Dr. Ina Vandebroek
Institute of Economic Botany, The New York Botanical Garden, 2900 Southern Boulevard, Bronx, New York, 10458, U.S.A.
Increasing mobility, urbanization and modernization, as well as other factors such as climate change, are creating pronounced effects on landscapes and peoples. The science of ethnobiology is uniquely poised to record and understand changes in the interactions between peoples and landscapes, as well as tensions between traditions and transformations in environmental knowledge. Examples of transformations that occur are many, including rural-urban disparities in plant knowledge, transnational changes in migrant pharmacopoeias, and the increasing importance of weeds, cosmopolitan or exotic species for human subsistence in many places. These transformations represent threats, as well as opportunities. For example, increased mobility of plant species leading to cosmopolitization of ethnobotanical inventories may warrant conservation programs to protect native species. At the same time, increased mobility of ethnobiology scholars and resources, through North-South travel grants and virtual herbaria, may foster new research partnerships, access to diverse study sites, hypothesis testing and theory building.
Ethnobiology scholars will have to develop best strategies, methods and tools, including photo essays and video interviews with community voices, to adequately document and interpret the interplay between traditions and transformations. These methods and information-sharing formats should become routinely incorporated into the ethnobiologist’s toolkit. This is all the more important, because transformations recorded in ethnobiology have widespread importance and their impacts should not only target scientific colleagues and local communities, but also policymakers and other important stakeholders, such as the public at large.