Wild plant gathering in agricultural societies

Case studies 2 and 3. Two case studies, conducted in Aksaray in central Anatolia and Muğ la in southwestern Anatolia, indicate that people have adopted various ways of using their environment for food, medicine, fuel, fodder, building materials and many other purposes (Ertuğ , 2006).

In a single village and its surroundings in Aksaray, 300 locally used and named plants have been recorded. The villagers consider over 100 plant species edible, while others are used for medicine, fuel, fodder, building material, dye, gum and glue. In the Bodrum Peninsula in the Muğ la area, about 360 useful wild plants have been recorded during a two-year study; 140 were used for food, about 100 were medicinal and others were used for various purposes such as making baskets, brooms and mats.

It is almost impossible to find two identical patterns of managing faunal and floral resources; some variations are apparent even within the same unit of study. Different wild plants are gathered in two adjacent regions and even within the villages in both regions. In both regions, however, although they now have access to fresh vegetables all year round, wild plants available in winter and spring continued to supplement the villagers' diets, during periods when, historically, fresh vegetables were scarce. This continuity of gathering may well be explained by nutritional needs of people and their search for "traditional tastes". While several plant uses, such as plaiting mats and fuel, are decreasing, gathering wild edibles is still more or less consistent in rural areas.

Inventory of traditional knowledge to combat

desertification

Case study 4. UNESCO launched a global program, the Traditional Knowledge World Bank, for an inventory assigned to the IPOGEA Research Centre on Traditional and Local Knowledge to Combat Desertification. The project gathers and protects historical knowledge and promotes and certifies innovative practices based on modern restoration of tradition (Laureano, 2005). Traditional knowledge and techniques were identified by surveys and studies in the field as well as by collecting photographs and current project documents. An iconographic system has been designed to show and easily identify the techniques and their use. Each technique matches an icon.

Each technique is linked to photographs, charts and drawings, project reports, bibliographical documents, analysis of exact references and geographic and chronological dissemination maps. All this information is in clusters of competence and in several categories, including Agriculture, Water Management, Soil and Environment Protection, Breeding, Hunting and Harvesting.

A case study in Wadi Mzab in Algeria classified traditional techniques according to natural context, rural settlement and urban settlement.

2.5.2.2 Water management

Large-scale water management techniques were developed by the ancient empires that flourished on the alluvial sediments of silt, loess and sand along the Afro-Asian river basins in the five subregions of CWANA. Great civilizations known as hydraulic societies prospered near rivers like the Nile, Euphrates and Tiger and in arid areas and oases. They

developed hydraulic infrastructures to elevate water from rivers, such as the noria system of lifting water in buckets on a current-driven wheel in the Orontes River in Southwest Asia, for stoking and transporting water and for rain harvesting. The knowledge concerning water management and irrigation was transmitted down generations.

The validity of traditional knowledge on water management and the practices derived from it have been studied and documented since the 1980s. For the last 20 years research on traditional water techniques has aimed at overcoming a top-down approach to transferring water management technologies and at achieving a participatory relationship to foster sustainability (Brokensha et al., 1980). Many international bodies, such as the International Labour Organisation (ILO) (Bhalla, 1977), the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Bank, have declared TK validity in research and documents. The interest of the United Nations conventions is clearly highlighted in the report entitled "Building Linkage between Environmental Conventions and Initiatives" (UNCCD, 1999).

2.5.2.3 Water harvesting

Water harvesting can be traced through human history almost as far as the origin of agriculture. This ancient practice sustained populations when conditions would have otherwise totally prevented agriculture, and many peoples in the world have continued to rely on water harvesting. Harvested water is used for drinking (although less commonly now, because even rainwater is less safe), irrigation, livestock drinking and groundwater recharge.

Various forms of water harvesting have been used throughout the centuries. Some of the earliest Middle East agriculture diverted wadi flow (spate flow from normally dry watercourses) onto agricultural fields. Reviewing archaeological evidence, Prinz (1994) notes indications of water-harvesting structures in Jordan, believed to have been constructed over 9,000 years ago and in southern Mesopotamia from 4,500 BCE (Bruins et al., 1986). A number of distinctive historical examples that incorporate effective water-harvesting systems survive in many CWANA countries. These include the cut-stone reservoirs of the Nabatean city of Petra in Jordan and the underground cisterns found in the country's Umayyad desert palaces, Crusader period castles and traditional village houses.

A sequence of reviews and manuals produced over the last 20 years provides a good inventory of old and new water-harvesting techniques, as well as essential information for their implementation (Frasier, 1974; GDRC, 1983; Pacey and Cullis, 1986; Reij et al., 1988; Critchley and Siegert, 1991; FAO, 1994; Prinz, 1999). Farmer innovations, ancient and modern, have stimulated research and research has started to solve problems on the farm.

In the early 1990s, several studies on traditional waterharvesting infrastructures were published (Prinz, 1996; Prinz and Wolfer, 1999). These techniques, which deeply mark the landscapes of the arid and semiarid areas, are regarded as part of our world inheritance. In North Africa, Saharan