The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Food and Environment today presented the second phase of the Spanish Inventory of Traditional Knowledge related to Biodiversity, a database that compiles and organizes secular knowledge linked to biodiversity, transmitted through oral tradition and which is the result of man’s adaptation to the environment in which he lives.
The Director General of Environmental Quality and Assessment and Natural Environment of the Ministry, Javier Cachón, chaired the presentation ceremony, where he stressed that “this knowledge is a legacy of priceless and irretrievable knowledge and is a very useful element for the sustainable management of natural resources and scientific and industrial development”, reasons why the Ministry launched the development of this Inventory, whose first edition was published in 2015.
Cachón thanked the participants in the preparation of the Inventory, more than 70 experts and 40 institutions, for their enormous effort. “Especially to the real protagonists, all those people, now very old, who have been generating, maintaining and transmitting their invaluable knowledge, for us to enjoy and pass it on to the next generations”, he stressed.
The Inventory presented today is made up of three volumes, is part of the Spanish Inventory of Natural Heritage and Biodiversity, and includes 707 plant cards covering a total of 760 species.
This information is in addition to that provided by the first phase of the Inventory. “We now have information on almost 3,000 plant species with associated traditional knowledge, nearly half of Spain’s floristic diversity. More than 100 reference works have been shelled, analyzed and their data entered in this repository in order to provide information to all interested parties,” explained the director general.
LEGAL RECOGNITION OF TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE
The 1992 United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity legally recognized the importance of traditional knowledge for the sustainable management of biodiversity. In particular, because the traditional use of resources has very often been carried out with great respect for the sustainability of the resource. They are, therefore, a good example of how to continue to manage these resources.
As Javier Cachón recalled today, “the Natural Heritage and Biodiversity Law took up this philosophy of the Convention and advanced even further in its development, establishing a specific definition that gives normative character to the concept of traditional knowledge and identifying a clear mandate for the Public Administrations, consisting of preserving, promoting and disseminating it”.
Thus, these considerations motivated the implementation, by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Food and Environment, of the Spanish Inventory of Traditional Knowledge related to Biodiversity which, unlike other components of the Spanish Inventory of Natural Heritage and Biodiversity of which it forms part, “integrates both the biological components and the human aspect”.
The work, carried out by a team of 70 experts including biologists, anthropologists, agronomists, pharmacists and linguists, has been based on the compilation of previously published traditional ecological knowledge that is relevant for the sustainable use and conservation of biodiversity, the work methodology, with a hierarchical classification of uses (animal feed, human food, medicine, toxic and harmful uses, etc.), has resulted in the database and the informative sheets included in the publications that make up the Inventory.
INVENTORY AVAILABLE AND EXHIBITION OPEN AT THE MINISTRY
This second publication of the Inventory, with its three volumes, is now available on-line on the MAPAMA website ( http://www.mapama.gob.es/es/biodiversidad/temas/inventarios-nacionales/inventario-espanol-de-los-conocimientos-tradicionales/inventario_esp_conocimientos_tradicionales.aspx) and will soon be available in hard copy from the Ministry’s Publications Service.
The director general also inaugurated an exhibition that disseminates the knowledge gathered in the Inventory, which can be seen until May 17 at the Ministry’s headquarters in Madrid (Paseo de Infanta Isabel, 1).
Subsequently, the exhibition will travel around the country as part of the traveling exhibition program of the Ministry’s National Environmental Education Center (CENEAM).
The spirit and content of the Inventory is also part of the initiative known as Open Administration, promoted internationally by the Open Government Alliance, to which Spain has belonged since 2011 and which aims to bring the Administration closer to citizens, precisely during this Week, between May 7 and 11, since on the one hand it is the result of collaboration and dialogue between very diverse actors (Administrations, Universities, Researchers, etc.) and on the other this publication is catalogued as “open data”, which allows citizens to access and reuse the data.
