*Review* **Role of Traditional Ethnobotanical Knowledge and Indigenous Communities in Achieving Sustainable Development Goals**

**Ajay Kumar 1,\*, Sushil Kumar 2, Komal 3, Nirala Ramchiary <sup>4</sup> and Pardeep Singh <sup>5</sup>**


**Abstract:** The sustainable development goals (SDGs) are a set of 17 goals with 169 targets. The Agenda 2030 of the United Nations envisages a holistic approach to achieve these goals by focusing on humankind and the planet. In this review, we analyzed the scientific literature and technical reports of international bodies such as the United Nations and Food and Agriculture Organization relating to traditional ethnobotanical knowledge (TEK). The literature on TEK was mapped with the targets of the SDGs to determine the role of traditional knowledge in the realization of selected goals and targets. Our extensive and systematic reviewing of available literatures suggests that, of the 17 goals, at least seven goals are associated with TEK. To achieve these seven goals, a thorough understanding is required to disentangle the intricacies involving TEK, indigenous people holding TEK, and their future role in achieving the SDGs. Our review points towards the role of TEK in achieving goals linked to poverty, health and wellbeing, responsible consumption and production, climate action, life on land, and partnerships. In summary, we argue that achieving the intended outcomes of the SDGs and the targets requires concerted efforts of all relevant stakeholders, including indigenous communities, common citizens, scientists, policy makers, and world leaders.

**Keywords:** sustainable development goals; ethnobotany; human health; poverty; traditional knowledge; sustainable agriculture

#### **1. Introduction**

The United Nations General Assembly in its 70th meeting on 25 September 2015 adopted a resolution "transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development" [1]. Its member countries adopted 17 set of goals called the sustainable development goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all. Each goal has certain targets to be achieved by 2030. Sustainable development goals are an extension of millennium development goals (MDGs) and part of a new sustainable development agenda to complete what MDGs did not achieve [2]. For the goals to be realized, everyone needs to do their part, including governments, the private sector, and civil society. The Agenda 21 of the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 [3] where the concept of sustainable development emerged, advocated a pivotal role for indigenous people and other local communities in the management of environment and sustainable development because of their traditional knowledge and associated practices [4]. The official UN document of 2015 (transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development) did not explicitly explain the role of ethnobotanists and traditional ethnobotanical knowledge (TEK) in achieving these

**Citation:** Kumar, A.; Kumar, S.; Komal; Ramchiary, N.; Singh, P. Role of Traditional Ethnobotanical Knowledge and Indigenous Communities in Achieving Sustainable Development Goals. *Sustainability* **2021**, *13*, 3062. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13063062

Academic Editor: Emanuele Radicetti

Received: 19 January 2021 Accepted: 4 March 2021 Published: 11 March 2021

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**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

sustainable development goals. Apart from the role of different countries and various stakeholders mentioned in the document in achieving the goals and targets, we advocate and reiterate a similar role for indigenous communities by recognizing and supporting their identity, cultures, customs, practices, and interests and by enabling their effective and active participation in the realization of sustainable development goals, including the goals that were mentioned in Principle 22 of the 1992 Rio Declaration on the Environment and Development [3]. It was reaffirmed that traditional ethnobotanical knowledge, ethnobotanists, and people's participation can significantly contribute towards achieving the sustainable development goals by 2030 and beyond.

People have a long history of using plants for various purposes such as for food, medicine, shelter, decoration, construction, and clothing [5]. The usage of plants for various purposes by indigenous and local communities comprises traditional ethnobotanical knowledge, which is not well documented by indigenous people, but has been orally and vertically transmitted from generation to generation [6]. However, ethnobotanists have played an important role in unraveling and documenting these plant-people interactions and unlocked the knowledge by conducting various types of interviews and surveys [7,8]. Besides these, archeological, paleontological, and archaeogenetic evidence has also recently been used to determine plant-people interactions from prehistoric times [9–11]. Though the records on the consumption of plants by humans in the prehistoric times are scarce, recently it was discovered that people in South Africa used leaves of *Cryptocarya woodii* for the construction of bedding 77,000 years ago, and the identity of the plants used was established using modern archaeogenetic tools [12]. This plant is still used by the people living in the area of its recovery, and it has now been established that this plant is toxic to mosquitoes because of its larvicidal properties [12]. The recovery of starch granules from the surfaces of at least 105,000 years old stone tools from Mozambique suggests that early humans consumed grass seeds [9]. The discipline of ethnobotany works at the intersection of plants-people at one end and science at the other end; therefore, ethnobotanists can act as a bridge between them [13]. Tuxill and Nabhan [14] have suggested that ethnobotany can act as useful vehicle and process of development. The outcomes of the interactions between the plants and people as deciphered by ethnobotanists holds enormous potential to solve some of the issues that the world faces today. The common global challenges we face today are ending poverty, achieving zero hunger, improving the nutritional status of the people, promoting sustainable agriculture, improving the health status of the people, providing affordable health care services, and combating climate change [15,16]. Therefore, in the present review article, we identified seven sustainable development goals towards which the traditional ethnobotanical knowledge can contribute significantly. These are SDG (1) no poverty, (2) zero hunger, (3) good health and wellbeing, (12) responsible consumption and production, (13) climate action, (15) life on land, and (17) partnerships for the goals. In the following sections, a brief background of major challenges and the potential roles of ethnobotany in overcoming these challenges to achieve the SDG by 2030 are presented (Figure 1).

*Sustainability* **2021**, *13*, 3062

**Figure 1.** A schematic representation highlighting the potential roles of ethnobotanists towards achieving seven sustainable goals and targets.

#### **2. Methodology**

To study the role of ethnobotanical knowledge in the realization of sustainable development goals, we searched available literature and information available on the subject [17]. Various reports and documents of the international bodies such as the UN and FAO were studied to understand the sustainable development goals and the targets envisaged under it. We conducted an extensive literature survey to find out papers and reports related to traditional knowledge to link with the sustainable development goals. The research question in the present study was to know whether there were any goals and targets related to ethnobotanical knowledge and whether ethnobotanical knowledge could help in achieving them. After a thorough study, we have identified seven goals related to ethnobotanical knowledge which are SDG 1 (no poverty), 2 (zero hunger), 3 (food health and wellbeing), 12 (responsible consumption and production), 13 (climate action), 15 (life on land), and 17 (partnerships for the goals). The seven goals and targets thereunder are abridged into four broad areas (Table 1) as few goals have overlapping/common targets, and then the gaps or problems in those broad areas are identified. For example, SDG 2 is common for broad area 1 (poverty-hunger-malnutrition) and broad area 2 (desertification, land degradation, and sustainable agriculture). Similarly, SDG 15 is repeated for broad area 2 and 4 (ensuring sustainable consumption-production and reversal of biodiversity loss). The goal 17 (SDG 17) refers to establishing partnerships and synergies among various stakeholders. Therefore, the need of partnerships to achieve different goals or outcomes is discussed in the broad areas. Following this criteria, various papers related to ethnobotanical studies were analyzed to fill the gaps or to solve the problems. Furthermore, various terms relating to sustainable development goals such as "traditional knowledge", "ethnobotanical knowledge", "traditional agricultural knowledge", "traditional ecological knowledge", "food security", "abiotic stresses", "climate change", "end hunger", "food security", "medicinal plants", "sustainable agriculture", "climate resilience" and "ethnobotanical knowledge" and various combinations of key terms were searched from various databases such as PubMed, Google Scholar, Web of Science, AGRICOLA, and Scopus [17,18]. The terms were searched either individually or in multiple combinations. The electronic search queries generated more than 3000 papers from various databases. We manually analyzed and removed the duplicates and only 105 articles including reports and websites were included for writing this review. For the survey of various reports relating to sustainable development goals, a simple Google search was used or the website of the organizations were directly visited.

**Table 1.** The identified four broad areas and the sustainable development goals linked with them.


#### **3. Results and Discussion**

#### *3.1. Poverty-Hunger-Malnutrition Conundrum and the Role of Wild Food Plants*

The ever-increasing human population projections indicate an increase in the number of consumers and demand for goods and services [19]. The Agenda 2030 seeks to end poverty (SDG1), achieve zero hunger, and improve nutritional status of the public (SDG2). Poverty, hunger, and nutrition are three interlinked issues with cause and effect relationships which need to be addressed systematically in an integrated manner [20]. Targeting poverty alone may help to achieve zero hunger, but unless people have access to nutritious food, it may not deliver the expected result [21]. Therefore, the initiatives for alleviating poverty must be coupled with addressing the issues related to diet, malnutrition, and undernutrition. Approximately one billion of the poorest people of the world remain undernourished today, and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that we will need to increase food production by 70% to feed the 9.1 billion people by 2050 [22]. These data suggest the gravity of challenges the world is facing to ensure food security for all.

As per the FAO [23], food security has four main dimensions: (1) physical availability of food (supply of food), (2) economic and physical access to food, (3) food utilization, and (4) the stability of the other three dimensions over time (Figure 2). The ethnobotanical consumption of wild vegetables and food plants by indigenous communities are in congruence with the above four dimensions as locally grown wild vegetables can help increase the supply of food thereby maintaining demand-supply equilibrium (as described in Figure 2). Since the wild food plants are collected and consumed locally by people, the change in the prices of the market foods may not affect the economic access to it. Besides this, the plants are locally grown, adapted to particular local environmental conditions, resilient to climate change, and are suitable to the local agro-climatic conditions [24]. Therefore, researchers have now emphasized the urgent need to diversify and expand the food basket of the people under unpredictable climatic conditions [25], and in this scenario wild food plants if adopted in mainstream diet are the best option to achieve this goal [26,27]. Several study groups also reported the importance and wide usage of wild food plants in various countries such as India [7,8,27,28], Ethiopia [29,30], China [31], Indonesia [32], Greece [33], and Italy [34,35], to name a few. Since the locally grown plants are rich in vitamins and micronutrients, they can help in reducing diet related malnutrition considerably [32,36]. Ethnobotanists have already generated immense amounts of data on the use of wild plants for food. A search on Google Scholar titled "wild plants as food" shows 1,220,000 results (within the years 2000–2020). All these results suggest that many wild plants under consumption by various indigenous communities have already been documented. Therefore, the present challenges of food insecurity necessitate the mainstreaming of wild food plants, their formal addition into the existing food basket of the public by scientifically validating the nutritional composition, the study and development of the mode of their multiplication/reproduction, and the life cycle-related requirements for their germination and cultivation. To achieve this, multidisciplinary approaches and experts in agronomy, plant science, phytochemistry, dietetics, and modern analytical approaches for nutritional profiling need to be employed. Furthermore, potential health effects also need to be understood as some plants may have the presence of harmful compounds which may exert negative side effects on humans. Combining multidisciplinary approaches along with the clues obtained from ethnobotanical data on wild plants for consumption as fruits and vegetables can provide alternative options and aid in diversifying the food basket of the people [25]. The issue of food security can be catered by popularizing and mass propagation of the locally grown plants especially in the developing countries in Africa and Asia. This can further reduce the dependency of people on only a few crop plants available for their nutritional purposes. In the long run, apart from the role of wild food plants in the diversification of food basket, they can also act as valuable genetic resources for the crop improvement programs as some of the food plants consumed indigenously are the wild relatives of the domesticated crops plants currently grown/consumed.
