Abstract
There are two broadly conceptualized ways in which conservation knowledge may evolve: the depletion crisis model and the ecological understanding model. The first one argues that developing conservation thought and practice depends on learning that resources are depletable. Such learning typically follows a resource crisis. The second mechanism emphasizes the development of conservation practices following the incremental elaboration of environmental knowledge by a group of people. These mechanisms may work together. Following a perturbation, a society can self-organize, learn and adapt. The self-organizing process, facilitated by knowledge development and learning, has the potential to increase the resilience (capability to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change) of resource use systems. Hence, conservation knowledge can develop through a combination of long-term ecological understanding and learning from crises and mistakes. It has survival value, as it increases the resilience of integrated social--ecological systems to deal with change in ways that continue to sustain both peoples and their environments.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the panel, “Knowledge for the development of adaptive co-management,” N.J. Turner and F. Berkes (session organizers) International Association for the Study of Common Property, IASCP ‘04, Oaxaca, Mexico. For the development of the ideas presented here, we thank our many colleagues in the IASCP session and Douglas Nakashima, UNESCO, Paris. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Bob Johannes, an original thinker on the meaning of conservation and its relationship to traditional ecological knowledge. Berkes’ work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Canada Research Chairs program; Turner's work was supported by SSHRC.
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Berkes, F., Turner, N.J. Knowledge, Learning and the Evolution of Conservation Practice for Social-Ecological System Resilience. Hum Ecol 34, 479–494 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-006-9008-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-006-9008-2