Changing environment and vanishing local knowledge

2022 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17K02014
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Area studies
• Research Institution: Kyoto University
• Principal Investigator: Itoh Noriko 京都大学, アフリカ地域研究資料センター, 研究員 (60402749)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-04-01 – 2023-03-31
• Keywords: 環境変動 / 在来知 / 植物相 / 気候変動

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The purpose of this study was to summarize both indigenous knowledge and scientific knowledge that is being lost due to environmental change, based on long-term ecological monitoring and field surveys including interviews with local people. In the target area, the Mahale Mountains National Park in Tanzania, East Africa, and its surrounding areas, the effects of global climate change were recognized from meteorological data. The field surveys and interviews had to be abandoned in the middle of the research period due to the pandemic, but instead, I estimated the local names and their scientific names based on 246 plant image from the past, including the 1960s, when the research was initiated. Within these data, I discovered 54 valuable data of which the local names had not been known even to local people during my previous field surveys.

Free Research Field

地域研究、生態人類額、人類学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

地球規模の環境変動は日本を含む先進国が主要な責任を負っている。環境問題に対処するためのマクロな対応・対策が重要な一方で、地球規模の環境変動が及ぼす影響の実態は、各々の地域の環境特性に埋め込まれて実現する。そこには当該地域での人間活動の歴史も含まれるが、これらを総体として扱うことは困難な場合が多い。さらに、在来知は変わり続ける生態・社会環境に埋め込まれて息づくが、近年の環境変動下では知の対象となる個々の生物そのものも失われてゆく。本研究の成果はこうしたミクロな実情にそって、変化し、失われゆくものを多角的な観点から記録として残そうとする試みである点で学術的・社会的な意義がある。