New article by Jamie Alissa Beck on Terralingua’s Biocultural Diversity Conservation Blog. “It is a natural assumption that international development programs lead to direct improvements in lives around the world. Decreasing rates of under-five mortality from malaria? Absolutely. Improving lives in the wake of unimaginable destruction from natural disasters? Without question. It was under these obvious assumptions that I worked for years on various development programs as part of a large government agency. However, I quickly realized that this dominant model of development – one that often takes a Western approach to what progress looks like and applies it to people in all parts of the world regardless of their own values – does not fare so well in empowering cultures, languages or local solutions. With time I saw clearly that in addition to building health clinics, schools, and green revolutions, I was in some cases unknowingly contributing to the creation of a Western monoculture and the destruction of beautifully diverse cultures and languages that hold immeasurable value.” [...]
The theme for this issue is our growing “community of practice” in biocultural diversity conservation–a movement that started with the publication of our book Biocultural Diversity Conservation: A Global Sourcebook in 2010, and has continued since then through our dedicated portal www.terralingua.org/bcdconservation, an online space that keeps the Sourcebook project vibrant, evolving, and interactive. Our editor Ortixia Dilts has drawn from the amazing global pool of dedicated biocultural conservationists who have contributed to both the print and online versions of the Sourcebook. This issue features articles spanning from South Africa to Italy to Costa Rica and describes the latest projects that we added to the portal.
What is linguistic diversity, and why is it so important? The current issue of Terralingua’s E-Magazine, Langscape, “The Case for Linguistic Diversity”, sheds light on these questions and illuminates them with new insights. This issue introduces our readers to one of Terralingua’s innovative projects, the Index of Linguistic Diversity (ILD), and provides a comprehensive companion to the work of ILD developers David Harmon and Jonathan Loh. “If linguistic diversity is part and parcel of the diversity of life in nature and culture, then any loss in linguistic diversity is a loss in the vitality and resilience of the whole web of life.” Luisa Maffi, from Introduction to Langscape 8.
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