Seminar and Discussion Series

Permanent URI for this community

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1

Open Access
Sex and ecosystem services: the importance of gendered ethnobotanical knowledge in the Bale Mountains, Ethiopia
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013-04-23) Luizza, Matt, speaker
Integrating local ecological knowledge (LEK) of resource users with conventional scientific methods can promote effective collaboration among diverse stakeholders, facilitate access to decision-making power for marginalized communities, and provide a more holistic understanding of the landscape in question. Although this LEK integration is inherent to ethnobotanical studies, the importance of the knowledge-gender link is often overlooked. Understanding gender-based differences in local knowledge of plants is important for promoting collaborative conservation of plant-derived ecosystem services. Building on existing research of men's knowledge of plants in the Bale Mountains of Ethiopia and extensive vegetation data collected by the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Matt conducted semi-structured interviews and focus groups to catalogue women's knowledge of plants in the Bale Mountains. This mixture of ecological field data and ethnobotanical data were examined in an effort to understand gender-based differences in plant-derived ecosystem services and the relative scarcity and abundance of service-providing plants across the landscape.