The Indigenous Knowledge and Natural Conservation Aspects of the Life of Baganda, the People of Uganda

Abstract

The researcher evaluated the role of “The Indigenous Knowledge and Natural Conservation Aspects of Life of Baganda, the people of Uganda’’ Facts are that, in Buganda Kingdom, Uganda, Africa and the world over, wildlife is decreasing and terribly deteriorating at a rate unseen and unheard of before.  This could be addressed by the intervention of the Indigenous knowledge and natural conservation aspects of the life of Baganda, the people of Uganda, through the use of totemism, taboos and people’s spirituality. A phenomenological research design in the study was employed since it focused on the commonality of lived experiences (verbatim) within a particular group or individuals, aiming to arrive at a description of the nature of the particular phenomenon. As a qualitative study, sample size of 34 from the population size of 3,392,333 people was used for the study. This was because a qualitative study is supposed to have a large enough sample size to uncover a variety of opinions, but limited the size at the point of saturation which occurs when the collection of new data does not shed any further light on the issue under investigation. Findings showed that, Buganda’s traditional wildlife conservational knowledge based on totemism, taboos and people’s traditional spirituality was very effective in wildlife conservation, and the same knowledge is still applicable and relevant in nature conservation today. A ‘Culturally Based Conservation Model (CBCM) was arrived at aiming at amending the existing conservation policies by the Government of Uganda,  integrating them with Buganda’s indigenous traditional conservation knowledge.The study therefore recommends that, environment authorities like National Environment Management authorities and (NEMA) and Uganda Wildlife authority (UWA) should work with various cultural institutions and researchers to ensure integration of the indigenous knowledge into modern  conservation strategies.