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The Index of Linguistic Diversity (ILD) is fully explained in a paper published in the online journal Language Documentation & Conservation: “The Index of Linguistic Diversity: A New Quantitative Measure of Trends in the Status of the World’s Languages”. 
Terralingua’s Index of Linguistic Diversity (ILD) is featured in a new Smartphone app called “Aichi Targets Passport”, just developed by The Biodiversity Indicators Partnership (BIP). The app was launched at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)’s 11th Conference of the Parties (COP). The app presents information about BIP indicators relevant to the CBD’s 2011-2020 Aichi Targets for addressing the loss of biodiversity. The CBD adopted “state and trends of indigenous languages” as a proxy for state and trends of traditional knowledge. 
Diversity is the natural state of the world (Harmon 2001). It is the quintessence of the evolutionary process as found in the natural world in its multiplicity of flora and fauna called biological diversity and in the constructed world in its multiplicity of cultures called cultural diversity. 
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 
David Braun of National Geographic News Watch interviewed Luisa Maffi, David Harmon, and Jonathan Loh about the new Index of Linguistic Diversity. 
Terralingua Director Luisa Maffi gave a keynote on the ILD at the Trace Foundation symposium “Interdependent Diversities: The Relationship Between Language, Culture, and Ecology”, which was held in New York in September of 2010. 
Terralingua Director Luisa Maffi presented on the Index of Linguistic Diversity in a session devoted to “Measuring Biodiversity and Its Values” at the International Conference on Biological and Cultural Diversity, co-organized by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and UNESCO and held in Montreal in June of 2010. 
In May 2010, Terralingua participated in the 12th International Congress of Ethnobiology held in Tofino, British Columbia, Canada. One of the sessions we organized there, titled “How Many People Speak Your Language? Data and Indicators of Linguistic Diversity and Language Vitality”, included a presentation on the ILD given by Terralingua researchers David Harmon and Jonathan Loh. Other session participants were Luisa Maffi (Terralingua), Gary Simons (Ethnologue), Melissa Grimes (UNESCO), and Alejandro Argumedo (IIFB/Tebtebba). 
Terralingua organized the workshop “The World’s Cultural Diversity: New Measurements Show What’s Happening and Why It’s Important to Conservationists” at the 4th World Conservation Congress (WCC) held in Barcelona, Spain, in October 2008. David Harmon and Jonathan Loh presented the initial results of Terralingua’s Index of Linguistic Diversity, Stanford Zent introduced Terralingua’s Vitality Index of Traditional Environmental Knowledge, and Margaret Florey discussed her work on the Linguistic Vitality Index. |
To support this project, you can earmark your donation "Index of Linguistic Diversity"
To receive our periodic enews and semiannual ezine, Langscape 
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