The nexus between traditional foraging and its sustainability: a qualitative assessment among a few selected Eurasian case studies

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F60460709%3A41340%2F24%3A91282" target="_blank" >RIV/60460709:41340/24:91282 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10668-022-02568-0" target="_blank" >https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10668-022-02568-0</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10668-022-02568-0" target="_blank" >10.1007/s10668-022-02568-0</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

The nexus between traditional foraging and its sustainability: a qualitative assessment among a few selected Eurasian case studies

Original language description

Plant foraging is an important human ecological phenomenon being studied by a number of contemporary ethnobiologists as well as by a few social anthropologists among rural communities and, more recently, in urban environments. The sustainability dimension of foraging is, however, largely unexplored. We analyse a few case studies from recent field research and qualitatively assess both the environmental and social sustainability of diverse patterns of traditional foraging practices in three distinct human ecological environments (horticulturalism, forestry, and pastoralism driven) located in the Eastern Mediterranean, Eastern Europe, and North Pakistan, i.e. we address the question of when does traditional foraging become unsustainable and what factors may influence this. The main findings are multidimensional. First, in all case studies, we sometimes observed competitive foraging among the gatherers of certain wild food plants potentially causing ecological degradation, such unsustainable practices seem to be linked to the market pressure on certain species. However, also customs and norms promoted by states can be detrimental (former Soviet Union), as well as climate change (Eastern Europe), and marginalisation of some minority groups (Pakistan). Second, in the Mediterranean Syrian context, wild food plant resources are largely represented by widely available wild vegetables, normally (but not exclusively) collected by women, and usually easily accessible, only very few wild food plants seem to be threatened due to specific market demands or to disequilibria created by household economic instabilities due to the recent war. We also argue that unsustainable foraging is enhanced by the abandonment of daily practices and continuous interaction with the natural environment and by the increasingly uneven distribution of active practical knowledge on wild food plants among the middle-aged and younger population. Facilitating the transmission of sustainable foraging knowledge and practices could be therefore crucial, also for coping with food insecurity in times of crisis, but for that to occur, holistic environmental and food educational frameworks, appropriate policies for fostering community based biodiversity conservation and also social cohesion and communal management of lands should be seriously considered as well. Moreover, future gastronomic and eco-tourism initiatives, if organised in a thoughtful manner, could represent a positive turning point not only for the local small scale economies of the considered rural communities but also for helping them to dynamically preserve the entire socio ecological system underpinned in plant foraging and ultimately to better adapt to the current global crisis.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

40101 - Agriculture

Project

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Continuities

S - Specificky vyzkum na vysokych skolach

Publication year

2024

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Environment, Development and Sustainability

ISSN

1387-585X

e-ISSN

1387-585X

Volume of the periodical

neuvedeno

Issue of the periodical within the volume

26

Country of publishing house

CZ - CZECH REPUBLIC

Number of pages

26

Pages from-to

29813-29838

UT code for WoS article

000832548000003

EID of the result in the Scopus database

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