Indonesia

Rural people’s livelihoods depend on their knowledge to manage available natural resources. Their knowledge continues to evolve under changing circumstances, based on personal experience and observations and acquired from secondary sources. In contrast to the populist view of cultural embeddedness of local knowledge, we assert that farmers knowledge that have developed and used in their decision making have ecological rationality in most cases and can be differentiated from cultural and supernatural aspects. While local insights may be comparable with scientific understanding in some respects, it may also differ in its scope and structure. Using case studies from Indonesia and Peru we illustrate the nature and scope of local ecological knowledge. In the Indonesia case, we investigated farmers ’ knowledge about soil erosion and associated natural processes both at a plot and landscape levels. While plot level knowledge was rich and diverse, landscape level knowledge was rather generic and was associated with implementation constraints on an individual basis. In Peru, we appraised local ecological knowledge about soils and other aspects of farming systems among the Shipibo communities with relatively new and general but evolving knowledge system. With these examples and other references, we discuss the nature and scope, limitations and usefulness of local knowledge in natural resource management. We advocate research and development based on local knowledge and innovations that are complemented with appropriate scientific investigation