The awareness of, and scientific enquiry into, biological diversity transformed into concern and activism for the preservation of that diversity, renamed in the 1980s as biodiversity (Wilson1988), when the people saw the loss of diversity to be coupled with environmental degradation instigated by human behavior. It is not that extinction of biological species did not occur before in paleo-historical times. It has occurred five times in a massive scale, each separated by millions of years, extinguishing together more than ninety per cent of species that ever lived (Heywood 1995). But the earth regenerates itself every time with new species. The impending sixth extinction feared by specialists will be the first one after modern humans (Homo sapiens) came into existence 250-200 thousand years ago and the human language emerged sometime after this evolutionary happening and before the modern humans migrated out of Africa 100-70 thousand years ago. The sixth extinction, if it happens, will be the one caused by humans and it may include the human species (Pimm and Brooks 2000). It will then be the one that includes extinction of languages. Even if there is no total extinction as feared, there is increasing loss of language diversity now directly attributable to human action.

What I learned and experienced through that work led me to believe that deep and fundamental change is needed to this Western led and strictly structured development paradigm. Along with many others, I now call for a new approach to international development that breaks with Western tradition to embrace local tradition: one that empowers local people to drive their own progress; one in which diverse approaches, practices and ideas are heard, embraced and celebrated.

These two models of development– the dominant Western approach and this new, sustainable one that values biological and cultural diversity – are reconcilable. The old model is rooted in indisputable good will, far reach, and well-researched methodology, but desperately needs to be reframed into one that allows the development conversation to be defined and led by those to whom it is most critically relevant.

The Dominant Development Paradigm

It is widely agreed that there are three primary aspects to the traditional development model that together create a three-legged stool upon which a healthy society rests: environment, society and economy[i]. Undeniably, this dominant approach has made great strides in creating opportunity and improving lives – indeed for the ‘recipients’ of the aid, but also for the development industry and those who work within it. Through working within that approach, I was given the invaluable opportunity to learn from some of the most brilliant, creative, and driven local and indigenous peoples from India to Tanzania. Deeply impressed by the vast storehouses of ideas, practice and knowledge that these communities held, I realized that more often than not, the solutions to their own development needs already existed within their respective communities.

Interview with Felipe Montoya Greenheck by Ortixia Dilts

…..tell me a little about Milpa.

Natural Justice (Lawyers for Communities and the Environment) is an NGO working with indigenous peoples and local communities to develop rights-based approaches to securing their continued management of their bio-cultural heritage. Bio-cultural community protocols are a novel type of rights based-approach that can support communities’ rights to self-determination and endogenous development and help communities to constructively engage with other stakeholders in accordance with locally defined priorities and procedures.

The Right to Endogenous Development

Endogenous development describes a community process of defining and working towards future plans according to local values. Endogenous development processes promote the use of existing resources, assets and values within communities to support the collective management of local traditions, cultures, spirituality, and natural resources. Endogenous development also stresses that external interventions and assistance must be undertaken only when the community grants free, prior and informed consent (FPIC). Interventions aim to strengthen communities’ capacities for endogenous development by agreeing on a vision of success. The vision of success consists of community-endorsed changes in practices and behaviours that would occur after a certain time span within a locality as a result of strengthened endogenous development. These changes often relate to management of natural resources, diversity of livelihood strategies, local leadership and governance, intra- and inter-community dialogue, dignity, value attached to cultural and spiritual knowledge, and capacities to negotiate access to external knowledge and resources. Endogenous development is founded on the principle of self-determination, which is also reflected in international law. Article 3 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) states that, “Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.” The UNDRIP’s explicit recognition of the centrality of endogenous development to self-determination constitutes a political victory at the international level, but since compliance with UNDRIP is voluntary, its effective implementation often remains elusive at the local level.

Endogenous development is already present and active in all indigenous and local communities and reflected in their capacities for self-determination. However, many communities’ capacities are undermined by the complex series of social, cultural, spiritual, economic, political, and legal relationships in which they continue reading-->]]> http://www.terralingua.org/bcdconservation/?feed=rss2&p=1209 0 http://www.terralingua.org/bcdconservation/?p=1120 http://www.terralingua.org/bcdconservation/?p=1120#comments Mon, 21 Jun 2010 20:14:04 +0000 Victor Toledo http://www.terralingua.org/bcdconservation/?p=1120 Víctor M. Toledo, Eckart Boege and Narciso Barrera-Bassols

Introduction

Studies from different disciplinary backgrounds are revealing the inextricable links between cultural, biological and agricultural diversity at global, national, regional and local scales (Maffi, 2005). These multidimensional and complex relations are named ‘biocultural diversity’. In some way, these links represent the (biocultural) memory of the human species, because they are the present-day expression of a long historical legacy of interrelations between humans and nature (Toledo and Barrera-Bassols, 2008). At the country level, the conjunction of these three dimensions represents the nation’s biocultural heritage, and it is revealed through the geographical analysis of wild plant and animal species, languages, domesticated organisms, and especially territories of indigenous and local peoples.

In this essay, we offer an overview of the biocultural heritage of Mexico, through the discussion of three main topics: (i) a brief description of biological, linguistic and agricultural diversities; (ii) the definition, identification and mapping of biocultural hotspots in the Mexican territory; and (iii) a rapid review of the main grassroots initiatives and projects engaged in the multiple defense of biotic resources, germplasm, language, cultural identity, local livelihoods and territory. Our national-scale review synthesizes decades of work carried out by Mexican researchers and foreign colleagues about the main components of biocultural richness of Mexico.

Mexico: The Third Biocultural Center of the World

The complex connections between dimensions of linguistic, biological, and agricultural diversity become evident when they are analyzed at a global scale. Such correlations reveal that, in general, the majority of languages and of plant and animal species are situated in countries that are located along the fringes of the tropics (Oviedo, Maffin and Larsen, 2000). The principal centers of domestic plant and animal dispersion are located in these countries, in addition to a majority of cultural centers and/or a majority of the birthplaces of civilizations (Toledo and Barrera-Bassols, 2008).

Mexico, a megadiverse (the country alone contains 10% of the biological diversity found on the planet) and megacultural country (11 linguistic families, 68 language groupings, and 364 language variants according to INALI, 2007) has provided a historical linkage of these two worlds through the generation of one of the most important and singular civilization poles of humanity: the Mesoamerican Civilization.

As a consequence, Mesoamerican peoples domesticated 15% of the plant species that make up the world’s food system (CONABIO, 2008). This feat of civilization was achieved through the manipulation of plant continue reading-->]]> http://www.terralingua.org/bcdconservation/?feed=rss2&p=1120 0 http://www.terralingua.org/bcdconservation/?p=836 http://www.terralingua.org/bcdconservation/?p=836#comments Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:56:48 +0000 Luisa Maffi http://www.terralingua.org/bcdconservation/?p=836 What do we need to do to further promote biocultural diversity conservation?

Since the existence of an “inextricable link” between cultural and biological diversity was affirmed in the pioneering 1988 Declaration of Belém, the field of biocultural diversity (BCD) has grown organically out of a variety of sources in the natural, social, and behavioral sciences, humanities, applied sciences, policy, and human rights. It has developed as an integrative approach that sees biodiversity, cultural diversity, and linguistic diversity as three interrelated and interdependent aspects of the diversity of life. BCD research has also shown that there is a “converging extinction crisis” of BCD: BCD is in significant decline globally, under the cumulative and synergistic effect of environmental degradation and rapid socio-economic, cultural and political changes driven by economic globalization and cultural homogenization. These changes affect in particular Indigenous peoples and local communities, who represent most of the world’s cultural diversity and are the main stewards of BCD.

Efforts are underway all over the world—many of them spearheaded by Indigenous peoples and local communities themselves—to sustain and restore cultures and biodiversity, often against tremendous odds. Efforts are also underway to further advance knowledge and understanding of BCD and impart this approach in education, as well as to promote the adoption of bioculturally friendly policies at international and national levels. In short, BCD is becoming an increasingly accepted paradigm; yet, the overall prospects for sustaining the biocultural diversity of life remain precarious. The very fabric of life in nature and culture continues to unravel, leaving our biocultural world increasingly fragile and the outlook for humans and all other species increasingly uncertain. What more needs to be done to foster a global shift in values toward a new paradigm that celebrates, cherishes and protects the biocultural diversity of life, in order to ensure that sustaining and restoring BCD becomes a primary societal goal and a fundamental object of political, social, and economic action? What obstacles need to be overcome, what opportunities need to be seized?

In our book Biocultural Diversity Conservation: A Global Sourcebook (Earthscan, 2010), Ellen Woodley and I identified a number of gaps and needs at various levels: in research and field work, in policy, in synergizing with other germane approaches and common interest communities, and in education. Some examples are:

In research and field work:

But the threats to biodiversity and cultural diversity are pervasive and far-reaching worldwide, and as a consequence the vitality and resilience of many local cultures and environments is rapidly eroding. In such cases, support for biocultural diversity often takes the form of explicit and conscious efforts at “revival”: that is, attempts to sustain cultures, languages and the environments when damage is imminent or has begun, or to restore them after they have already been damaged. Revival approaches are prevalent in the case studies included in our book Biocultural Diversity Conservation: A Global Sourcebook and presented in the project gallery on this portal. This underscores the urgency of the situation and the need to understand what conditions need to be in place in order to address the threats and restore vitality and resilience to bioculturally diverse people and places.

The projects we analyzed in the Sourcebook exemplify a great diversity of approaches to this challenge.  Each project addresses aspects of a whole constellation of issues that are critical for the achievement of biocultural diversity conservation and global sustainability. Looking at the projects as a kaleidoscope of human ingenuity put to the service of confronting some of the most pressing challenges of our times serves to highlight their very diversity as the key feature, instead of singling out individual projects as examples of “best practices”. It is the collective dimension of these projects as a whole, rather than the features of any one “model project”, that reveals the variety and richness of “good practices” that are and can be deployed according to need and circumstances. The diversity of continue reading-->]]> http://www.terralingua.org/bcdconservation/?feed=rss2&p=741 0 http://www.terralingua.org/bcdconservation/?p=733 http://www.terralingua.org/bcdconservation/?p=733#comments Thu, 04 Mar 2010 19:18:26 +0000 Luisa Maffi http://www.terralingua.org/bcdconservation/?p=733 Throughout the world, biocultural diversity continues to decline, despite the growing recognition of its vital importance for the future of humanity and of all life on earth. The many on-the-ground efforts that are taking place worldwide to support and restore biocultural diversity are forging a new, integrated path toward sustainability. However, by and large these efforts happen in isolation from one another and tend to “fall under the radar”: they often remain invisible, and the people involved in them cannot benefit from one another’s experiences and form a common front. There have been no established mechanisms for making the interconnections among these efforts. As a consequence, the lessons from all these activities remain dispersed in many different locales and cannot be learned easily. Their wide-ranging implications for policy and implementation—and indeed for an overall paradigm shift in how we think of human relationships with the environment—cannot be brought out as prominently as they deserve. Our current global predicament calls for giving much greater visibility to these efforts, so that we can share successes and solutions, and work together to better address the challenges ahead and promote a more favorable climate for biocultural diversity conservation. One of the key goals of the Terralingua project that led to our book Biocultural Diversity Conservation: A Global Sourcebook is to support the development of a network, or “community of practice”, in biocultural diversity conservation, so as to create the conditions for greater direct interactions among researchers and practitioners involved in biocultural diversity conservation activities. Within such a network, people are able to share information, experiences, and lessons learned among peers, discuss what works and what remains a challenge, and build on this knowledge sharing in order to strengthen methodologies, expand the scope of the approach, raise awareness, and identify needs and opportunities for advancing biocultural diversity research, policy, and action. This companion portal to our Sourcebook is our response to the need for such a community of practice. On the “Stories” page, portal users can read as well as post “real-life” stories of people who are working on the ground to conserve biocultural diversity.  On the “Projects” page, people can add to the gallery of biocultural diversity conservation projects, thus progressively expanding the network and its worldwide reach. The “Conservation in Conversation” discussion forum enables participants to post queries and comments and discuss relevant topics, ranging from the “nuts and bolts” of biocultural diversity continue reading-->]]> http://www.terralingua.org/bcdconservation/?feed=rss2&p=733 0