Upcoming speaker: March 8, 2007. 5:00 – 6:30 pm, AnSo Rm 2107.
Dr. Kelly Bannister (Director, POLIS Project on Ecological Governance, U Vic.).
“The Nexus of Biodiversity and Traditional Knowledge.”
The role of traditional knowledge in biodiversity science and decision-making has peaked serious interest by governments, policy-makers, academics, Indigenous communities and others around the world. However, despite increasing agreement in principle that combining western scientific and traditional knowledge systems may better address some emergent human and ecosystem health problems, relatively little progress has been made in practice or in developing policies and infrastructure to support such practice. The role of ethical and quasi-legal instruments, such as research protocols and codes, are receiving significant attention at local to international levels for their potential to address a number of challenges that lie at this nexus of principle-policy-practice involving biodiversity and traditional knowledge. Are such instruments tools for building cross-cultural relationships, democratizing biodiversity science and empowering communities in decision-making, or do they serve to bureaucratize the research enterprise?