With great shock we received the sad news of the sudden death of our friend and colleague Mike Warren, University Professor at Iowa State University and Director of the Centre for Indigenous Knowledge for Agriculture and Rural Development (CIKARD). He was struck by thrombosis and died unexpectedly in Nigeria on 28 December 1997, at the age of 55 years. Mike Warren was a true pioneer in promoting the study of indigenous knowledge and its application within the context of development--a cause for which he fought vigorously, and which he finally saw accepted in the early 1990s.

Born on 7 May 1942, Mike Warren obtained his BA in Biology at Stanford University in 1964. Then, after being trained by the Peace Corps in Berkeley, Mike was assigned to teach high school science at the newly opened Techiman Secondary School in central Ghana. These two years mark the beginning of his lifelong dedication to Africa, its peoples and their indigenous knowledge systems and practices. His stay in Ghana also marked his life in another respect. The Bono people introduced him to Mary, the granddaughter of a Yoruban chief from Nigeria. Mike and Mary married in 1966. After his return to the USA, Mike continued his studies in Anthropology at Indiana University, where, in 1974, he received his PhD with a dissertation entitled Disease, medicine and religion among the Bono of Ghana: a study in culture change.

Mike learned to appreciate the value of communities such as the Techiman, the Bono and the Yoruba, and felt that their contributions to global knowledge were not recognized--not in Africa and not in the world at large. He realized that many of his colleagues--scientists and other experts in the field--were indifferent or even opposed to the revitalization of indigenous knowledge and practice--an attitude that was also common among policy planners and administrators as well as development agencies. For this reason, Mike Warren founded the Centre for Indigenous Knowledge for Agriculture and Rural Development (CIKARD) at Iowa State University in 1987.

Through CIKARD, Mike coordinated and encouraged research and training on the subject of indigenous knowledge systems and practices, and the contribution these can make to establishing truly participatory approaches to development. Mike considered a global network linking institutions and individuals to be a necessary instrument for disseminating his ideas on the role that indigenous knowledge should play in sustainable development, a concept that would rank high on the international development agenda following the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, in June of 1992. As a consequence of his vision, the CIKARD global network was established, together with the first indigenous knowledge resource centres. In the same year that CIKARD was founded, Mike signed a collaborative agreement with Jan Slikkerveer, chairman of the Leiden Ethnosytems And Development Programme (LEAD) at Leiden University, the Netherlands.

In the beginning, Mike Warren had to fight many uphill battles to convince educators and development professionals of the potential power of indigenous knowledge. In 1991, however, the tide started to turn, and in that year the World Bank invited him to present a seminar on Indigenous Knowledge and Development. This resulted in World Bank Discussion Paper No. 127, Using indigenous knowledge in agricultural development, which has been reprinted several times and translated into French, Spanish and Portuguese. In 1995, the World Bank invited Mike to deliver a keynote speech on natural resource management. Mike Warren's role as an expert on indigenous knowledge systems and practices grew; he was consulted by USAID, Canada's IDRC, and CIDA, IIRR, UNESCO, and ILO-INDISCO.

The gradual recognition of indigenous knowledge and its role in development, and Mike's major achievements in this field, also attracted the attention of Nuffic-CIRAN. In May 1992 Mike Warren (CIKARD), Jan Slikkerveer (LEAD), and Guus von Liebenstein signed a 'Memorandum of Understanding' in which they agreed to cooperate further in support of the growing indigenous knowledge network. The first manifestation of this cooperation was the IDRC-funded international conference on Indigenous knowledge and sustainable development, held at the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction in Silang (the Philippines) in September 1992.

One of the recommendations of the Silang conference was to establish a journal which would inform individuals and resource centres around the world about initiatives in the field of IK and sustainable development, and which would serve as a mechanism to link the growing global network. With the support of NUFFIC, and additional funding from IDRC and the Directorate-General for International Cooperation of the Netherlands' Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor was published for the first time in February 1993. Mike has left a lasting impression on the Monitor. As a member of the editorial board from the very beginning, he supplied a steady stream of valuable information and often alerted the editors to interesting articles and initiatives.

With Mike Warren as the great stimulator, CIKARD's international reputation as a centre of education and training grew, and it attracted many students from all over the world. Quite a number of them obtained their PhD degrees. CIKARD now also houses the world's major library of indigenous knowledge materials. Much of its collection are papers and reports published by staff and students of the centre itself. With the help of the new UNESCO-supported International Institute for Theoretical and Applied Physics at Iowa State University, the CIKARD Home Page now has a very fast keyword search engine for bibliographical citations and abstracts. Already, over 5000 documents are thus accessible.

Through CIKARD, Mike was able to set up an international network of alumni all over the world, each of them acting in their home country as an advocate for drawing indigenous knowledge into the development process. As no one else, Mike Warren realized that the most cost-effective way to record indigenous knowledge would be through a global network of indigenous knowledge resource centres. To date, there are 34 such centres, and their number continues to grow. Most of the IK resource centres have become part of the national or regional institutional landscape, and most are involved in both research and teaching in the field of indigenous knowledge and sustainable development.

During his short life, Mike Warren produced an impressive published record. He worked with great efficiency, which is reflected in the many publications he authored or co-authored: 31 books and/or manuals; 48 chapters in books; 52 articles; 67 reviews, and 26 reports. We would like to mention especially the two major books that he co-edited: Indigenous knowledge systems and development (Washington, DC: University Press of America 1980), and The cultural dimension of development: indigenous knowledge systems (London: Intermediate Technology Publications 1995).

With the untimely death of Mike Warren, the world has lost an irreplaceable, gifted teacher and brilliant scientist, who encouraged his staff and students to further develop IK's crucial role in the modern world. We will miss Mike as a colleague whom all of us respected and admired, but more than that, we will miss him as a friend. The warmth of his interest in people and other cultures and his great sense of humour made him a unique and unforgettable person. While we convey our deepest sympathy to his wife Mary and daughter Medina, we will do our best to see that his spirit lives on in our work.

Mike Warren's original ideas and ideals are very well expressed in an interview with Mary Challender of The Des Moines Register, published on December 13, 1994. In his view, plants and animals are not the only endangered species, but cultures are also disappearing at an alarming rate. These so-called 'primitive' knowledge systems, often passed down verbally from generation to generation, reflect thousands of years of experimentation and innovation in everything from agriculture to education, and from medicine to natural resource management. Western culture has always turned up its nose at this low-tech database, often trampling local knowledge underfoot in its haste to implement Western solutions. But as the West has come up short in its search for answers to many of the world's most vexing problems--disease, famine, ethnic conflict--indigenous knowledge has begun to take on new importance.

Guus von Liebenstein - Director, CIRAN
Jan L. Slikkerveer - Director, LEAD