Human-environmental relations, planning and conservation. “Doing nothing” and “doing something” in the protection of local knowledge

Abstract

The protection of human-environmental relations is a subject that involves different kind of legal frameworks that crosses the field of environmental management. This work discusses the incidence of global logics of private property protection behind a project of technological innovation with a group of artisan families who make food products derived from palms in south-eastern Uruguay. The innovation project is part of an attempt to conserve specific ecosystems configured by these palms. This paper analyses the expectations, demands and conflicts regarding the protection of the local knowledge and suggests that environmental management must carefully consider to what extent they interfere in everyday life.