Being Forest Peoples: Globalizing Local Sustainability?

Conventional discussions of sustainable development are often biased by technical and managerial considerations. In the current search for sustainability, we look for models of sustainability and seek to render them more transparent to scientific testing and investigation. The problem, however, is that the terms of the investigation are laid down by the external paradigm; thus, even if we find local models of sustainability, we may not be able to recognize them—or we misconstrue them. The epistemology of the Batek of Malaysia suggests that an ontological approach may be a powerful local paradigm. The Batek interpret environmental disasters as indicators of the superhuman beings’ displeasure with the human world. The onus for maintaining stability is on the forest people, for if they do not heed the messages from the superhuman beings, they endanger their own lives. However, a cosmological interpretation of this sort is not easily translatable into the practical concerns of resource management.