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Traditional and Indigenous Knowledge: Bridging Past and Future Sustainable Development

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Life on Land

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals ((ENUNSDG))

Definitions

Indigenous knowledge (IK) is the knowledge of local groups with a unique culture, history, and social relations.

As defined by Warren and Rajasekaran, this term refers to “the systematic body of knowledge acquired by local people through the accumulation of experiences, informal experiments, and intimate understanding of the environment in a given culture” (Amer Al-Roubaie 2010, p. 118).

Many authors agree that it is “notoriously difficult” (Fre 2018; Popova-Gosart 2009) to define indigenous knowledge. However, it looks like some common characteristics can be recognized within the varied definitions:

  • It is collective knowledge: accumulated by a certain community and considered to be collective property.

  • It is closely tied to location (Fre 2018), where the respective indigenous community lives.

  • It is intergenerational: passed down from generation to generation, through specific cultural and traditional mechanisms, mostly orally, and most often by elders or people holding...

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References

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Correspondence to Violeta Orlovic Lovren .

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Orlovic Lovren, V. (2019). Traditional and Indigenous Knowledge: Bridging Past and Future Sustainable Development. In: Leal Filho, W., Azul, A., Brandli, L., Özuyar, P., Wall, T. (eds) Life on Land. Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71065-5_96-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71065-5_96-1

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