Abstract
The documentation of local food resources among linguistic/cultural minorities is essential for fostering measures aimed at sustaining food biocultural heritage. Moreover, interdisciplinary studies on food cultural heritage represent a vital aspect of promoting environmental and social sustainability. The current study aimed to record the traditional foraging of wild food plants (WFPs) among three minority groups (Kalasha, Muslim Ismaili Yidgha, and Muslim Sunni Kamkata-vari speakers) as well as the dominant (Sunni Muslim) Kho/Chitrali people in the Kalasha and Lotkoh valleys, Chitral, NW Pakistan. A field survey recorded fifty-five locally gathered wild food plants and three mycological taxa. Most of the WFPs were used raw as snacks or as cooked vegetables, and Yidgha speakers reported the highest number of WFPs. Although the wild food plant uses of the four considered groups were quite similar, Yidgha speakers exclusively reported the use of Heracleum candicans, Matricaria chamomilla, Seriphidium brevifolium, and Sisymbrium irio. Similarly, Kalasha speakers reported the highest number of use reports, and along with Yidgha speakers they quoted a few WFPs that were frequently used only by them. The results of the study showed a remarkable degree of cultural adaptation of the minority groups to the dominant Kho/Chitrali culture, but also some signs of cultural resilience among those linguistic and religious minorities that were historically more marginalized (Kalasha and Yidgha speakers). The recorded food biocultural heritage should be seriously considered in future development programs aimed at fostering social cohesion and sustainability.
Highlights
In today’s complex socio-ecological systems, biocultural approaches shaping human culture relationships have gained extraordinary interest across different scientific disciplines [1]
Since the concept of biocultural diversity has been defined by Maffi [3] as “the diversity of life in all its manifestations—biological, cultural and linguistic—which are interrelated within a complex socio-ecological adaptive system”, this idea found an important arena for discussion within the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD); The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) [4]; and later the Florence Declaration of 2014 [5]
This ethnobotanical study aimed to document the biocultural heritage linked to wild food plants (WFPs) among three linguistic minorities residing in the Chitral region of north-west Pakistan, which could play a central role in shaping local social sustainability and sovereignty
Summary
In today’s complex socio-ecological systems, biocultural approaches shaping human culture relationships have gained extraordinary interest across different scientific disciplines [1]. Biocultural heritage underpins the various interrelations that biological diversity has with the language, cultural memory, ecological knowledge, and social values of local and indigenous communities [9,10,11,12,13]. The ethnobotany of wild food plants (WFPs) is becoming an increasingly important topic in ethnoscience, as ethnobotanical knowledge, mainly retained by women or attached to domestic practices managed by women, has often been neglected, despite its importance in fostering the food sovereignty and security of local communities This ethnobotanical study aimed to document the biocultural heritage linked to wild food plants (WFPs) among three linguistic minorities residing in the Chitral region of north-west Pakistan, which could play a central role in shaping local social sustainability and sovereignty.
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