T1. INTRODUCTION
The aim of this study was to estimate of the value of Orang Asli traditional ecological knowledge among the public in the Peninsular Malaysia. This was achieved through the application of a choice experiment (CE), which was utilised to directly assess the economic value of the sustainable management of natural resource that are provided by the Orang Asli. The remainder of the paper is organised as follows. The theoretical background is outlined in section two. In section three we describe the data used in terms of CE and model results in section four. Finally, conclusions and future directions are presented in section five.
2. BACKGROUND
Orang Asli are the indigenous peoples of Peninsular Malaysia. They consist of at least 18 ethnic groups generally classified for official purpose under three distinct groups, namely Negritos, Senoi and Proto Malays. These ethnic groups are in range between a few hundreds to…show more content… However, in this study, we focused specifically on three namely, documentation of medicinal plants and knowledge of their use, traditional forest-related knowledge and conservation of natural forests among the Orang Asli. These attributes were broadly based on the ecosystem services identified in line with the CBD and Malaysia’s National Policy on Biological Diversity 1998. Indigenous knowledge and practices pertaining to medicinal plants are of particular relevance to Malaysia because it has been estimated to have more than 2,000 species of medicinal plants in Malaysia and there are about 200 species being used by different ethnic groups mainly by Orang Asli (Salleh & Latiff, 2002). In addition to the abundance of medicinal plants, there is also rising demand for traditional medicine products, especially in the primary health care and cosmeceuticals (Nicholas,