The Ethno-knowledge and the human struggle to environmental changes in Africa

非洲人、耕耘者、牧民和渔民积累了对自然环境的民族生态知识。近年来，人们必须通过结构调整计划来应对气候、地形、植被和景观等自然环境的变化，经济和社会的变化，以市场经济体制为导向。本研究项目以非洲民族独立后近年来的环境变化为研究对象，梳理了耕耘者和牧民的民族生态知识。随后，我们对人类对剧烈环境变化的反应进行了案例研究，包括地质生态、社会政治和经济条件。案例研究的比较表明，在地域理论或民族学理论下，人与环境关系的句法是正确的。该项目集中于三个热带稀树草原地区：西非的尼日尔、中非的喀麦隆和东非的肯尼亚。在这些地区，我们继续深入研究民族生态知识与剧烈环境变化的关系，以考察生存方式和人类的反应。我们运用遥感和GIS技术来了解气候景观和植被的复杂性，并对人类对自然环境的识别进行了长期的实地研究。我们尝试重新评估民族生态知识的重要性。

People in Africa, cultivators, pastoral people and fishermen accumulated the ethno-ecological knowledges to the natural environment. Recent years, people must response to the natural environmental changes of climate, topography, vegetation and landscape, economic and social changes to the market-oriented economy systems by the SAP (Structural Adjustment Program). This research project focus on the environmental changes in recent years after African nation independence and clarified the ethno-ecological knowledge of the cultivators and pastoral people. subsequently, we carried out the case studies on the human responses to drastic environmental changes, including geo-ecological, socio-political and economical conditions. The comparison of the case studies indicates the syntax of the human-environment relationship under the regional or ethnological theories.This project concentrated on the three savanna regions, Niger in West Africa, Cameroon in central Africa and Kenya in East Africa. In these regions, we continued intensive research on the relationship of the ethno-ecological knowledge and drastic environmental changes in order to examine the mode of subsistence and human responses. We applied remote sensing and GIS techniques for understanding the complex of climate-landscape and vegetation as well as long-term field research on the human recognition to natural environment. We made trials to re-estimate the importance of the ethno-ecological knowledge.