Abstract

While community-based schemes in forest management have been implemented in the Philippines for over two decades now, knowledge on how local and indigenous groups construe the concept of ‘value’ beyond commercial means remains limited. How natural resources and their value are viewed through a cultural lens is fundamental in substantiating the concept of sustainability in environmental discourses. It is in this light that this article aims to present an ethnotaxonomy of the Obo Manobo of southern Philippines that reflects concepts of the natural world characterized by life and life-giving cycles (umuu) and by an anthropocentric relational value (koru-an) of living entities which are generally classified as either edible (koka-an), the ones that perpetuate life, or inedible, the ones that serve as ornamentation (doppan) for the living. Hence, the environment is made meaningful through cycles and relations rather than distinctions. Advocacy and pedagogy for ecological sustainability need to take into account these nuances that expand the view on environmental resources as mere commodity.