A one day Capacity Building and Awareness program was organized on April 27 at El Dora, Mokokchung under the theme “Wildflowers and its Cultural and Ecological significance”. The program was organised by Center for Indigenous Culture and Environmental Studies (CICEs) in collaboration with Henry Martyn Institute (HMI), Hyderabad.

T Senka Ao, Padma Shree Awardee 2022 and Alemwapang .T. Imchen, Asst. Conservator of Forest, Mokokchung were the speakers for the event with participants from various educational institutes attending the program.

For the Nagas, the upkeep of their surrounding was always within the purview of their daily activities. As such utmost care was taken on the environment and the biodiversity being safeguarded through various indigenous knowledge systems. Amongst the myriad indigenous knowledge systems, the Naga community’s knowledge on wild flowers is very unique and treated with great social and cultural significance. In this regard, the awareness program was held to strengthen this knowledge.

T. Senka Ao shared details about several wild flowers and their significance, in the Ao Naga perspective. He stressed on how stories of wildflowers are often beyond human understanding but at the same it reflects the culture of a society. Alemwapang .T. Imchen presented on the topic “Protected Areas and the OECMs (Other Effective area based Conservation Measures): its potential in Nagaland”. He briefly highlighted the concept of Protected Areas (Pas) and the OECMs (a formally defined concept at the 14th CoP of the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2018) and also the various community led initiatives taken up by the Forest Department, respectively.

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Imchen also underlined the concept of the OECMs and how it is emerging to be an effective key approach to biodiversity conservation in the Global Biodiversity Framework.

Founder member of CICEs, Dr. Martemjen in his concluding note, remarked that dissemination of such knowledge is vital for biodiversity conservation and can also be a contributing factor in preserving and promoting the Naga culture. He also expressed that the CICEs look forward to documenting such rich traditional knowledge which will in turn help in preserving the cultural practices for future reference and practices.