Navigating Knowledge Systems: Keeping wild food gathering alive in Norway

Keywords: conservation, sustainability, foraging, wild edible plants, Norway, knowledge systems, more-than-human
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Eating wild plants and fungi connects human and non-human beings across the planet. In its global review of sustainable foraging, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) aims to include indigenous knowledge systems. In this systematic literature review, I explore what knowledge systems count when researchers and practitioners discuss sustainable foraging in the Nordics. Academic publications show foraging is essentially ubiquitous in Norway and that people pluck nearly 300 species of edible plants alone. However, without continued use, the associated knowledges, skills, tools, and perhaps organisms are at risk. In Norway, intimate foraging know-how is commoned through a national foraging organization and through communities of indigenous (Sami) peoples, culturally Norwegians, immigrants, and visitors. Foraging knowledge is also bought and sold through private foraging courses and tours. These local practices are supported by Sami and Norwegian policies protecting the right to forage, and Norway internationally purports its support of sustainable foraging through IPBES. However, much of the academic work draws on knowledge systems that frame plants and mushrooms as products and ecosystem services. This analysis creates space for considering foraging as a labor of care for a living Earth, based on knowledge systems that animate plants and mushrooms as community members, not products. It calls for the inclusion of diverse knowledge systems in biodiversity governance and further theorizes foragers as part of more-than-human communities.