What is meant by Ethnobotany?
To understand in simple terms, ethnobotany is a composite word- made of two different words. Those are ‘ethnic‘ and ‘botany‘. Ethnic general refers to anything considered as native or indigenous to a specific place. While, botany is simply the study of plants.
Technically speaking, ethnobotany is a combination of two branches: anthropology and botany. It gives us information about the use of various plants and flora by various indigenous people and the societies they are a part of.
Thus, when we define ethnobotany we can say that it is the: “Study of a culture and people to understand how those people make use of the native/indigenous plants in their area.“
In short, it means the traditional knowledge of plants and how to use them. It involves, methods of plant classification, cultivation, uses in food, medicine and shelter. Ethnobotany has also been divided further into many sub branches like Ethnomycology, Ethnolichenology, Ethnotaxonomy etc.
Importance of Ethnobotany:
Ethnobotany has held us importance in terms of many aspects: conservation, preservation of the environment and its resources. Its use in pharmaceutical and medicinal use. Some are elaborated below:
•Conservation: in the era of exceeding carbon dioxide emissions and resulting global warming and climate change we are also facing a boom in population which has understandably resulted in a demand for more food.
Thus the food sector has been burdened much more and many agricultural practices being used to cater to an ever increasing demand but slow supply has lead to using modern, but often unsustainable practices.
Ethnobotany comes in here because the knowledge that the ancestors held of specific areas and the kinds of plants best suited for growth and cultivation is needed to prevent further soil degradation and loss of soil fertility. Both of which are common now a days.
Ethanobotany helps people to understand what plants can grow in which places and even places considered to be unarable or unfertile can grow species of plants we may normally never have thought of growing.
• Preservation: One such example of this is that of cotton and soya. These are some high water demanding crops that are clearly responsible for the extreme water shortage in Africa due to the colonialism of the French. They opted to use modern methods in favor of the sustainable, local/indigenous methods of cultivation previously being used. The land being unable to tolerate such harsh agriculture practice resulted in the severe depletion of underground water reservoirs and water tables. That resulted in an extreme famine and drought like conditions in most of Africa.
For more information on this, check out: What Is Green Colonialism? – Everything You Need To Know
Instead soya (or any crop with a high water demand) could be naturally grown in places with high rainfall like the tropical forests or regions of Spain where precipitation rate is high. This could prevent the starvation and water insecurity Africa has been, and presently faces due to unsustainable agricultural practices.
• Pharmaceutical: Ethnobotany plays an important role in drug development and as a pharmacological research tool. Traditional medical knowledge and healing practices such as Traditional Chinese Medicine are an example of treatment of diseases via ethnobotany. The use of local wild and endemic species of plants for making medicines, poultice and other healing droughts dates back to ancient times. Ethnobotany has helped develop modern medicine.
Also Check out: 12 Indigenous Plant Species of Pakistan
Conclusion:
It is high time that we bring ethnobotany back to the forefront in the face of climate change induced weather events. Ethnobotany has helped in not only resource conservation and its sustainable use but it has also been found that up to 25% of modern medicine and drugs have been derived from naturally occurring substances.
Moreover, even planting indigenous plants can help us weather many extreme weather events, improve soil fertility and overall be beneficial to the environment where it grows naturally. Whereas, planting something else instead of indigenous plants can result in a waste of money, time and is not beneficial at all to the environment or us in any way. Sometimes, it may even make the situation or the weather/environment worse.
You may also be interested in: Is Planting Conocarpus Tree in Karachi Pakistan Harmful?
I hope you all liked this post! Please comment below if you have any suggestions, comments, or feedback! We at #envpk love hearing from our readers! Thanks!
