Knowledge Gap : Sacred Forest Conservation and Generational Shift in the North Pare Mountains, Tanzania

Agustina Alvarez

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Title (eng)

Knowledge Gap

Sacred Forest Conservation and Generational Shift in the North Pare Mountains, Tanzania

Author

Agustina Alvarez

independent researcher

Description (eng)

This article focuses on the (dis)continuity of sacred forests’ management in the Pare Mountains, Tanzania, and questions the reasons behind the big generational divide when it comes to forest conservation. Studies show that sacred forests in North Pare are better preserved than national forest reserves and scholars suggest that the reasons for such high biodiversity are the communities’ local traditions and conservation methods. Because local caretakers enable well-organized conservation with low economic expenditure, sacred forests’ management has been thus recently considered a new favoured type of conservation model. However, the results of my ethnographic fieldwork show that at stake in this context, is much more the basic question of how this traditional knowledge can be gained in the first place. While it is commonly accepted that the main causes of forest destruction are farming, the cutting of building poles, etc. this paper highlights that the biggest concern regarding sacred forests’ conservation for people in North Pare is the young generations’ distance from sacred forests. I suggest therefore that changing worldviews have to be considered in the debate of sacred forest conservation and that knowledge transfer to the next generation of custodians (and mechanisms to ensure this happens) can complement recent conservation efforts, which typically neglect such generational issues.

Keywords (eng)

sacred forestNorth Pare MountainsTanzanialocal knowledge systemsforest conservationgenerational shift

Subject (eng)

ÖFOS 2012 -- 602001 -- African studies

Type (eng)

journal article

Language

[eng]

Persistent identifier

https://phaidra.univie.ac.at/o:2092773

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