ID: 613 / 196

Category: Symposia

Track: Pending

Proposed Symposium Title: BEYOND PLANT BLINDNESS: BRINGING PLANTS INTO THE FOREGROUND

Abstract: The phenomenon of “plant blindness”—often defined as people’s inability to notice, recognize and appreciate plants and their significance, has been described as one of the greatest challenges that botanists face in our joint mission to address the social-ecological crisis of our time. Reverting plant blindness will entail a transformative and sustained shift across sectors in how plants and their multiple contributions to humans are recognized, affirmed and valued. In turn, enacting such transformative change requires an improved understanding of the effectiveness of different methodological approaches to bend the curve of human-plant disconnection across scales. This symposium will bring together a wide range perspectives and ongoing efforts to foster positive human-plant relations through artistic, ethnobotanical and participatory approaches. A plethora of empirical case studies and in-depth reflections from around the world will explore pathways through which the nexus between people and plants can be nurtured and strengthened by weaving the middle spaces between science and creative imagination, local and scientific knowledge, emotions and perceptions. More specifically, we will highlight the transformative power of blending ethnobotany with different methodological approaches, such as participatory processes, knowledge sharing with civil society and artistic expressions to move plants from the background into the foreground of people’s daily lives. We will celebrate the power of conducting ethnobotany through an artistic lens to express and enforce the intricate relationships between peoples and plants, and their critical importance in efforts to curb plant blindness across scales. The symposium will feature the work of different scholars and practitioners working at the interface between arts and science to promote increasing appreciation towards plants. We aim to bring evidence on the enormous potential of transdisciplinary approaches, combining artistic, experiential and empirical methods, to promote reflectivity and transform the ways in which we relate with the plant world.

Speaker 1: Teresa Garnatje, Airy Gras, Montse Parada, Joan Vallès Institut Botànic de Barcelona / Universitat de Barcelona (UB), Spain joanvalles@ub.edu Ethnobotany from people to people to foster the interest on plants. Prospection, data treatment and different ways of returning knowledge to society in the Catalan linguistic area

Speaker 2: Vincent Porcher Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Spain vincent.porcher@uab.cat Children's perception and plant identification knowledge: Using drawing to tackle emic perspective

Speaker 3: Joaquim Querol, Sandrine Gallois and Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Spain sandrine.gallois@uab.cat; joaquim.querol@gmail.com Intangible relations as a way of highlighting our relationship with plants: A case study in the Catalan Pyrenees

Topics (Up to three): Ethnobotany

Topic 2: Education and Outreach

Topic 3: Conservation Biology

Justification: Our symposium focuses on at least three important topics highlighted in this congress: Ethnobotany, Education and Outreach, and Conservation Biology. Our team is gender and culturally-diverse and includes speakers from both the natural and social sciences. While diverse, we share a binding interest in raising awareness about the fascinating worlds of plants and their fundamental importance to life on Earth.