Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Their Integration into Environmental Health Practice in Rural Communities in South East Nigeria: An Ethnographic Investigation

Indigenous knowledge systems embody centuries of community-developed understanding of environmental health relationships, yet their systematic documentation and integration into formal environmental health practice frameworks remains rare in Nigerian scholarship, representing both an intellectual gap and a practical missed opportunity. This dissertation presents an ethnographic investigation of indigenous environmental health knowledge systems in four rural communities of Ebonyi and Imo states, South East Nigeria, and develops an original framework for ethically integrating these knowledge systems into contemporary environmental health practice. A critical ethnographic approach was adopted over a thirty-month fieldwork period, employing participant observation, 112 in-depth interviews with community elders, traditional healers, women health workers, and community leaders, twelve community mapping exercises, and focus group discussions. Indigenized data analysis drew on both thematic analysis and the reflexive principles of abductive ethnography. Findings documented rich indigenous knowledge systems encompassing water source identification and quality assessment, environmental disease etiology, traditional environmental management practices, medicinal plant use, and community governance mechanisms for environmental health management. Scientific validation testing of fifteen documented indigenous water quality assessment practices found seven to have statistically significant concordance with laboratory-based physicochemical measurements. A co-production protocol for integrating validated indigenous practices into LGA environmental health programming was developed collaboratively with community members. The dissertation makes an original contribution to environmental health epistemology by challenging the hegemony of biomedical knowledge and proposing a validated integration methodology. Keywords: indigenous knowledge, environmental health practice, ethnography, South East Nigeria, co-production.