Abstract
This paper explores how medicinal plant knowledge of the Waorani (Ecuador) varies with socio-economic and demographic factors. Medicinal plant knowledge was compared at individual and community levels. Semi-structured interviews were performed with 56 informants (men N= 29, women N= 27) between 15 and 70 years old in five Waorani communities located within the Yasuní National Park and Waorani Ethnic Reserve. We found a positive correlation between an informant’s medicinal plant knowledge and age, and a negative correlation between informant’s medicinal plant knowledge and the years of schooling. Reasons behind these findings are thought to be in the rapid socio-cultural changes of the Waorani due to globalization processes. Increased accessibility to health centers and improved transportation infrastructure result in a loss of ethnobotanical knowledge.
Highlights
Academic interest on ethnobotany, and medicinal plants, is increasing while rural and indigenous people’s knowledge about the use of plants for medicinal purposes is declining [1]
This paper explores how medicinal plant knowledge of the Waorani (Ecuador) varies with socio-economic and demographic factors
Reasons behind these findings are thought to be in the rapid socio-cultural changes of the Waorani due to globalization processes
Summary
Academic interest on ethnobotany, and medicinal plants, is increasing while rural and indigenous people’s knowledge about the use of plants for medicinal purposes is declining [1]. Studies around the world have shown that elders, in general, tend to know more about medicinal plants than younger generations [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. Voeks and Leony [9] explain the phenomena of finding a greater knowledge within older generations in that people acquire more knowledge with age. The differences in knowledge might not be explained by the greater life experience of the elders, but by other socio-economic factors. In general, women know more than men about medicinal plants [7,9,15]; some authors suggest that this is because men are more exposed at losing ethnobotanical plant knowledge than women [16]. Hanazaki et al [19] discovered that in some communities in the Atlantic rainforest of Brazil, men know more medicinal plants than women, which might mean that men in those communities have a closer relationship with the forest
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