation to traditional knowledge. Rather than mere sets of information of potential
utility, local and indigenous knowledge should be understood as dynamic components of
other cultures. It is in this spirit that UNESCO is setting into place an intersectoral project on
this issue that draws together its sectors of Natural Sciences, Social and Human Sciences,
Culture, Education and Communication and Information.

Programme Specialist, Natural Science Sector, UNESCO (Paris, France).