Tourism & Tày Ethnobotany: What’s at Stake?

In the quiet villages near Ba Bể National Park, Tày knowledge of medicinal plants is vast — and vanishing.

With the growth of eco-tourism, traditional knowledge systems risk becoming commodified or erased. Our research asks: how are Tày plant-based practices and environmental worldviews being transformed by tourism? Are these shifts empowering or displacing? Who gets to decide?

These are not just botanical questions. They’re cultural, economic, and environmental ones — and they’re urgent.