Practising the past in the present: using Ghanaian indigenous methods for water quality determination in the contemporary era
Service Opare ()
Additional contact information
Service Opare: University Canada West
Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, 2017, vol. 19, issue 6, No 5, 2217-2236
Abstract:
Abstract Surface water sources remain the dominant sources of water supply for a significant proportion of poor communities. These water supply sources tend to have low water quality levels. Application of water quality determination and purification measures could minimize water-related diseases associated with direct consumption of water with poor quality levels. A number of simple measures have been devised and utilized by indigenous communities based on their resource conservation knowledge to improve water quality levels. However, scientific approaches that are more in tune with modern demands for reliability and exactness are the preferred, mainstream approaches for determining water quality. Growing recognition of the relevance of indigenous knowledge has led to renewed interest in the possibility of utilizing it for such tasks. Research conducted in 2007 and 2008 in two indigenous communities in Ghana revealed a diversity of indigenous methods for water quality determination and purification including straining, settling and use of special seeds which could still be useful in this contemporary era. This paper recommends that knowledge co-production and transdisciplinary approaches be employed to enable indigenous communities and experts to collaborate and develop measures that tap both knowledge systems for improving water quality levels for human use.
Keywords: Indigenous; Water; Purification; Knowledge; Contemporary (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10668-016-9851-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:endesu:v:19:y:2017:i:6:d:10.1007_s10668-016-9851-2
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10668
DOI: 10.1007/s10668-016-9851-2
Access Statistics for this article
Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development is currently edited by Luc Hens
More articles in Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().