Critical Analysis

Critical Analysis

Introduction

This assignment provides a critical analysis of the author's argument in the article “Coming Full Circle: Indigenous Knowledge, Environment, and Our Future” by Deborah McGregor. The author sheds light on the incorporation of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) into the public policy of Canada, in this article the author hypothesizes that TEK is a relatively novel phenomenon that is fully entrenched in the policies of environmental decision-making processes of Canada. The argument of the author defines a forceful style of the author to express his viewpoint on such a phenomenon where he justifies the incorporation of TEK into Canadian policies in a successful manner.

Analysis and Arguments

The study of traditional knowledge is a relatively new discipline and still controversial. Indeed, the debate about their validity for application to modern problems of resource management hinders the recognition of their usefulness and their effective use within management policies. Western science is still reluctant to consider such knowledge as they are included in an eco-centric environmental ethics fundamentally different from the currently dominant anthropocentric ethics.

Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) is a form of knowledge that stems from the experiences of indigenous people to adapt to their environment. The author contends that the incorporation of such knowledge into the public policies for environmental decision-making will not go unrewarded, since its implications speaks high of its benefits. Once traditional knowledge collected, it is possible to integrate the processes of natural resource management by drawing on traditional management methods, implementing a system of co-management or through adaptive management. Despite the difficulty to highlight major trends among the extreme variability of contexts, a review of case studies dealing with the integration of TEK into forest management highlights gaps in the methodologies employed, the difficulties in incorporating effectively the TEK in planning processes and forest management, and sometimes the lack of community involvement.

Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) can be used for environmental management, in order to manage the biological resources in the traditional land use and ecosystem services in the areas inhabited by indigenous people as a whole. Along with this, TEK represent an independent value for the development of new conceptual approaches to sustainable development. In addition, they are indispensable in the evaluation of environmental impacts, as people whose survival depends on local conditions, can determine the actual cost of losses or gains from the sale of a project better than the visiting experts. This ...