Videos online Channel IRD
Kenya sacred sites listed by Unesco
January 2011
The kaya forests are a major feature of Kenya’s coastal strip. They were originally residential sites, the earliest founded in the sixteenth century, but are now regarded as sacred − and endangered. They play a central role in the identity and imagination the Mijikenda, a group linguistically related to the Bantu.
IRD researchers and the Kenyan scientific authorities have revealed the historical and symbolic value of the kaya in the region around Mombasa. Their goal is to protect them and encourage local communities to get involved in managing their heritage.
Ethnology meets the Saharan bee and the South Moroccan beekeepers
September 2010
GMO, pesticides, Asian predatory wasps are the reasons internationally evoked today to explain the progressive extinction of the bee population. Nevertheless, doesn't the evocation of these great scourges hide another social or cultural reason, that of the loss of the traditional diversity of know-how regarding beekeeping?
Indeed, by losing the diversity of these traditional hives, slowly replaced by industrial standards, man has lost the richness of beekeeping know-how and the knowledge on bees.
In Cirata (Indonesia), aquaculture is a victim of its own success
March 2007
In West Java, Indonesia, the water filling of the Cirata dam in 1987 causes the eviction of thousands of small farmers. As a compensation, the Indonesian government, with the support of the World Bank, develops an aquaculture project which consists of floating cages on the lake. ..
