Integration of indigenous knowledge and ethnoscientific approaches into contemporary frameworks for conservation and sustainable management of natural resources will become increasingly important in policies on an international and national level, both in countries that are industrialised and those that have a developing status. We set the scene on how this can be done by exploring the key conditions and dimensions of a dialogue between 'ontologies' and the roles, which ethnosciences could play in this process. First, the roles of ethnosciences in the context of sustainable development were analysed, placing emphasis on the implications arising when western sciences aspire to relate to indigenous forms of knowledge. Secondly, the contributions of ethnosciences to such an 'inter- ontological dialogue' were explored, based on an ethnoecological study of the encounter of sciences and indigenous knowledge in the Andes of Bolivia, and reviewed experiences from mangrove systems in Kenya, India and Sri Lanka, and from case-studies in other ecosystems world-wide, incl. Australia, Burkina Faso, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Indonesia, Nepal, Niger, Philippines, Senegal, South-Africa and Tanzania. |
