Indigenous Knowledge and Conservation and Utilization of Animal Germplasm

Anil K Gupta
[email protected]

Abstract

Conservation of animal germplasm has not received even a fraction of attention compared to the attention paid to the issues of plant germplasm conservation issues. It might be because (a) the constituency of livestock stake holders is weak, (b) the livestock interests in the west are dominated far more by the private sector unlike crop research where public sector research is still there, (c) the international consultations on livestock have failed to impress global policy makers and donors to realize that poorest people on this earth survive primarily through livestock economy, and that livestock products have high employment pay off as well as high income elasticity. In this paper I discuss a framework for incorporating indigenous knowledge of pastoralists and other men and women livestock rearers in developing a germplasm conservation and knowledge documentation program. I argue that without incorporating local technical and institutional knowledge of livestock dependent communities and local experts in devising conservation strategy, we will be repeating the mistakes that plant conservation community committed. Having started late, we should learn from the mistakes of crop conservation strategies. It is unfortunate that FAO has also reduced its emphasis on incorporating such knowledge in devising conservation strategy though it began with such a focus few years ago. The SRISTI and Honey Bee network can contribute in development of such a strategy given the fact that we have one of the richest data base on indigenous knowledge on sustainable natural resource management.

Attachment gupta02.pdf (23 k)