OBJECTIVES 1. Test how various forms of integration to the market economy affect individual levels of ethnobotanical knowledge: We hypothesize that only economic activities that take individuals out of their culture and environment will correlate with the loss of ethnobotanical knowledge. 2. Test a new method for measuring ethnobotanical knowledge based on the skill that drawn on ethnobotanical knowledge 3. Evaluate the correspondence between the measure of practical skills and conventional measures of theoretical ethnobotanical knowledge. Variables and Descriptive statistics We interviewed all adults (>15 years of age) in 13 villages Tsimane’ along the Maniqui river, for a total of 229 men and 247 women. BACKGROUND Ü Ethnobotanical knowledge accumulated over generations but is now being loss 1;2 . Ü Preserving ethnobotanical knowledge matters to: o Indigenous peoples because it helps them protect their nutrition 3 and health 4 and manage their habitats 5;6 ; o Science because it contributes to research in medicine, agriculture, botany, zoology, and hydrology; and o The Environment because it contributes to ecological adaptation and might help design policies for conservation 7 . Ü Previous research has been unable to identify the causes of loss of ethnobotanical knowledge. Some researchers have linked the loss of ethnobotanical knowledge to the expansion of the market economy 8 , whereas others have found persistence in ethnobotanical knowledge despite large socio- economic changes 9 . Ü The topic matters because if ethnobotanical knowledge vanishes with economic development, then economic development comes at the cost of losing humanity’s heritage and diversity. CONCLUSIONS ETHNOBOTANICAL KNOWLEDGE AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT A CASE STUDY FROM THE TSIMANE’ AMERINDIANS, BOLIVIA Effects of share of wage labor in income against ethnobotanical knowledge and skills Ü An increase of one percent in the score of ethnobotanical skills correlates with a ~0.06% lower share of wage earnings in total personal income (p<0.001) (column [1]). Ü Theoretical ethnobotanical knowledge did not correlate significantly with the share of wage earnings in total personal income (column [2]). Table 1. Descriptive statistics of the variables measured Figure 3. Regression of ethnobotanical knowledge versus skills V REYES-GARCIA, V VADEZ, and T HUANCA, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA WR LEONARD and TW McDADE, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, METHODS Research took place between May 2002 and November 2003 among Tsimane’, a foraging and farming society of ~8,000 people in ~100 villages in the Bolivian Amazon. Share of wage earnings Variable [1] [2] [3] Knowledge (log) .02 .03 Skills (log) -.06** -.07** Age .001 -.001 .0003 Male .19** .18** .18** School grade .03** .03** .03** Writing .01 .01 .01 Spanish .09** .09** .10** Village-to-town distance -.004 -.002** -.001 Regressions contain a constant and a set of binary variables for village of residency (not shown) and clustering by village. [1] does not include the variable knowledge. [2] does not includes the variable skills * p≤0.10; **p<0.01 RESULTS Relation between ethnobotanical knowledge and skills Ü The variable that proxies practical skills has a higher coefficient of variation than in the variable that proxies theoretical knowledge (cv of skills=0.44; cv of knowledge=0.36). Ü Theoretical ethnobotanical knowledge and ethnobotanical skills correlate in a positive and statistically significant way, but the correlation coefficient is low (coeff=1.42; p=0.001; n=453). Ü The way one defines and measures ethnobotanical knowledge matters. We measured theoretical ethnobotanical knowledge and ethnobotanical skills and found only a weak correlation between the two variables. Ü Participation in wage labor, an economic activity that take people out of their culture and that reduces their interaction with the environment, correlates with less ethnobotanical skills. Ü Sale of forest or farm products, a market activity that does not take people out of their culture and that do not reduce their interaction with the environment, correlates with more ethnobotanical skills and with more theoretical ethnobotanical knowledge. Ü Economic development and preservation of traditional ecological knowledge might be simultaneously achieved only if economic development takes place through activities that keep people in their habitat and their culture. Acknowledgements Research was funded by the National Science Foundation (grants BCS- 0134225 and BCS-0322380) and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (Gr-7250). Ü Tsimane’ reportedly know 414 different species of wild plants, of which only 46 plants (11 % ) had no recorded use. The remaining 368 plants had a total of 571 different uses. ÜTsimane’ employ only about half of the uses of plants they know with important differences between settings 11 . 48 6 15.95 28.3 Kilometers from village to closest town Village-to- town-distance 1 0 0.46 0.3 Fluency in spoken Spanish (0=no fluent; 1=fluent) Spanish 2 0 0.88 0.7 Ability to write his/her name (0=unable; 2=good) Writing 13 0 2.27 1.9 Maximum school grade attained School grade 1 0 0.50 0.5 Sex of participant (male=1; female=0) Male 90.3 15.0 15.02 34.4 Age of participants, in years Age Control 10.1 0 1.82 4.1 Score in a test of ability to make 18 objects from plants Skills 0.95 0.05 0.20 0.56 Agreement with the sample on uses of 21 randomly-selected plants Knowledge Explanatory 92 0 23 22 Share of earnings from sale of goods in total yearly personal income Share of sale 96 0 25 16 Share of wage earnings in total yearly personal income Share of wage Dependent Max Min Std Dev. Mean Definition Variable 0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 Ethnobotanical knowledge 0 2 4 6 8 10 Ethnobotanical skills Table 2. Multivariate OLS regressions of the share of wage labor in total yearly personal income against ethnobotanical knowledge and skills (n=416) Effects of share of sales in income against ethnobotanical knowledge and skills Ü An increase of one percent in the score of ethnobotanical skills correlates with a ~0.06% higher share of sales in total personal income (p<0.001) (column [1]). Ü An increase of one percent in the score of theoretical ethnobotanical knowledge also correlates with a ~0.06% higher share of sales in total personal income (p<0.1) (column [2]). Regressions contain a constant and a set of binary variables for village of residency (not shown) and clustering by village. [1] does not include the variable knowledge. [2] does not includes the variable skills * p≤0.10; **p<0.01 -.007** .001 -.006** Village-to-town distance .002 -.001 -.008 Spanish .002 -.01* .005 Writing -.01* -.003** -.01* School grade .03 .04 .04 Male .001 .001 .001 Age .06** -.06** Skills (log) .05 .06* Knowledge (log) [3] [2] [1] Variable Share of earnings from sale of goods Table 3. Multivariate OLS regressions of the share of earnings from sale in total yearly personal income against ethnobotanical knowledge and skills (n=416) REFERENCES 1. P. A. Cox, Science 287, 44-45 (2000). 2. L. Maffi, On Biocultural Diversity. Linking Language, Knowledge, and the Environment (Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C., 2001). 3. F. Jackson, Yearbook Physical Anthropology 39, 161-176 (1996). 4. N. L. Etkin, Eating on the Wild Side: The Pharmacologic, Ecologic, and Social Implications of Using Noncultigens (University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 2000). 5. P. Olsson, C. Folke, F. Berkes, Environmental Management 34, 75-90 (2004). 6. S. Laird, Biodiversity and Traditional Knowledge: Equitable Partnerships in Practice. (Earthscan, London, 2002). 7. F. Berkes, J. Colding, C. Folke, Ecological Applications 10, 1251-1262 (2000). 8. N. Ross, in Ethnobiology and Biocultural Diversity, J. R. Stepp, F. S. Wyndham, R. Zarger, Eds. (International Society of Ethnobiology, Athens, GA, 2002). 9. R. Zarger and J. R. Stepp, Curr.Anthropol. 45, 413-418 (2004). 10. V. Vadez et al., Hum.Ecol. 32, 635-646 (2004). 11. V. Reyes Garcia, V. Vadez, R. Godoy, T. Huanca, W. Leonard, Econ.Bot. Under review, (2005). Figure1. Study area 7 15 21 49 54 68 140 169 47 Poison fish Dye Canoe Edible House building Tools Firewood Medicine Other Number of plants The People Tsimane’ reached the middle of the 20 th century in relative isolation, but are now in the early stages of continuous transition to a market economy. Tsimane’ subsistence centers on hunting, fishing, and horticulture 10 . Tsimane’ take part in the market economy in two ways. Some earn cash by selling forest and agricultural goods – activities that take them to the forest and keep them in their culture– but others earn cash by working as unskilled wage laborers for farmers and ranchers – activities that take them away from the forest and their culture. Hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists Figure 2: Uses of 414 wild and semi-cultivated plant species by the Tsimane’