Understanding Traditional Knowledge and Biodiversity: A Study of UNESCO’s Man and Biosphere Program in India

Abstract

Biodiversity has emerged as a central object of global environmental governance, crystallising multiple scientific, economic and ethical concerns around the conservation and use of nature. Among the international organisations engaged with biodiversity, the United Nations Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) occupies a distinctive position because it explicitly links nature and culture, scientific research and traditional knowledge, and conservation and development. This article analyses UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme as a key institutional site where these linkages are configured, with particular attention to the biosphere reserve model and its implementation in India.

Drawing on critical literatures on knowledge, power, and biodiversity, as well as on political ecology and global governance, this article attempts to conceptualise biosphere reserves as discursive-institutional nodes where global norms, state agendas, and local practices intersect.  The article argues that the UN’s discourse on biodiversity reshapes the image and governance of biodiversity through the biosphere reserve model; that cooperation with other international actors enhances but also conditions the effectiveness of these reserves; and that the institutional nature of biosphere reserves creates structural limits for sustainable and just management