The First Nations of Canada have been active over the past three decades in negotiating natural resources co-management arrangements that would give them greater involvement in decisionmaking processes that are closer to their values and worldviews.

In December 1989, the United Nations General Assembly called for a global meeting that would devise strategies to halt and reverse the effects of environmental degradation. In response to this request, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), commonly known as the Earth Summit, was held in June 1992 in Rio de Janeiro.

Nous tenterons ici une histoire anthropologique de la notion de « savoirs locaux », depuis les premiers écrits dans les années 1950 qui se sont intéressés aux savoirs botaniques ou zoologiques des peuples « traditionnels » jusqu’à l’explosion d’un intérêt pour ces savoirs qui réunit des acteurs aussi disparates que la Banque Mondiale, les ONG de conservation et de développement, les gouvernemen

Local ecological knowledge (LEK) of those who earn their livelihoods from natural environments has long been recognized as providing far-reaching insights into ecological processes.