Year: 2026 | Month: October | Volume: 13 | Issue: 10 | Pages: 45-71
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52403/ijrr.20261006
From Ethnobiological Knowledge to Biocultural Justice: Food, Health, Livelihood, and Conservation Pathways in Social Ecological Systems
Bambang Trihandoko1, Haris Panai2, Sukirman Rahim3, Marike Mahmud4
1Doctoral Program in Environmental Science, Universitas Negeri Gorontalo,
Gorontalo, Indonesia
2,3,4Postgraduate Program, Universitas Negeri Gorontalo, Gorontalo, Indonesia
Corresponding Author: Bambang Trihandoko
ABSTRACT
Traditional ecological knowledge is increasingly invoked as a resource for food security, community health, livelihoods, climate adaptation, and conservation, yet its ethical and institutional conditions are often treated as secondary. This integrative review synthesizes 19 overlapping Scopus records published in 2024–2027. The corpus covers ethnobotany, ethnoecology, ethnoveterinary care, wild foods, non-timber forest products, community forestry, biological invasions, hunting, gastronomy tourism, and artificial intelligence for crop domestication. Using abstract-level evidence, the review compares knowledge domains, social differentiation, resource-use pathways, methods, conservation tensions, and governance implications. The synthesis shows that traditional knowledge operates as practical infrastructure: it broadens low-cost healthcare, strengthens dietary diversity, supports pastoral and forest livelihoods, and maintains cultural human–environment relations. Its benefits, however, are conditional. Market integration can increase income while accelerating overharvest and unequal value capture; introduced species can provide uses while homogenizing knowledge; documentation can support conservation while exposing communities to appropriation; and technological selection can improve domestication decisions while obscuring culturally specific values. Across studies, women, elders, migrants, linguistic communities, collectors, and market actors hold differentiated knowledge, but benefit sharing, consent, tenure, longitudinal change, and community control are rarely evaluated. The review proposes a Biocultural Integrity Framework linking knowledge continuity, material security, ecological reciprocity, and institutional fairness. It argues that future research should combine ethnographic depth, ecological and nutritional measurement, longitudinal comparison, participatory governance, and transparent data stewardship. This framework redirects ethnobiological research from documenting useful species toward evaluating who sustains knowledge, who benefits from its mobilization, and whether ecological and cultural diversity remain jointly viable.
Keywords: traditional ecological knowledge; ethnobiology; biocultural diversity; food security; community health; non-timber forest products; conservation governance
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