Recently, I had the chance to present my developing research at the Transnational Island Museologies conference organised by the International Committee for Museology (ICOFOM) and hosted by the University of St Andrews in Scotland.
Rising Rooted: Exploring Opportunities for Reactivating Traditional Environmental Knowledge to Increase Plant Awareness
Hannah Reid Ford
Ethnobiology PhD Student, University of Kent
Abstract
Plants make up the majority of life on Earth and are foundational to life-giving and sustaining processes upon which humanity depends. The inability to notice, understand and appreciate the plants in one’s own environment – a phenomenon known as plant blindness – poses a significant challenge to sustainable development. Plant blindness is linked to an increasing separation between people and the natural world, which has also impacted traditional ways of knowing nature across the globe. Research in the Cayman Islands proposes the reactivation of traditional environmental knowledge as an opportunity for increasing plant awareness and, in doing so, facilitating sustainable development.
Just north of where the Caribbean Sea reaches its deepest point, lies a trio of low, lonely islands. Initially dubbed ‘Las Tortugas’, the tiny archipelago was settled by a diverse mix of enslaved people, sailors, soldiers, planters and privateers (Sainsbury, 1889), eventually becoming known as the Cayman Islands. Despite totalling less than 300 square kilometres, the Cayman Islands is the third most biodiverse United Kingdom Overseas Territory (UKOT) (Churchyard et al., 2016). This remarkable biodiversity is complemented by a unique repository of Caymanian traditional environmental knowledge (TEK), which was essential to human survival on the islands well into the 20th century. In the space of approximately 60 years, however, the Cayman Islands has experienced a rapid and significant socio-economic, geopolitical and technological transformation. The country’s population has grown by approximately 739% since the 1960s (ESO, 2022), and residents now rely almost exclusively on imported food, fuel and goods (ESO, 2023). Around the world, similar processes have contributed to an increasing separation between people and the natural world, interrupting the culturally based processes which produce and sustain TEK (Aswani et al., 2018). Concurrently, there has been a global increase in ‘plant blindness’ (Wandersee & Schussler, 1999) – the inability to notice, understand and appreciate the plants in one’s own environment (Wandersee & Schussler, 2001). Plants make up the majority of life on Earth and are foundational to life-giving and sustaining processes upon which humanity depends (Jose et al., 2019). It is not possible to facilitate sustainable development, conserve biological diversity, or build resiliency to climate change without increasing awareness, understanding and appreciation of plants (Sanders, 2019). The question is: Does TEK have a role to play in efforts to increase plant awareness?
TEK comprises the knowledge, beliefs, traditions, practices, institutions, and worldviews developed and sustained through repeated anthropocentric encounters with the natural environment by a specific people in a specific place (e.g. Gomez-Baggethun et al., 2013; Kimmerer, 2002). Distanced from the mainland and overlooked by the motherland, early Caymanians had to rely on a bioculturally specific repository of environmental knowledge for their survival. They roofed their houses with Silver Thatch (Coccothrinax proctorii), framed their walls with sturdy Ironwood (Chionanthus caymanensis), and cured their ills with plants like Headache Bush (Capparis cynophallophora) and Worry Vine (Stachytarpheta jamaicensis). Once viewed as little more than a folkloric vestige of bygone eras (Gomez-Baggethun et al., 2013), TEK is increasingly understood in terms that reject binary ‘original plentitude and subsequent loss’ understandings of cultural knowledge (Rigney, 2005) and recognised as dynamic, adaptive, communal, experiential and anti-essentialist. Both distinct from and complementary to ‘scientific’ ways of knowing nature, TEK is steadily acknowledged across a variety of fields, disciplines and sectors for its potential to offer “not only important biological insights but a cultural framework for environmental problem solving that incorporates human values” (Kimmerer, 2002). Nevertheless, the loss and degradation of biological diversity is interconnected with and correlates to the loss and degradation of cultural diversity (Aswani et al., 2018). This is particularly true in the case of plants which, for a variety of reasons, tend to be overlooked and underappreciated by humans across a multitude of sectors.
Despite their prevalence and importance to sustaining planetary processes, humans are susceptible to what Wandersee and Schussler called ‘plant blindness’. Though rooted in human physiology (Achurra, 2o22; Balas & Momsen, 2014), there is growing consensus within the literature that the tendency to overlook plants is neither innate nor inevitable, and that cultural factors play a decisive role in whether persons are aware of plants (Balding & Williams, 2016; Stagg & Dillon, 2022). While several studies have suggested focusing on useful and/or culturally significant plants as a method for increasing plant awareness, the relationship between a person’s traditional knowledge and how they perceive, understand and value plants has not been explored. For the majority of their history, circumstance necessitated that Caymanians be aware of the plants around them, and knowledgeable about their unique attributes and uses. As this direct reliance on the natural world has lessened, the relationship Caymanians have with the living environment of their islands has changed. As one elderly Caymanian put it: “They [previous generations] were blessed with wisdom. I don’t think we come up to it today. And why we don’t come up to it, is because we don’t have to. We don’t have to. […] We lived from the ocean, and the land. That’s how we survived. That’s how we came to where we is.” (Ebanks, 1990). I hypothesise that Caymanians who possess traditional knowledge about plants will have greater awareness, understanding, and appreciation of plants and, further, that interventions designed to increase TEK will result in increased plant awareness in participants.
The real world consequences of plant awareness disparity are serious and pervasive. To quote Howard Thomas, Helen Ougham and Dawn Sanders: “Sustainability in an era of plant blindness is unsustainable” (2020, p. 50). The “inability to visually and conceptually distinguish and interpret a botanical world that has been stripped of meaning” (Lewis-Jones, 2016, p.1)” is a serious impediment to sustainable development, climate resiliency, and biodiversity conservation. Indeed, though they contribute the least to the ongoing crises of biodiversity loss, climate change and pollution, small islands like the Cayman Islands are both disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts of global environmental change (Robinson, 2020) and hold “a disproportionately large amount of the world’s threatened biodiversity” (Churchyard et al., 2016, p. 1678). The Cayman Islands’ remarkable repository of biodiversity is imperilled, not just by environmental crises playing out on the global scale, but also by local tensions which pit socioeconomic development against sustainable practices (see Cayman News Service, 2024). At the global and local scale, unsustainable practices and the related loss of biocultural diversity have foundations in the growing human-nature disconnect and the resulting increase in plant blindness. Efforts to facilitate sustainable development, to build resiliency to climate change, and to sustain biocultural diversity require the development of interventions that increase plant awareness while restoring connections between humans and the more-than-human world.
For the majority of their history, Caymanians relied on their culturally specific TEK to make a home where no other humans had dared to put down roots before. Within the space of 60 years, the Cayman Islands has transformed from the ‘islands time forgot’ (Maloney, 1950) to a luxury tourism destination and offshore financial centre. While most current-day Caymanians no longer have to rely on their natural environment to meet their basic, daily needs, the continued importance of plants to human survival has not lessened. Against the backdrop of a complex and interconnected nexus of geopolitical uncertainty, socioeconomic inequality, environmental degradation and climate change, plants continue to be powerful allies for the wellbeing of people everywhere (Kumar et al., 2021). Efforts to increase sustainable development, climate resiliency and biological diversity can only be successful if they are matched by efforts that aim to increase awareness, understanding and appreciation of plants through the conscious cultivation of biocultural connection. As both content and process, the active revitalisation of TEK offers the opportunity to ‘come up to’ those old wisdoms once again. By embodying the centralism of nature within human perception, TEK offers a unique pathway for cultivating connections between people and nature to revitalise biocultural diversity, in particular through increasing awareness, understanding and appreciation of plants.
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