1: Naming and recognition of species in participatory biodiversity inventory ERP project R7112 - Development and promotion of improved methods for identification, assessment and evaluation of biodiversity for tropical mountain environments Jenny Wong1 , Rita Lysinge, David Kenfack, John Healey2 , John Hall3 Contribution to the ETFRN workshop on Participatory monitoring and evaluation of biodiversity: the art and the science. 7-25 January 2002. This paper outlines work undertaken by ERP project R7112 in three communities (Ekona Lelu, Bakingili and Bova) on Mount Cameroon during the period 1999-2001. The results illustrate points arising out of the background paper 'Participatory assessment, monitoring and evaluation of biodiversity: the art and the science' and is presented as a contribution to Theme 2 - 'Incorporating values' of the ETFRN workshop. The protocols used for the fieldwork are presented in an accompanying document also posted on the ETFRN website (Ambrose-Oji et al. 2001) with preliminary results previously published as Lawrence et al. (2000). This paper uses results from Ekona Lelu and Bakingili communities to explore the relationship between local and scientific naming and the implications of this for participatory biodiversity inventory. Ethnobotanists have, to a large extent, led the development of participatory biodiversity inventory and there are numerous papers detailing long lists of local names and uses of plants against their scientific names. Such lists are often the basis for participatory biodiversity inventory. Recent experience in participatory resource inventory of NTFPs (non-timber forest products) suggests, however, that traditional ethnobotanical lists may be of limited usefulness. Berlin (1992) has done much to develop understanding of a basic framework to ethnosystematics. His work clearly demonstrates that within one culture there are likely to be parallel classifications and names for plants, particularly the most useful ones. Although cultures share gross partitioning of the plant kingdom (trees, grass, ferns etc.) this begins to break down at the generic, species and sub-species level. It is often not possible to create one-to-one correspondence between local and global (=latin or 'scientific') species names as one local name may refer to a genus or sub-species rather than a scientific species. Little of this thinking has trickled down into less specialised participatory techniques. Most ethnobotanical lists are prepared using the following assumptions. It is time to challenge and test them. §
Names are consistent within a community or language group
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People will have a reliable name for plants which they use
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Plants without a local use will not be reliably named
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There is a one-to-one correspondence between local and global names
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Herbalists can be used as key informants and have greater knowledge of plants than other groups in society
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The information provided by informants is reliable, i.e. that they have given the ‘correct’ name for the plant
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Formerly School of Agricultural and Forest Sciences, University of Wales Bangor, UK, currently Wild Resources Limited, UK,
[email protected] 2 School of Agricultural and Forest Sciences, University of Wales Bangor, UK,
[email protected] 3 School of Agricultural and Forest Sciences, University of Wales Bangor, UK
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The data collected for the species scoring exercise generated a table (excerpt in Table 1) of the names proffered by ten people from a community for 42 species of plant for which we had vouchers and scientific determinations. The species were selected to include some that are common, rare, useful and not useful and some from each of the sites visited during the field walk. These data afforded an opportunity to test these assumptions. Table 1. Excerpt of table of local names given in species scoring exercise for Bakingili Plant ID 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Species Cordia millenii Asplenium sp. Kigelia africana Ceiba pentandra Tristemma demeusei Sonchus asper Cordia aurantiaca Leea guineensis Jateorhiza macrantha Annickia chlorantha Paullinia pinnata
Respondents AT EL torti senge ebok boma apeu
litolamba
EW wokombo srenge wolule woma
JL
litolangwa wondaletu lingala
itolagba watalelu
mofaata
senge wobuma
ML womba senge wolulu wobuma
ME wowalo senge wolulu boma
litolamba wondalelu isose limoni
ewilangate
mopata
mokolikoli
Consistency of plant names within a community Following Philips & Gentry (1993) if we recognise one person naming one plant as one ‘event’ then for Bakingili we have 43 plants x 10 people = 430 events. Of these events: ♦ 167 different names were given (3.8 per plant) ♦ 173 events yielded a correct name for the plant (40%) - the accepted local name for the plant in question as revealed in feedback exercises ♦ 47 incorrect names were given - the participants agreed that they had mistaken the plant for another in feedback exercises Of the 43 plants used in the exercise: ♦ nine were not given a name or the name given was incorrect ♦ names were given in four different languages ♦ nine were only correctly named by one respondent ♦ four were given generic names which refer to a number of plants with similar characteristics, e.g. tombolombo = carry-me-no-go-leave-me = plants with seeds that stick to clothes ♦ two were given two names in the same language It was discovered that people were often not able to identify plants from vouchers unless they are given the relevant clues as to whether it is a tree, climber etc. It was also apparent that people were using a verbal shorthand for describing plants according to a set of locally relevant characters that was easily understood by all participants. Indeed, it even seems that these shorthand descriptions are increasingly being used in place of commonly recognised names in communities of mixed ethnicity. An example of such a description taken from a publication of folk plant descriptions being prepared for the community of Bakingili is given below:
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Mbonji Family: Euphorbiaceae
Scientific name: Alchornea cordifolia
DESCRIPTION § Brown stem § Heart shaped leaves § Green hanging fruit § Red seed when matured USES: Dry leaves combined with other plants to produce blood tonic. Medicinal (blood tonic, vomiting, purge, tooth ache, wounds), hoe handle, bird fruit PROBLEMS: Disturbs crops, tough to cut ECOLOGICAL NOTES Habit: Tree or shrub that grows to 8 metres tall Guild: Pioneer - likes open places with plenty of sun Habitat: Forest and farm-bush Star: Green - in tropical Africa
The development of field guides based on folk taxa, local spot characters and by the community offers a promising entry point into local ownership for biodiversity inventory. The communities with which we worked are keen to record their plant lists to preserve what they accept is an eroding body of useful lore. The matching local names with their global counterparts is difficult and we were not able to address it in the time available. This is a fundamental problem: if we can't be sure we are talking about the same taxa then attempts to share knowledge become futile. An interesting question is whether it is possible to use local taxa as a surrogate for scientific species and thus avoid the problem of needing to determine the relationship between scientific and folk taxa and names. Annex 1 gives the scientific and local names for the vouchers4 used in the plant scoring exercise in Ekona Lelu. The names presented in Annex 1 have been checked; in the herbarium and in a feedback exercise with the community both of these are equally time consuming and result in significant changes in names. In both cases it is often not possible to arrive at a definitive determination so there will nearly always be a residual level of ambiguity in the data. Table 2 illustrates for the species used in the scoring exercise how many vouchers were given specific names. Table 2. Level of names given to the vouchers used in the plant scoring exercise (%) Level of name obtained Specific Generic Undetermined
Bakingili (n=42) Scientific Local 86 67 7 9 9 24
Ekona Lelu (n=43) Scientific Local 81 79 14 16 2 2
The results in Table 2 amply illustrate the point that even in scientific surveys run from longestablished herbarium with trained botanists that it is often not possible to identify exact species from voucher material and names have to be left as undetermined family or genera. The communities also use generic names such as senge = ferns. It would appear from Table 2 that around 80% of the species can be named with accuracy be either the scientists or local communities especially those that are more involved with the forest as are the people of Ekona Lelu. Fewer plants are well known in 4
Note that the plant material collected from the field was split into two vouchers. One was used immediately in the plant scoring exercise while the other was pressed and returned to the Limbe herbarium for scientific determination as done for rapid botanical survey samples.
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Bakingili but this is a fishing village with a mix of ethnicities and many people who do not depend on the forest. It would appear from Table 2 that given the complexities described above that there is a remarkable degree of convergence in the gross numbers of taxa/names that can be recorded from a locality or set of vouchers using either scientific or local approaches. This is encouraging - and suggests that it may be possible to use local name counts (using the methodology devised) as a surrogate for biodiversity richness. However, local name lists will not reveal what these species are or whether any of them are of international conservation interest and so it is likely that they will remain of most relevance to local agenda setting and management planning. Testing the relationship between names and uses The plant scoring exercise provides data well suited to statistical treatment as it includes replications of people and plants. As an example of the sort of analyses that are possible, contingency tables are presented which test whether local people in two communities are more or less likely to be able to put a name to the plants for which they know are useful. The assumption that local people are only interested in useful plants often lurks behind much participatory assessment and invites formal testing. Hypothesis: Do plants with names also have uses? Community: Bakingili
USES
No Yes
NAMES No 135 75 210
Yes 22 198 220
157 273 430
NAMES No 70 5 75
Yes 100 203 303
170 208 378
Chi² = 136.5901 P < 0.001
Community: Ekona Lelu
USES
No Yes
Chi² = 88.42001 P < 0.001
NB: The numbers represent 'events' sensu Philips & Gentry (1993) (number of people x number of plants) It is clear that in both communities that more plants having a use were named than not named and that there are few plants that could be named for which the respondent knew of no use. Free listing of plant species A field walk exercise in which the 25 participants were taken to 5-6 localities within the community lands was undertaken. As part of this work, each participant was asked to list all the plants and animals which they knew to be present at each site. Such lists are termed 'free lists' as they are of indefinite length and can include whatever the participant wants to mention. Our experience reveals considerable problems in working with local names even if we accept to work with folk taxa. The reconciliation of local names, i.e. recognising alternative pronunciations, derivatives and names used for a single taxon, is difficult even within ethnically homogeneous groups. Alternative names for a plant might be given for a variety of reasons: § § §
specialist names used by specific users e.g. herbalists individual personal ideosyncracies use of general names and precise names by different participants for the same plant
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§ §
names for products derived from the plant mis-identifications
Interesting patterns emerge, as can be seen for the ethnically homogeneous community of Ekona Lelu (Table 3). Only 18% of the names given in the free lists were used by all stakeholder5 groups while 50% are known by only one stakeholder group. Table 3. Names obtained from field walk free lists by stakeholder group Number of groups using name 4 (all groups) 3 2 1 Accumulated names
Number of names 23 15 25 63 126
Table 4 gives the number of names mentioned by each stakeholder group, again for Ekona Lelu, and including officials from the MCP project6 and forestry staff7 and elites who represent the opinion leaders and power-brokers within the community. It is notable that the sample of five herbalists as a group knew the fewest names both overall and exclusively. This was confirmed in a feedback exercise where all the participants acknowledged that hunters and not herbalists knew most about the plants on the Mountain. This was because they travelled the furthest and spent most time living off the land away from the village. It was explained that herbalists were often specialists and knew best the plants close to the village which they used in their remedies. Table 4. Number of names given by stakeholder group Group Herbalists Hunters Elites Farmers Officials
Number of names Exclusive Total 6 55 22 76 17 58 8 61 16 53
However, knowledge is not homogeneous even within a stakeholder group. The results from the scoring exercise, and more detailed analysis of individual free lists, revealed that knowledge is held very unevenly within stakeholder groups. Knowledge was strongly linked to familiarity and also with what was termed 'curiosity' - i.e. with the individual and not gender, stakeholder group or age. Discussion The data and experience gained from the Mount Cameroon fieldwork challenge the veracity of all the assumptions in the preparation of ethnobotanical inventories listed above. This suggests that we may need to think of ways of using local knowledge in its own right as it is not possible to simply translate it into scientific knowledge by matching up scientific and local taxa or names as has often been presumed but never achieved in practice. There are many reasons why we should be interested in collating and recording local names. Ethnobotany has concentrated on recording local knowledge for posterity but our results suggest that although experts within the community may know names and uses for many plants that this may not 5
A group of people sharing the same livelihood or social status. In Ekona Lelu the stakeholder groups were: Elites, Hunters, Farmers and Herbalists. 6 The DFID funded Mount Cameroon Project - our Cameroonian collaborators. 7 MINEF (Ministry of Forestry) district staff.
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be shared by members of the community. Understanding which plants and names that have common currency within a community requires a different approach and more careful consideration of how the community should be sampled. If we are interested in facilitating participatory biodiversity assessment then we a group of local people who can recognise and name taxa, this can be done by either teaching local people how to recognise scientific taxa using appropriately designed field guides (as in FRP projects R7367 and R7475) or to expand the knowledge base within the community for local taxa and names. Our experience suggests that both are useful and are not incompatible with each other though formally linking the two may be difficult. Given these difficulties the issue of whether global (latin) or local (folk) taxa should be used as a basis for biodiversity evaluation is a pertinent one. Obviously, local agendas are probably well served by the use of local systematics but might it also be possible to use richness measures based on folk taxa in global assessments? Key questions are therefore: • • •
Who's taxa and names should be used in participatory inventory? Global or local ones? Can biodiversity measures based on local taxa contribute to global assessments? Is it possible to devise a straightforward means of collecting and documenting local names for globally recognised (scientific) taxa that takes into account the complexities highlighted in this paper?
Observations arising from our experience are: §
Even if local people take the lead in biodiversity inventory it will probably often be necessary to document and perhaps rationalise synonyms even for common taxa.
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Care should be taken when selecting informants - test who in the community knows most about the plants in the locale or use an objective sample of people.
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Replicate vouchers for each local name are required to check if it refers to a species, genus or other grouping of plants. It may be possible to work directly with folk taxa.
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Using a sample of participants gives a much greater chance of insights into the use and consistency of names. Feedback of results is useful to identify misidentifications, correct pronunciation, use of alternative names, general names etc. as recorded in Annex 1.
References Ambrose-Oji, B., Lawrence, A., Lysinge, R. and Wong, J. (2001) Obtaining local values for biodiversity: Protocols used by the ERP Mount Cameroon Project. Posted on ETFRN website Berlin B. (1992) Ethnobiological classification: Principles of categorization of plants and animals in traditional societies. Princeton University Press, New Jersey. Lawrence, A., Ambrose-Oji, B., Lysinge, R. and Tako C. (2000) Exploring local values for forest biodiversity on Mount Cameroon. Mountain Research and Development 20(2): 112-115. Phillips O. and Gentry A.H. (1993) The useful plants of Tambopata, Peru: I. Statistical hypotheses tests with a new quantitative technique. Economic Botany 47 (1): 15-32. This publication is an output from a research project funded by the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) for the benefit of developing countries. The views expressed are not necessarily those of DFID. R7112 Environment Research Programme.
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Annex 1. Local and scientific names for the plants scored in Ekona Lelu Species Aspilia africana africana Alchornea floribunda
Local name Bwassa Ekonbilika / Njodinga Yongonge / Wongo
Strombosia sp. Agauria salicifolia (Cyperaceae indet.) sp. Diplazium sp. Selaginella vogelii Macaranga occidentalis Croton longiracemosus
Ewondo Mbella fako Farongo / Fajasongo Senge Jarenge Ewowo Mbararo / molapo
Hypselodelphys scandens Panicum hochstetteri
Erongo / Morenreni Njorongo / Njosongo
Bridelia micrantha Entandrophragma angolense Solanum mauritianum
Bwangu Woku
Notes for local name Two names Both names describe different characters of the spines on the plant.
Singular and plural Generic name for ferns
First is most well known, other used by two people who concur on other information so maybe this is an alternative name. Names for leaf and whole plant respectively. Generic name for 'grass' Uncertain if variants may be different species/types
Mbonji / Flower
General name used for 'flowers' and also specific name for this plant. Flower is translation of name in Bakweri. Aframomum flavum Meragbwe / Litondotondo Specific and generic names Clerodendrum formicarum Ekoyo Costus dubius Modandowani Clematis simensis Weyese Dioscorea sp. Membia Neoboutonia mannii Wawaloh / Ebgebge Two names Cylicomorpha solmsii Etungunya Dracaena fragrans Iwenbe Aneilema beniniense Isangando Vernonia blumeoides Njawanjana Uncertain name - only one person knew it Trilepisium Ndutu madagascariense Ficus sp. Litu Plectranthus glandulosus Erukaruka Asplenium preussii Senge / Senge liongo General name for ferns and generic name for Asplenium spp. Pennisetum purpureum Likoko / Makoko Singular and plural Setaria megaphylla Ligongi / Mangongi Singular and plural Anchomanes difformis Nyaka liembu / nynambo First is most well known name, others look like alternatives / lindelanganga names because the people had good knowledge and appreciation of the plant. Uses are for medicine/magic. Erythrina excelsa Erukurku Allophylus africanus Wokeke / Eligamonone Two names Albizia zygia Ejakah Tectaria angelicifolia Senge Generic name for ferns Asplenium unilaterale Senge Generic name for ferns Paspalum paniculatum Njorongo / Njosongo Generic name for 'grass' Asplenium dregeanum Movasenge Not certain of distinction between Senge and Mova senge Mallotus oppositifolius Jororo Oplismenus hirtellus Nwua (Passifloraceae indet.) sp. Pete
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