Mobilising knowledge for ecosystem assessments

In assessments such as the southern African Millennium Assessment or SAfMA, knowledge relevant to an issue of societal importance is collected, evaluated, organised and communicated in order to support decision-making. Formal assessments are, by nature, part of the ‘scientific’ world view. In order to retain their credibility and power, they have to conform to the norms of evidence, logical inference and trace-ability that apply in that domain. This type of formal knowledge is the conventional source of information for ecosystem assessments. But local resource users also constantly assess the condition of their ecosystems, albeit in an informal and tacit manner. This informs their decisions about short term ecosystem utilization and enables them to make longer term predictions. In the process, a knowledge system tacitly evolves through adaptive management and inter-generational learning, and transferred between ecosystem users. A great deal of relevant information is held in these less formal local, ‘traditional’ or ‘indigenous’ knowledge systems. This paper suggests approaches by which formal and local knowledge can, in complementary ways, be brought to bear on ecosystem assessments. It provides examples of the appropriate and inappropriate use of local and formal knowledge respectively and suggests rules for validating them. It further indicates how the procedures usually associated with formalising local knowledge can usefully be applied to tacit knowledge within the science domain as well. Local knowledge, embedded in local cultures and belief systems, is most useful for gathering localized and fine-grained information about ecosystem and social dynamics, ecosystem management practices, local belief systems, human behaviour, historical patterns of social and ecological change, and information about fine-grained key resource areas that make a disproportionate contribution to human well-being. The assessment process added value to these different sources of knowledge through • collation: making relevant information from diverse and dispersed sources available • evaluation: comparison, checking and applying informed judgement to competing or absent information • summarisation: approaches to reducing the complexity and detail of data, including indices, indicators and statistical analysis • synthesis: recombination of primary information to provide novel insights, through simple or complex models • promoting dialogue and debate between investigators with varying world views who work at different spatial scales, and amongst decision makers [and the public?] • communication: translating from specialist/technical domain into a policy domain using maps, diagrams, pictures, tables and words, and its dissemination in printed and non-printed media. 1 Dept of Environmental Science, Rhodes University, Grahamstown 6140, South Africa. E-mail [email protected] 2 CSIR, P.O. Box 395, Pretoria 0001, South Africa