The use of Local Environmental Knowledge has been considered as an important strategy for adaptive management in the face of Global Environmental Change. However, the unprecedented rates at which global change occurs may pose a challenge to the adaptive capacity of local knowledge systems. In this paper, we use the concept of the shifting baseline syndrome to examine the limits in the adaptive capacity of the local knowledge of an indigenous society facing rapid ecosystem change. We conducted semi-structured interviews regarding perceptions of change in wildlife populations and in intergenerational transmission of knowledge amongst the Tsimane', a group of hunter-gatherers of Bolivian Amazonia (n = 300 adults in 13 villages). We found that the natural baseline against which the Tsimane' measure ecosystem changes might be shifting with every generation as a result of (a) age-related differences in the perception of change and (b) a decrease in the intergenerational sharing of environmental knowledge. Such findings suggest that local knowledge systems might not change at a rate quick enough to adapt to conditions of rapid ecosystem change, hence potentially compromising the adaptive success of the entire social-ecological system. With the current pace of Global Environmental Change, widening the gap between the temporal rates of on-going ecosystem change and the timescale needed for local knowledge systems to adjust to change, efforts to tackle the shifting baseline syndrome are urgent and critical for those who aim to use Local Environmental Knowledge as a tool for adaptive management.

中文翻译：

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快速的生态系统变化挑战当地环境知识的适应能力。

当地环境知识的使用被认为是应对全球环境变化的适应性管理的重要策略。然而，全球变化发生的前所未有的速度可能对当地知识系统的适应能力构成挑战。在本文中，我们使用移动基线综合症的概念来检查面临生态系统快速变化的土著社会的地方知识适应能力的限制。我们对玻利维亚亚马逊河流域的狩猎采集者 Tsimane'（n = 13 个村庄的 300 名成年人）对野生动物种群变化和知识代际传播的看法进行了半结构化访谈。我们发现 Tsimane 的自然基线 由于 (a) 与年龄相关的变化感知差异和 (b) 代际环境知识共享的减少，衡量生态系统的变化可能会随着每一代人而发生变化。这些发现表明，地方知识系统的变化速度可能不足以适应生态系统快速变化的条件，因此可能会损害整个社会生态系统的适应性成功。随着当前全球环境变化的步伐，不断扩大的生态系统变化的时间速率与当地知识系统适应变化所需的时间尺度之间的差距，解决基线变化综合症的努力对于那些致力于使用本地环境知识作为适应性管理的工具。