The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment presents the Spanish Inventory of Traditional Knowledge on Biodiversity

The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment has today presented the publication of the Spanish Inventory of Traditional Knowledge related to Biodiversity, a work promoted and paid for by the Ministry to preserve, maintain and promote traditional knowledge of interest, transmitted orally over time in the rural world and that was at risk of being lost. to collaborate in the conservation and sustainable use of natural heritage and biodiversity.
 
The Secretary of State for the Environment, Federico Ramos, presided over this event and, after thanking the authors of the book and all their collaborators “for their work and valuable contribution with this publication”, a pioneer in Spain and Europe, he stressed “the importance of preserving in an inventory all that knowledge, all that culture and all that baggage that our society has after having been related to nature for a long time”.
 
“Now that we are talking about sustainable growth and how to continue moving forward without changing our planet,” Ramos pointed out, “we look back and see that this concern has been had by many others before, people who have developed very interesting ways of doing it, and all this is what this book compiles, the collective memory of knowledge that has a really important value and that we must preserve”.
 
This Inventory, on which work continues for future extensions, will be integrated into the Spanish Inventory of Natural Heritage and Biodiversity, and responds to the legal mandate established in the Natural Heritage and Biodiversity Law. More than 65 experts from multiple disciplines have worked on its writing, from 39 different institutions.
 
NOW AVAILABLE ON THE MINISTRY’S WEBSITE
The publication, which can already be consulted and downloaded on the Ministry’s website (www.magrama), specifically at the link http://goo.gl/9gnK0, combines the informative style with the academic rigor that a work of these characteristics requires.
 
The Inventory includes a description of the methodology designed specifically for the project, as well as a series of informative sheets (just over 50), on traditional uses and knowledge of plants, animals, ecosystems and minerals.
 
ROUND TABLE
The event took place with a round table in which some of the authors, experts in the field of ethnobiology and anthropology, such as Manuel Pardo de Santayana (Autonomous University of Madrid), Emilio Laguna (General Directorate of Natural Environment of the Generalitat Valenciana), participated together with the Director General of Environmental Quality and Assessment and the Natural Environment of the Ministry, Guillermina Yanguas. Alonso Verde (Botanical Garden of Castilla-La Mancha), Rufino Acosta (University of Seville), Reyes González-Tejero (University of Granada) and Honorio Velasco (UNED).
 
The round table highlighted the importance of traditional knowledge, its relationship with the conservation of biodiversity and the interest of the project developed, and underlined the recognition that society owes to all the people who have been generating, maintaining and transmitting this cultural heritage of incalculable value.
 
INVENTORY EXPANSION
Work to conclude the Inventory continues. The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment, aware of the value and need for the compilation of traditional practices in Spain, is continuing with the work in a second phase, which will cover a greater number of species, up to about 300. This second phase will last until the beginning of 2017.