Strengths of Zapotec Indigenous Knowledge in Water Management

Indigenous peoples have a deep well of knowledge gathered through their immersive experiential lifestyle. Such Indigenous knowledge (IK) is self-sufficient and has allowed them to overcome environmental challenges and manage water for millennia. Zapotecs of Southern Mexico are contemporaries of Incans and Mayans, who possess such an IK and pass it down through traditional practices and community-oriented traditions. Understanding the interactions of IK (regarding water resource management) with Western scientific knowledge (WSK) can illuminate pathways to integrate these disparate realms of knowledge. With such an aim of convergence, this research employs household surveys, water sampling, and structural equation modeling. The model results reveal significant pathways among variables linking Indigenous origin, Indigenous practices, environmental concern, and perception of water quality risks. The deep-rooted Zapotec knowledge of their water resources allows us to recognize changes in water quality (based on their past experiences). We have probed their concerns further with physicochemical and microbial characterizations of collected water samples. The integrated (IK and WSK) approach followed here can be considered as a viable strategy to reveal intricate relationships between these knowledge realms and facilitate the protection of water resources and human health.