PARENT SESSION
Symposium #23: Relationship, Community, and Intergenerational Innovation: Traditional Ecological Knowledge for Ecosystem Restoration .
Sponsored by ESA Sustainable Biosphere Initiative
Organized by: K Klubnikin, K Rodriguez, J Parrotta, and W Covington
Wednesday, August 7. 1:00 PM to 4:30 PM. Leo Rich Theatre.
Conservation of biodiversity in Latin American traditional agroecosystems.
ALTIERI, MIGUEL*,1, TOLEDO, VICTOR MANUAL*,2, 1 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY, BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA2 CENTRO DE ECOLOGIA, MORELIA, MICHOACAN, MEXICO
ABSTRACT- Traditional farming throughout Latin America characteristically encompasses a high degree of biodiversity. Traditional farming systems emerged over centuries, the result of interative, intergenerational processes in which human knowledge has been shaped by both natural resources and cumulative experience. Built upon local resources,innovation,self- reliance, and experience, peasants shaped sustainable farming systems in natural and semi-natural ecosystems that have supported long-term, active plant gathering and crop production. Still found throughout the Andes, MesoAmerica and the lowland tropics, the diverse agroecosystems are major in-situ reserves for both crop and wild plant germplasm. The plant resources are directly dependent upon human mangement; thus, they have been shaped in part by specific cultural practices. The greatest challenge to understand how the local people maintain, preserve and manage biodiversity is to recognize that the agroecosystems are complex production systems that are closely linked to sophisticated, culturally- specific management techniques.We explore the biodiversity in southern agroecosystems, how pesants maintain their knowledge and techniques for shaping ecosystem services, and make a case for the concurrent preservation of the traditional systems in conjunction with cultural maintenance of the local people, the critical technologies for conservation of biodiversity and human security in these areas.
KEY WORDS: biodiversity, agroecosystems, Latin America, sustainability