Sustainable Natural Resource Management Through Traditional Ecological Knowledge: A Perspective on the Role of Apatani Tribal Women, Arunachal Pradesh

Abstract

Climate change (CC) crisis offers one of the biggest challenges of the present time (Sathaye et al. 2006) leading to biodiversity deterioration, hunger, and agrarian crisis in the larger world context, more prominently in the rural context of the developing and underdeveloped countries of the world (Kurian 2007). The impact takes a larger shape among the women, who are largely the poorest and most marginalized (Dhillon et al. 2007). Women in this context bear the maximum brunt shouldering a disproportionate burden of such effects because of their socio-constructed status and responsibilities, less access to resources in their roles as providers of home comfort, food, fuel, nutrition, and water as well as fodder. In this context, India stands out as a case study. Home for over 400 million women, acknowledged for its plurality of traditions, customs, and institutions, reflecting extreme diversity in the role and possibilities, but instantaneously having a wide gap between the status of women across the length and breadth of the country. One of the important components of this diversity is the Tribal population which accounts for almost (104 million as per the 2011 census) i.e., around 8.6.2% of the total population Sustained by primordial subsistence agriculture and intricate relation with forests. Settled mostly in heterogeneous topography, remaining isolated from the pan-national culture, economy, and development, continuing the age-old socio-economic stagnation almost unedited, until recently when the impact of change of the policy-measures made inroads into these areas exposing these societies to the larger cultural context which can be termed as modern. In the present chapter an example of the Apatani eco-cultural landscape in Arunachal Pradesh has been taken which illustrates the pivotal role played by the Apatani women toward optimum use of the limited available natural resources by keeping its utility and value by practicing their traditional ecological knowledge in the form of sustainable natural resource management which is emerging as the alternative to mitigate the emerging challenges, an inevitable need for the future generation.