TBI is launching the series “Monitoreos Comunitarios para el Manejo de los Recursos Naturales en la Amazonia Colombiana” (Community monitoring for natural resource management in the Colombian Amazon). This series documents TBI Colombia’s experiences on the use of local and traditional knowledge for conservation and sustainable management of natural resources.
For more than 15 years, TBI Colombia has been collaborating with local communities in the lower and middle Caquetá River to document and revitalise traditional knowledge and practices, and use these as a tool for developing models for local governance and sustainable management of natural resources. The success of these models has found increasing recognition by a variety of organisations working with indigenous and afro-colombian communities in Colombia. Until now, the methods used for engaging local communities in participatory research were not yet documented. The experiences compiled in this series serve as a guide and a source of inspiration for researchers and development NGOs, who work on projects generating local information aimed at facilitating decision making processes for conservation and sustainable management of natural resources. Through this series, TBI wants to make a further contribution to the recognition of local and traditional knowledge, to the capacity of the local communities to generate information and monitor natural resources, to the discussions on the sustainable use of natural resources and to the development of a platform to strengthen environmental governance.
The first four books of the series are on: “chagras” - indigenous farming systems -, subsistence fishing, commercial fishing and participatory mapping. Upcoming editions will address fauna management, the use of non-timber forest products, climate change, and the application of local knowledge in the health sector.