Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) describes indigenous and other traditional knowledge of local resources. As a field of study in Northern American anthropology, TEK refers to "a cumulative body of knowledge, belief, and practice, evolving by accumulation of TEK and handed down through generations through traditional songs, stories and beliefs. It is concerned with the relationship of living beings (including human) with their traditional groups and with their environment." Indigenous knowledge is not a universal concept among various societies, but is referred to a system of knowledge traditions or practices that are heavily dependent on "place". Such knowledge is used in natural resource management as a substitute for baseline environmental data in cases where there is little recorded scientific data, or may complement Western scientific methods of ecological management.
The application of TEK in the field of ecological management and science is still controversial, as methods of acquiring and collecting knowledge—although often including forms of empirical research and experimentation—differ from those used to create and validate scientific ecological knowledge from a Western perspective. Non-tribal government agencies, such as the U.S. EPA, have established integration programs with some tribal governments in order to incorporate TEK in environmental plans and climate change tracking.
There is a debate whether Indigenous populations retain an intellectual property right over traditional knowledge and whether use of this knowledge requires prior permission and license. This is especially complicated because TEK is most frequently preserved as oral tradition and as such may lack objectively confirmed documentation. As such, the same methods that could resolve the issue of documentation to meet Western requirements may compromise the very nature of traditional knowledge.
Traditional knowledge is used to maintain resources necessary for survival. While TEK itself, and the communities tied to the oral tradition, may become threatened in the context of rapid climate change or environmental degradation, TEK is proving critical for understanding the impacts of those changes within the ecosystem.
TEK can also refer to traditional environmental knowledge which emphasizes the different components and interactions of the environment.
Development of the field
The earliest systematic studies of TEK were conducted in anthropology. Ecological knowledge was studied through the lens of ethnoecology, "an approach that focuses on the conceptions of ecological relationships held by a people or a culture," in understanding how systems of knowledge were developed by a given culture. Harold Colyer Conklin, an American anthropologist who pioneered the study of ethnoscience, took the lead in documenting indigenous ways of understanding the natural world. Conklin and others documented how traditional peoples, such as Philippine horticulturists, displayed remarkable and exceptionally detailed knowledge about the natural history of places where they resided. Direct involvement in gathering, fashioning products from, and using local plants and animals created a scheme in which the biological world and the cultural world were tightly intertwined. In emphasizing the study of adaptive processes, which argues that social organization itself is an ecological adaptational response by a group to its local environment, human-nature relations and the practical techniques on which these relationships and culture depended, the field of TEK could analyze a broad range of questions related to cultural ecology and ecological anthropology.
By the mid-1980s a growing body of literature on traditional ecological knowledge documented both the environmental knowledge held by diverse indigenous peoples and their ecological relations. The rise of traditional ecological knowledge at this time led to international recognition of its potential applications in resource management practices and sustainable development. The 1987 report by the World Commission on Environment and Development reflects the consensus at the time. The report points out that the successes of the 20th century (decreases in infant mortality, increases in life expectancy, increases in literacy, and global food production) have given rise to trends that have caused environmental decay "in an ever more polluted world among ever decreasing resources." Hope, however, existed for traditional lifestyles. The report declared that tribal and indigenous peoples had lifestyles that could provide modern societies with lessons in the management of resources in complex forest, mountain, and dryland ecosystems.