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Biocultural Diversity: Stewards of Biocultural Diversity in Mexico, Peru and Uganda, also speaking out at the UN in New York.

The past two decades have witnessed an upsurge of interest in the links between cultural, linguistic, and biological diversity. These various manifestations of the diversity of life are under threat by some of the same forces, yet, both in scientific inquiry and in the realms of policy and management, nature and culture are often treated as separate and unrelated entities. This may stem in part from the mutual isolation that has traditionally characterized training and work in the natural and social sciences, leading to limited communication or collaboration among fields concerned with sustainability in both nature and culture. Fragmented approaches have not been successful in stemming the growing erosion of the world’s biodiversity and of the vast and diverse pool of cultural knowledge, practices, and languages developed by humanity. This is resulting in an ever more fragile, less diverse and resilient world.

At a time when the environmental and social consequences of human-induced changes such as deforestation, desertification, degradation of global water resources, and climate change are becoming more and more severe, it is vital to achieve a clearer understanding of the connections between cultural, linguistic, and biological diversity and a better dialogue among the relevant actors. It is also necessary to understand and learn from the vast variety of approaches to sustainability that have developed across the world’s diverse cultures, through close interactions with the natural environment, and often based on an intimate connection between knowledge, values, and belief systems.

Recent years have seen the emergence of integrative fields that seek to better comprehend the complex interactions between culture and nature, and that variously work to incorporate insights from both the biological and the social sciences, as well as from traditional cultural knowledge systems. Among these are the fields of biocultural diversity, social-ecological systems, ecosystem health, nature-society theory, ethnobiology, and ecological anthropology. Agencies, institutions, and organizations broadly responsible for environmental conservation and management, development, and cultural issues, are expressing intense interest in this kind of integrative work and its policy dimensions. This indicates that now is the time to assess both the scientific advances in these fields and their contributions to addressing pressing issues of environmental and social sustainability, as well as to foster communication among different ways of knowing (scientific and traditional knowledge systems). This stock-taking should help create the conditions for more integrated approaches to research, policy, and management in years to come.

Source: American Museum of Natural History, New York -Sustaining Cultures and Biodiversity in a Changing World, Symposium, April 2008