Kingston, Jamaica. Wednesday, June 24, 2020. In an article just released in the journal Nature Plants, twenty-nine experts from around the world question the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on research in ethnobiology, a key discipline for biological and cultural conservation around the world. The pandemic triggered by the SARS-CoV-2 virus is shaking our world, and ethnobiological research - the authors conclude - is not excluded from its impacts.

Among the authors are Dr David Picking and Professor Rupika Delgoda from the Natural Products Institute (NPI) in the Faculty of Science and Technology (FST), UWI Mona campus.

In their viewpoint article the researchers point to several issues: How will the pandemic affect indigenous communities, their traditional knowledge, their subsistence or the management of natural resources? And how will the global crisis affect interactions between researchers and local communities? They suggest that “given the role of ethnobiology in the conservation, sustainability and ethical use of bio-cultural diversity, the answers to these questions will be crucial".

Dr. Picking and Professor Delgoda note that the questions posed in the article are particularly significant for the Caribbean which faces health and food security threats and environmental degradation in the context of both COVID-19 resilience and climate change. 

Ethnobiology is devoted to the study of past and present relationships between humans, cultures, and the biophysical environment, with a focus on knowledge, cognition and the traditional use of plants and animals. Transdisciplinary in nature, ethnobiology is also a field-based enterprise: researchers explore different biological and cultural landscapes around the world and interact with local and indigenous communities and their ecosystems.

The article was coordinated by Dr Ina Vandebroek of The New York Botanical Garden (USA) and can be accessed at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41477-020-0691-6.pdf (link is external)