Ethnomedicine, Capacity Development, and Innovation System Through GMCL

Abstract

Until recently, local innovation capacity and management practices and institutions developed by local communities through their traditional knowledge have received little attention. This chapter illustrates not only the results of scientific research into innovation systems but also on how local communities, through their participation with GMCL in a network of supportive partnerships, can draw knowledge for others and combine this with their own and generate innovations in their local practices. In this chapter we refer to the concept of “capacity” as capacity to use the traditional ethnomedicine knowledge in a way that it enhances socio-economic development of local communities. We define this new concept of capacity with the term “ethnomedicine capacity”. The innovation that we shall describe in the chapter consists in the capacity of local stakeholders to use the ­traditional knowledge, and in particular ethnomedicine, in a way to boost income generation, local health practices and environmental conservation. We shall define the innovative processes through which this capacity is created and reinforced as a “capacity development” process.