Reviving Dormant Ethnobotany: The role of women and plant knowledge in a food secure world

For the vast majority of human evolution traditional ethnobotanical knowledge (TEK) has been an essential form of human capital relied upon for nutritionally balanced, diverse, and stable supplies of food from wild plant sources. While TEK is still prevalent where indigenous cultures and native ecosystems co-exist, in many other regions it is thought to have vanished. We demonstrate that this is not necessarily true. In many regions TEK instead lies dormant in the memories of elders – mostly women – who retain knowledge specific to the ecosystems in which they were raised. Preserving TEK is widely recognized as a key solution to the global food security challenge. We argue that it may be necessary not only to protect the TEK where it is used in a dynamic or active sense, but to revive this knowledge where it is not extinct, but merely dormant in both developed and developing world settings.