Indigenizing Biodiversity Conservation: A Collaborative Inquiry on the Ways Amazonian Indigenous Ecological Knowledges and Practices Promote Biodiversity and Ecosystem Conservation
2023 Faculty Research Award
AWARD PERIOD: 2023-2025
João Biehl, Susan Dod Brown Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Brazil LAB at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, explores and showcases the myriad ways Indigenous Peoples are safeguarding many of the world’s diverse array of ecosystems. The researchers focus on the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon—the planet’s largest tropical forest— and develops new collaborative methodologies that put Indigenous and Western scientific knowledge systems into critical and integrative dialogue. Specifically, the researchers are designing frameworks that creatively combine ancestral Indigenous knowledges and practices concerned with biodiversity and ecosystem conservation with cutting-edge understandings of social-ecological systems that emanate from the social and natural sciences. Some of these practices include, for example, techniques for managing multispecies interactions and soil enrichment. The overall goal is to demonstrate how Indigenous ecological knowledges and practices can inform nature-based sustainability initiatives.
The project will provide summer research opportunities for two undergraduates in Brazil. The researchers will also offer a freshman seminar, “Planet Amazonia,” that will include a three-week module, Indigenizing Biodiversity Conservation, to introduce students to indigenous ecological knowledge. During the second year, a new Anthropology course will be offered that will be dedicated solely to indigenous ecological knowledge and practices.
Participating Departments
- Department of Anthropology
- Brazil LAB at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies
Collaborating Institutions
Faculty
Research Associates
- Miqueias Mugge, Academic Research Manager, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies
- Rodrigo Simon de Moraes, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies
Additional Researchers
- Marina Hirota, Associate Professor in the Department of Physics, Federal University of Santa Catarina
- Carolina Levis, Research Fellow, Graduate Program in Ecology, Federal University of Santa Catarina
- Bernardo Flores, Postdoctoral Researcher, Graduate Program in Ecology, Federal University of Santa Catarina