The Importance of Keeping Alive Sustainable Foraging Practices: Wild Vegetables and Herbs Gathered by Afghan Refugees Living in Mansehra District, Pakistan

Ajmal K Manduzai,Michele F Fontefrancesco,Kevin Cianfaglione,Abdullah Abdullah,Muhammad S Amjad,Andrea Pieroni,Mohammad H Amini,Renata Soukand,Arshad M Abbasi,Shujaul M Khan,Julia Prakofjewa

doi:10.3390/su13031500

Abstract

The issue of foraging for wild food plants among migrants and relocated communities is an important one in environmental studies, especially in order to understand how human societies rearrange their practices linked to nature and how they adapt to new socioecological systems. This paper addresses the complexity of Traditional/Local Environmental Knowledge (LEK) changes associated to wild vegetables and herbs across four different groups of Afghan refugees living in Mansehra District, NW Pakistan, since 1985. Via interviews with eighty study participants, forty-eight wild vegetables and herbs were recorded, representing both the past and present wild plant gastronomic heritage. The majority of the quoted wild plant ingredients were only remembered and no longer actively used, thus suggesting an important erosion of LEK. Moreover, the number of wild vegetables and herbs currently used by Afghan Pashtuns engaged in farming activities is much higher than those reported by the other groups. The findings indicate that practiced LEK, i.e., knowledge that is continuously kept alive via constant contact with the natural environment, is essential for the resilience of the biocultural heritage, which is, however, also influenced by the rearrangement of social life adopted by refugees after relocation.

Highlights

The data presented in the current article show that the four Afghan refugee communities living in NW Pakistan still practice a few foraging activities and these are linked to their gastronomic heritage too
The cultural makeup of communities is critical to the articulation of the links among their social dimension, the wild food systems, and the local flora
This study suggests that continued exposure to the new natural environment plays a crucial role in keeping foraging and wild food plants-centered gastronomic practices alive, and that, a long-stay in refugee camps or engaging in urban activities may lead to the erosion of Local Environmental Knowledge (LEK)

Summary

Introduction

The ethnobotany of migrants, i.e., the exploration of wild plants and herbal teas used by relocated communities has become the focus of an increasing number of studies during the past two decades, aimed at exploring how Traditional/Local EnvironmentalKnowledge (LEK, [1]) and attached gastronomic heritage [2] change after relocation.During the past two decades, several scholars have undertaken the task of exploring the food systems of migrants (for example [3,4,5,6,7]), and their plant-related knowledge and practices ([8], and references therein), in the USA [9,10,11], Latin America [12,13,14,15], the UK [16,17], and the European Union [18,19,20,21,22], as well as in Northern Africa [23]. The ethnobotany of migrants, i.e., the exploration of wild plants and herbal teas used by relocated communities has become the focus of an increasing number of studies during the past two decades, aimed at exploring how Traditional/Local Environmental. No research has far considered the LEK of migrants forcibly relocated because of war, and very few studies have addressed the issue of migrants’ plant knowledge in Asia [24]. Northwest Pakistan has undergone profound changes in its social structure over the past several decades due to the arrival of a significant number of war refugees from. Since the late 1990s, a considerable number of Afghan refugees have moved out of refugee camps to peri-urban areas, and in 2011, 67% of them lived in urban or rural areas, while the remaining 33% still resided in 54 refugee camps [26]

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