Abstract:
Environmental degradation and the associated food scarcity, water shortage, dwindling harvests of agricultural output, shortage of medicinal plants, and global warming are expected to peak on crisis proportions in the 21st century thereby rendering the survival of human beings and other animal and plant species a catastrophe. Many studies in disciplines with concerns in the environment have identified issues like population pressure on the environment and the use of chemical fertilizers etc. Very few of them have sought explanations from the knowledge that indigenous people have of their environment. This study ventures the explanation from indigenous knowledge, not by any means the sole factor, using the desk research method to arrive at the conclusion that the major causes of these phenomena, among several others, are uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources, the loss of languages and the associated loss of Indigenous Knowledge banked in these languages. Any attempt to reverse this trend of environmental degradation that does not embrace cultural revival, regeneration of indigenous languages and emphasis of Indigenous methods of conservation of the environment are unlikely to bear fruit because these three processes are intractably linked.
