Indigenous knowledge on use values of Karvan district plants, Iran

Author

Habib Yazdanshenas (habib_yazdan@ut.ac.ir), Elham Shafeian, Maliheh Nasiri and Seyed Alireza Mousavi
Additional contact information

Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, 2016, vol. 18, issue 4, pages 1217-1238

Abstract: Abstract Traditional and indigenous knowledge on plants usage is a valuable source of information from cultural and natural perspectives, reflecting society’s complicated and close relationship with the environment. Communities have a valuable source of traditional knowledge on the utilization of natural resources, and it is worth to be documented and preserved for current and future applications. We conducted this research to collect and identify plant species of Karvan District and document the traditional knowledge on their use and consumption values. Regarding the results, 150 plant species are used by local communities, more than 30 % of which are directly consumed as food, 24 % (37 species) are used as medicinal plants, and 16.3 % are applied for decoration purposes; 58.6 % of the species are consumed in the raw form, and the remaining is processed before consumption. Leaves (35 %), seeds (21 %) and flowers (21 %) are the most frequent parts of the plants that are used. High number of young emigrants to industrialized areas in seek of job opportunities is threatening this precious source of indigenous knowledge. Attempts to preserve this empirical source of information by encouraging trans-generational knowledge transmission would help to maintain it for future applications.

Keywords: Plant species; Karvan; Indigenous knowledge; Use values (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10668-015-9698-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link:http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:endesu:v:18:y:2016:i:4:d:10.1007_s10668-015-9698-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10668

Access Statistics for this article

Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development is currently edited by Luc Hens

More articles in Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development from  Springer
Series data maintained by Sonal Shukla (sonal.shukla@springer.com).

For further details log on website :
http://econpapers.repec.org/article/sprendesu/v_3a18_3ay_3a2016_3ai_3a4_3ad_3a10.1007_5fs10668-015-9698-y.htm