Traditional ecological knowledge

Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is a cumulative body of knowledge, practice, and belief, evolving by adaptive processes and handed down through generations by cultural transmission, about the relationship of living beings (including humans) with one another and with their environment.

The application of TEK in the field of ecological management and science is still controversial, as methods of acquiring and collecting knowledge—although often including forms of empirical research and experimentation— may differ from those most often used to create and validate scientific ecological knowledge.^{[citation needed]} Non-tribal government agencies, such as the U.S. EPA, have established integration programs with some tribal governments in order to incorporate TEK in environmental plans and climate change tracking. In contrast to the universality towards which contemporary academic pursuits often aim, TEK is not necessarily a universal concept among various societies, instead referring to a system of knowledge traditions or practices that are heavily dependent on "place".^{[citation needed]}

There is a debate whether Indigenous populations retain intellectual property rights over traditional knowledge and whether use of this knowledge requires prior permission and license.^{[better source needed]} This is especially complicated because TEK is most frequently preserved as oral tradition and as such may lack objectively confirmed documentation. As such, the same methods that could resolve the issue of documentation to meet legal requirements may compromise the very nature of traditional knowledge.

Traditional knowledge is used by its holders to maintain ecological resources necessary for survival.^{[citation needed]} While TEK and the communities which contain it are threatened in the context of rapid climate change or environmental degradation, TEK also can help to explain the impacts of those changes within the ecosystem.^{[citation needed]}

"The earliest systematic studies of TEK were done by anthropologists. Ecological knowledge was studied through the lens of ethnoecology (an approach that focuses on the conceptions of ecological relationships held by a people or a culture)..." in understanding how systems of knowledge were developed by a given culture. Harold Colyer Conklin, an American anthropologist took the lead in documenting indigenous ways of understanding the natural world. Conklin and others documented how traditional peoples, such as Philippine horticulturists, had detailed knowledge about the plants and animals where they resided. Direct involvement in gathering, fashioning products from, and using local plants and animals created a scheme in which the biological world and the cultural world were tightly intertwined. The field of TEK encompasses a broad range of questions related to cultural ecology and ecological anthropology by emphasizing the study of human-nature relations, adaptive processes, which argues that social organization itself is an ecological adaptational response by a group to its local environment, and the practical techniques on which these relationships and culture depend.

in 1987 report, Our Common Future, by the World Commission on Environment and Development was published by the United Nations. The report points out that the successes of the 20th century (decreases in infant mortality, increases in life expectancy, increases in literacy, and global food production) have given rise to trends that have caused environmental degradation "in an ever more polluted world among ever decreasing resources." The report declared that tribal and indigenous peoples had lifestyles that could provide modern societies with lessons for management of resources in complex forest, mountain, and dryland ecosystems.

Fulvio Mazzocchi of the Italian National Research Council's Institute of Atmospheric Pollution outlines the characteristics of TEK as follows:

Traditional knowledge has developed a concept of the environment that emphasizes the symbiotic character of humans and nature. It offers an approach to local development that is based on co‐evolution with the environment, and on respecting the carrying capacity of ecosystems. This knowledge--based on long‐term empirical observations adapted to local conditions--ensures a sound use and control of the environment, and enables indigenous people to adapt to environmental changes. Moreover, it supplies much of the world's population with the principal means to fulfil their basic needs, and forms the basis for decisions and strategies in many practical aspects, including interpretation of meteorological phenomena, medical treatment, water management, production of clothing, navigation, agriculture and husbandry, hunting and fishing, and biological classification systems.... Beyond its obvious benefit for the people who rely on this knowledge, it might provide humanity as a whole with new biological and ecological insights; it has potential value for the management of natural resources and might be useful in conservation education as well as in development planning and environmental assessment.