About this Research Topic

Background

Traditional Forestry Knowledge (TFK) has been the focus of a number of studies conducted in the past few decades, mainly devoted to describing folk perceptions, uses, and management of forest environments and their products. These works have often envisioned the potential of TFK for local rural development programs.

However, very little is known about how TFK changes are transmitted and especially how this knowledge copes with global socio-ecological changes. Even less has been explored regarding the processes through which TFK meets concrete projects, i.e., empowering local communities towards sustainable development of their local resources, exploring new strategies for the dynamic conservation of forests, and fostering inclusive platforms shared among local communities, institutions, and external stakeholders.

The valorisation of TFK into a resource for genuine sustainable development faces the challenge that TFK is fluid and nowadays has to adapt and respond to the huge global issues of our time: climate change and globalisation, including the commodification of common goods and place-based (often customary) rules that in most areas of the world have regulated access to forest resources for centuries. However, place-based non-global changes may also have a tremendous impact on forests and their perceptions and uses.

This Research Topic welcomes comprehensive studies assessing TFK, especially in its transformation and understanding as a vital linchpin for implementing ecological and social sustainability and small-scale circular economies.

The analysis of inspiring case studies, taken from different geographical and cultural contexts of the world, will help to develop a more comprehensive approach to the valorisation of TFK.

We especially welcome original research-based manuscripts focusing on the dynamics of TFK, whilst emphasising the link between TFK and its possible projections at the social, cultural, and political levels.

Topics may include, but are by no means limited to:

-Historical studies on changes in forest use and management
-Culture-specific forestry semiotics and forest representations and changes in people’s perceptions of forest environments
-Ethnobiology of forests and their products (i.e., ethnobotany, ethnomycology, ethnoecology) and related items, including non-plant and non-fungal forest biotas
-Adaptation of local communities to climate change affecting forests
-Adaptation of local communities to major socio-economic-political changes affecting forests and their management (i.e., urbanization, migration, globalization, geopolitical changes)
-Community-based forestry conservation strategy efforts
-Potential conflicts between conservation policies regarding forests and their local communities
-Wood ethnobiology and woodworking
-Changing uses of forests for leisure, camping, picnicking, and barbecuing
- Forest bathing and its importance for mental health.

Keywords: ethnoforestry, forestry knowledge, TFK, local communities, sustainable development, forest management

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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