Abdullah Rubaet Chowdhury, a Bangladeshi social scientist and anthropologist, has received the SES Elodie Sandford Award from the UK-based Scientific Exploration Society (SES) for a planned research expedition documenting Indigenous ecological knowledge in Nepal’s Himalayan Mustang region.
The award will support a year-long expedition focused on Nepal's Bönpo community, which is home to one of the world’s oldest continuous knowledge traditions dating back 18,000 years, and its approaches to the natural environment.
Rubaet Chowdhury said the research would examine how Bönpo practitioners respond to environmental and climatic changes through knowledge rooted in their relationship with nature.
“Our expedition is particularly interested in learning how Bönpo practitioners, placed at the forefront of the climate crisis, have maintained a strong kinship with nature and natural entities driven by their ‘living knowledge’ to face these challenges,” he said.
The expedition is expected to take place in the Mustang region around the Kali Gandaki Gorge, an environmentally and culturally distinctive area of the trans-Himalayan landscape.
According to the expedition team, the project will use a collaborative research model intended to avoid treating Indigenous knowledge simply as information to be extracted by outside researchers.
Rubaet Chowdhury and his team plan to work with Bön spiritual leaders and young people using an ethnophotography-based approach. The researchers say they will jointly develop biodiversity conservation indicators, participatory maps and a community-owned field film.
The project aims to connect local environmental practices with contemporary biodiversity policy while allowing the community to retain ownership of the knowledge and materials produced during the research.
Findings from the expedition are expected to be shared with bodies involved in implementing the UN Global Biodiversity Framework, including the secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, as well as Nepal’s Ministry of Forests and Environment, according to the press release.
The team also plans exhibitions and academic presentations, including at Heidelberg University’s ethnographic museum and institutions in Nepal.
The Scientific Exploration Society is a UK organisation that supports expeditions combining scientific research, exploration and conservation.
