Co-producing uncomfortable, transdisciplinary, actionable knowledges against the corporate food regime through critical science approaches.

The current corporate food regime generates some of the most challenging ecological, social, and ethical problems for humanity in its quest for sustainability and ecological justice. Different scientific disciplines have analyzed these problems in-depth, but usually from their comfort zone, i.e., without engagement with other disciplines and epistemologies. The predominance of disciplinary visions seriously limits, however, understanding the complexities of the corporate food regime, including the impacts it generates. Further, most research concerned with this food regime confronts epistemological, methodological, and political limitations to engage with the type of solutions that could lead to transitions to just sustainabilities. Here we review and integrate the findings from scientific literature focused on the ecological, social, or ethical impacts of the corporate food regime, with an emphasis on impacts that operate on a global scale. In addition, we analyze the need for critical science approaches to trigger generative processes for the co-production of uncomfortable, transdisciplinary, actionable knowledges that are fit for designing just and sustainable food regimes. Much of the evidence presented in our analysis is in tension with the interests of the corporate food regime, which fosters decision-making processes based on selective ignorance of the impacts caused by this regime. Our work provides arguments that justify the need to promote transitions to just sustainabilities in agricultural systems from multiple domains (e.g., research and development, public policies, grassroots innovations). We posit that strategies to co-design and build such transitions can emerge from the co-production of uncomfortable, transdisciplinary, actionable knowledges through critical science approaches.

Grassroots innovation for the pluriverse: evidence from Zapatismo and autonomous Zapatista education.

The social and environmental failure of successive Western development models imposed on the global South has led local communities to pursue alternatives to development. Such alternatives seek radical societal transformations that require the production of new knowledge, practices, technologies, and institutions that are effective to achieve more just and sustainable societies. We may think of such a production as innovation driven by social movements, organizations, collectives, indigenous peoples, and local communities. Innovation that is driven by such grassroots groups has been theorized in the academic literature as "grassroots innovation". However, research on alternatives to development has rarely examined innovation using grassroots innovation as an analytical framework. Here, we assess how grassroots innovation may contribute to building alternatives to development using Zapatismo in Chiapas (Mexico) as a case study. We focus on grassroots innovation in autonomous Zapatista education because this alternative to formal education plays a vital role in knowledge generation and the production of new social practices within Zapatista communities, which underpin the radical societal transformation being built by Zapatismo. We reviewed the academic literature on grassroots innovation as well as gray literature and audiovisual media on Zapatismo and autonomous Zapatista education. We also conducted ethnographic fieldwork in a Zapatista community and its school. We found innovative educational, pedagogical, and teaching-learning practices based on the (re)production of knowledge and learning, which are not limited to the classroom but linked to all the activities of Zapatistas. Our findings suggest that innovation self-realized by Zapatistas plays a key role on the everyday construction of Zapatismo. Therefore, we argue that a specific theoretical framework of grassroots innovation for the pluriverse, based on empirical work carried out in different alternatives to development, is an urgent task that will contribute to a better understanding of how such alternatives grassroots groups imagine, design, and build, particularly across the global South.

High overlap between traditional ecological knowledge and forest conservation found in the Bolivian Amazon.

It has been suggested that traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) may play a key role in forest conservation. However, empirical studies assessing to what extent TEK is associated with forest conservation compared with other variables are rare. Furthermore, to our knowledge, the spatial overlap of TEK and forest conservation has not been evaluated at fine scales. In this paper, we address both issues through a case study with Tsimane' Amerindians in the Bolivian Amazon. We sampled 624 households across 59 villages to estimate TEK and used remote sensing data to assess forest conservation. We ran statistical and spatial analyses to evaluate whether TEK was associated and spatially overlapped with forest conservation at the village level. We find that Tsimane' TEK is significantly and positively associated with forest conservation although acculturation variables bear stronger and negative associations with forest conservation. We also find a very significant spatial overlap between levels of Tsimane' TEK and forest conservation. We discuss the potential reasons underpinning our results, which provide insights that may be useful for informing policies in the realms of development, conservation, and climate. We posit that the protection of indigenous cultural systems is vital and urgent to create more effective policies in such realms.

Shifts in indigenous culture relate to forest tree diversity: a case study from the Tsimane', Bolivian Amazon.

Understanding how indigenous peoples' management practices relate to biological diversity requires addressing contemporary changes in indigenous peoples' way of life. This study explores the association between cultural change among a Bolivian Amazonian indigenous group, the Tsimane', and tree diversity in forests surrounding their villages. We interviewed 86 informants in six villages about their level of attachment to traditional Tsimane' values, our proxy for cultural change. We estimated tree diversity (Fisher's Alpha index) by inventorying trees in 48 0.1-ha plots in old-growth forests distributed in the territory of the same villages. We used multivariate models to assess the relation between cultural change and alpha tree diversity. Cultural change was associated with alpha tree diversity and the relation showed an inverted U-shape, thus suggesting that tree alpha diversity peaked in villages undergoing intermediate cultural change. Although the results do not allow for testing the direction of the relation, we propose that cultural change relates to tree diversity through the changes in practices and behaviors that affect the traditional ecological knowledge of Tsimane' communities; further research is needed to determine the causality. Our results also find support in the intermediate disturbance hypothesis, and suggest that indigenous management can be seen as an intermediate form of anthropogenic disturbance affecting forest communities in a subtle, non-destructive way.

Exploring indigenous landscape classification across different dimensions: a case study from the Bolivian Amazon.

Decisions on landscape management are often dictated by government officials based on their own understandings of how landscape should be used and managed, but rarely considering local peoples' understandings of the landscape they inhabit. We use data collected through free listings, field transects, and interviews to describe how an Amazonian group of hunter-horticulturalists, the Tsimane', classify and perceive the importance of different elements of the landscape across the ecological, socioeconomic, and spiritual dimensions. The Tsimane' recognize nine folk ecotopes (i.e., culturally-recognized landscape units) and use a variety of criteria (including geomorphological features and landscape uses) to differentiate ecotopes from one another. The Tsimane' rank different folk ecotopes in accordance with their perceived ecological, socioeconomic, and spiritual importance. Understanding how local people perceive their landscape contributes towards a landscape management planning paradigm that acknowledges the continuing contributions to management of landscape inhabitants, as well as their cultural and land use rights.

Are ecologically important tree species the most useful? A case study from indigenous people in the Bolivian Amazon.

Researchers have argued that indigenous peoples preferably use the most apparent plant species, particularly for medicinal uses. However, the association between the ecological importance of a species and its usefulness remains unclear. In this paper we quantify such association for six use categories (firewood, construction, materials, food, medicines and other uses). We collected data on the uses of 58 tree species, as reported by 93 informants in 22 villages in the Tsimane' territory (Bolivian Amazon). We calculated the ecological importance of the same species by deriving their importance value index (IVI) in 48 0.1-ha old-growth forest plots. Matching both data sets, we found a positive relation between the IVI of a species and its overall use value (UV) as well as with its UV for construction and materials. We found a negative relation between IVI and UV for species that were reportedly used for medicine and food uses, and no clear pattern for the other categories. We hypothesize that species used for construction or crafting purposes because of their physical properties are more easily substitutable than species used for medicinal or edible purposes because of their chemical properties.

Cultural change and traditional ecological knowledge. An empirical analysis from the Tsimane' in the Bolivian Amazon.

Among the different factors associated to change in traditional ecological knowledge, the study of the relations between cultural change and traditional ecological knowledge has received scan and inadequate scholarly attention. Using data from indigenous peoples of an Amazonian society facing increasing exposure to the mainstream Bolivian society, we analyzed the relation between traditional ecological knowledge, proxied with individual plant use knowledge (n=484), and cultural change, proxied with individual- and village-level (n=47) measures of attachment to traditional beliefs and values. We found that both the individual level of detachment to traditional values and the village level of agreement in detachment to traditional values were associated with individual levels of plant use knowledge, irrespective of other proxy measures for cultural change. Because both the individual- and the village-level variables bear statistically significant associations with plant use knowledge, our results suggest that both the individual- and the supra-individual level processes of cultural change are related to the erosion of plant use knowledge. Results from our work highlight the importance of analyzing processes that happen at intermediary social units -the village in our case study- to explain changes in traditional ecological knowledge.

Evidence of traditional knowledge loss among a contemporary indigenous society.

As biological and linguistic diversity, the world's cultural diversity is on decline. However, to date there are no estimates of the rate at which the specific cultural traits of a group disappear, mainly because we lack empirical data to assess how the cultural traits of a given population change over time. Here we estimate changes in cultural traits associated to the traditional knowledge of wild plant uses among an Amazonian indigenous society. We collected data among 1151 Tsimane' Amerindians at two periods of time. Results show that between 2000 and 2009, Tsimane' adults experienced a net decrease in the report of plant uses ranging from 9% (for the female subsample) to 26% (for the subsample of people living close to towns), equivalent to a 1 to 3 % per year. Results from a Monte Carlo simulation show that the observed changes were not the result of randomness. Changes were more acute for men than for women and for informants living in villages close to market towns than for informants settled in remote villages. The Tsimane' could be abandoning their traditional knowledge as they perceive that this form of knowledge do not equip them well to deal with the new socio-economic and cultural conditions they face nowadays.

Secular trends on traditional ecological knowledge: An analysis of different domains of knowledge among Tsimane' men.

Empirical research provides contradictory evidence of the loss of traditional ecological knowledge across societies. Researchers have argued that culture, methodological differences, and site-specific conditions are responsible for such contradictory evidences. We advance and test a third explanation: the adaptive nature of traditional ecological knowledge systems. Specifically, we test whether different domains of traditional ecological knowledge experience different secular changes and analyze trends in the context of other changes in livelihoods. We use data collected among 651 Tsimane' men (Bolivian Amazon). Our findings indicate that different domains of knowledge follow different secular trends. Among the domains of knowledge analyzed, medicinal and wild edible knowledge appear as the most vulnerable; canoe building and firewood knowledge seem to remain constant across generations; whereas house building knowledge seems to experience a slight secular increase. Our analysis reflects on the adaptive nature of traditional ecological knowledge, highlighting how changes in this knowledge system respond to the particular needs of a society in a given point of time.