Role of the Indigenous People in Conservation
Conserving Natural Flora:
- The magico-religious belief of plants’ tribal communities as a god and goddess habitat leads to their conservation in their natural habitat.
- Further, a wide variety of plants such as crop plants, wild fruits, seeds, bulbs, roots and tubers are conserved by the ethnic and indigenous people as they have to depend on these sources for edible purposes.
Application of Traditional Knowledge:
- Indigenous people and biodiversity complement each other.
- Over time, the rural communities have gathered a pool of indigenous knowledge for the cultivation of medicinal plants and their propagation.
- These plants conserved are antidotes to snake bites and scorpion bites or even for broken bones or orthopaedic treatments.
Conserving the Sacred Groves:
- India’s ethnic people have played a vital role in preserving the biodiversity of several virgin forests and have conserved flora and fauna in sacred groves of tribals.
- Otherwise, this flora and fauna might have disappeared from the natural ecosystem.
Role of women in Conservation
- Growing population and technological advancement are continuously putting a strain on the environment and world‘s natural resources, which calls for adoption of more methods of sustainable development.
- It has been seen that women have emerged as better proponents of environment as compared to men. This can be due to following reasons:
- In search of a job, men migrate to cities and women have to take care for agriculture activities, which makes them cautious about natural resources availability
- Women in most parts of the world still unemployed or do part time works. This makes them suitable for indulging in conservation works.
- According to Eco-feminism, women are considered to be closer to nature then men.
- Women take care of children, so they can better inculcate habits of environmental protection among children
- Women are worst sufferers of environmental degradation.
- They will have to travel long distances for food, fuel, fodder. So keeping them as guards of environment is more effective
- Family preferences depend upon women. So women can well counter the culture of consumption, which is majorly responsible for environment degradation.