Policy for Biocultural Diversity: Where Are We Now?

“It is arguably crit­i­cal for advo­cates of bio­cul­tural diver­sity to con­tinue to rise to the chal­lenge and strive for con­crete steps for­ward at the inter­na­tional and national lev­els that can, in turn, sup­port and be influ­enced by local ini­tia­tives for bio­cul­tural diver­sity con­ser­va­tion. Recent devel­op­ments in inter­na­tional pol­icy indi­cate that this pos­i­tive feed­back loop has been set in motion. At the begin­ning of the third decade since the Dec­la­ra­tion of Belém, edu­ca­tion is one of the key aspects of affirm­ing the mul­ti­plic­ity of val­ues and roles that a bio­cul­tural per­spec­tive can play. Cre­at­ing a groundswell of sup­port for bio­cul­tural diver­sity involves in-depth work to edu­cate the pub­lic, pro­fes­sion­als, policy-makers, and fun­ders about the value of bio­cul­tural diver­sity as the “true web of life” and that sus­tain­ing life on earth means sus­tain­ing bio­cul­tural diver­sity.” Luisa Maffi

At the editor’s request, Luisa Maffi has con­tributed an arti­cle to the lat­est issue of Pol­icy Mat­ters (IUCN, Issue 17, Octo­ber 2010). “Pol­icy for Bio­cul­tural Diver­sity: Where are we now” explores the exten­sive work that has been done over the past 15 years to imple­ment bio­cul­tural diver­sity into policy.

Pol­icy Mat­ters, Issue 17, Part 2 (.pdf) (Maffi Arti­cle — Page 23)

The full pub­li­ca­tion can be down­loaded from the fol­low­ing link: (please note that the site does not yet offer the pub­li­ca­tion as a whole, but in sections)

http://www.iucn.org/about/union/commissions/ceesp/ceesp_publications/pm/