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Biocultural Diversity and Sustainability
Luisa Maffi

INTRODUCTION
Conventional approaches to environmental conservation have tended to consider the role of humans only or mostly in terms of the threats that the intensification of human extractive and transformative activities poses for the environment. From this perspective, finding solutions to environmental problems largely means seeking to put a halt to those activities by taking human hands off what is seen as the last remaining pristine environments on the planet (Terborgh, 1999). Underlying this perspective is a philosophical view that depicts humans as external to, and separate from, nature, and interacting with it mostly in an effort to establish dominion over it (Eldredge, 1995). Complementarily, nature is seen as separate from humans and as existing in a primordial, virgin state unless and until they are encroached upon by humans. That the exponential increase in the pace and scale of human activities has come to constitute the prime threat to the environment is undeniable both through the direct effects of extraction and transformation of natural resources, and through the indirect effects of these activities (such as global climate change). It is now widely recognized that we have entered an era in which massive species extinctions, habitat deterioration, and loss of ecosystem functions are all due principally to human intervention (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). From the 1980s onwards, however, several paradigms have challenged the philosophical perspective described above, presenting a different view of human relationships

with the environment and thus of the relationships between the state of the environment, the threats or pressures on it, and the response options to counter or alleviate the threats. Three will be mentioned here in particular. In the natural sciences, the field of ecosystem health (Rapport, 1998, 2007) embraces a humans-in-environment approach which, while acknowledging that the global commons are severely imperiled by human action, takes as its main goal to address Aldo Leopolds challenging question: how can we humanly occupy the Earth without rendering it dysfunctional? In the social sciences, the field of biocultural diversity (Maffi, 2001a, 2005) drawing from anthropological, ethnobiological, and ethnoecological insights about the relationships of human language, knowledge, and practices with the environment takes as its fundamental assumption the existence of an inextricable link between biological and cultural diversity. And in the realm of policy, the sustainable development paradigm that emerged in the 1980s proposes that the key to sustainability resides in balancing three pillars: environment, society, and economy (Bruntland, 1987). The documents spawned by the 1992 Rio Summit on Environment and Development (Rio Declaration, Agenda 21, Convention on Biological Diversity) also recognize the relevance of traditional environmental knowledge for the conservation of biodiversity. This chapter reviews the field of biocultural diversity, its history and main contributions thus far, as well as the gaps and needs for future research and application. It then explores this fields relationships to the idea of sustainability

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and points to its current and future opportunities to contribute to achieving a sustainable world.

SOME HISTORY AND DEFINITIONS

The idea of an inextricable link between biological and cultural diversity was perhaps first expressed in those terms in the 1988 Declaration of Belm of the International Society of Ethnobiology (http://ise.arts.ubc.ca/ declareBelem.html). Several decades of ethnobiological and ethnoecological work had accumulated evidence about the depth and detail of indigenous and local knowledge about plants and animals, habitats, and ecological functions and relations, as well as about the low environmental impact, and indeed sustainability historically and at present of many traditional forms of natural resource use. The evidence also pointed to a variety of ways in which humans have maintained, enhanced, and even created biodiversity through culturally diverse practices of management of wild resources and the raising of domesticated species (such as the use of fire, protection and dissemination of culturally important wild species, agroforestry, horticulture, animal

husbandry, etc.). This countered the image of pristine environments, unaffected by humans, that could be brought back to their original state by fencing them off to protect them from human activity. (See, e.g. Heckenberger et al., 2003, for recent evidence about the anthropogenic nature of even parts of so-called virgin tropical rainforests.) These findings suggested the following conclusion: the sum total and cumulative effect of the variety of local interlinkages and interdependencies between humans and the environment worldwide means that at the global level biodiversity and cultural diversity are also interlinked and interdependent, with significant implications for the conservation of both diversities. Pioneering global cross-mappings of the distributions of biodiversity and linguistic diversity (taken as a proxy for cultural diversity as a whole) provided independent support for this conclusion, revealing significant geographic overlaps between the two diversities, especially in the tropics, and a strong coincidence between biologically and linguistically megadiverse countries (Harmon, 1996). Map 1 shows some of these correlations, with a focus on endemism in both languages and higher vertebrate species (languages and species only found within the borders of an individual country).

Map 1 Endemism in language and higher vertebrates: comparison of the top 25 countries Source: Harmon (1996), based on data from Groombridge (1992) (pp. 139141, for species) and Grimes (1992) (for languages). Figures for Ethiopia include Eritrea. Higher vertebrates include mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians; reptiles not included for USA, China, and Papua New Guinea because the numbers were not reported in the source table.

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Interest in this topic grew through the 1990s, drawing from a variety of sources in the natural, social, and behavioral sciences, humanities, applied sciences, policy, and human rights. Out of these converging interests, a new field of research and applied work has emerged that has been labeled biocultural diversity (Posey, 1999; Maffi, 2001a, 2005; Harmon, 2002; Stepp, et al., 2002; Carlson and Maffi, 2004). This label is actually a short form for biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity. Proponents of this field argue that the diversity of life is comprised not only of the variety of species and cultures that have evolved on earth, but also of the variety of languages that humans have developed over time. This approach also highlights the role of language as a vehicle for communicating and transmitting cultural values, traditional knowledge and practices, and thus for mediating humanenvironment interactions and mutual adaptations. (On the specific aspect of linguistic diversity, see Maffi, 1998, 2001b; Maffi et al., 1999; Harmon, 2002.) Although the theoretical and methodological bases of the field of biocultural diversity are still being refined, and an explicit, agreed-upon conceptual framework has not been fully worked out yet, it is possible to glean some definitions and key elements based on how the concept has been

generally used by its proponents. Biocultural diversity might be defined as follows. Biocultural diversity comprises the diversity of life in all of its manifestations: biological, cultural, and linguistic, which are interrelated (and possibly coevolved) within a complex socio-ecological adaptive system. The above definition comprises the following key elements: 1 The diversity of life is made up not only of the diversity of plants and animal species, habitats, and ecosystems found on the planet, but also of the diversity of human cultures and languages. 2 These diversities do not exist in separate and parallel realms, but rather they interact with and affect one another in complex ways. 3 The links among these diversities have developed over time through mutual adaptation between humans and the environment at the local level, possibly of a coevolutionary nature. A possible representation of these complex relationships at different scales is suggested by the diagram in Figure 18.1. Taken together, the above assumptions raise important issues of history, pattern, and causality: how have the links among diversities developed and changed over time, how are the relationships

GLOBAL, REGIONAL, OR NATIONAL LEVEL CORRELATIONS BIODIVERSITY AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY Ecosystem, species & genetic richness Languages and cultures

CAUSAL RELATIONSHIPS AT LOCAL LEVEL BIODIVERSITY LOCAL CULTURES

Ecosystem, species & genetic richness

Ecological knowledge, practices, beliefs, language

Figure 18.1 Relationship between national/regional/global correlations of cultural and biological diversity and causal relationships between cultures and biodiversity at the local level Source: original figure by Ellen Woodley, 2005.

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manifested today, and how does one form of diversity affect the others? Is local biodiversity, at least to some extent, culture specific? These assumptions also raise significant issues of scale and levels of analysis: how do these diversities and the relationships among them manifest themselves and play out at different degrees of resolution, from the local to the global, and how are patterns and processes connected across scales? This stresses the need for, on the one hand, indepth studies of the global distributions of biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity, both currently and over time; on the other, detailed case studies of the links between the environment and language, cultural beliefs, knowledge, and practices at regional and local levels. A corollary of the definition of biocultural diversity is that the trends in biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity are also interrelated, potentially with mutual beneficial or detrimental effects. This corollary points to the importance of having tools, or indicators, to measure and compare the state and trends in these diversities globally and regionally, in order to assess whether the current and historical status of one is mirrored by the current and historical status of the others.Work carried out from a biocultural perspective during the past decade has sought to tackle some of the questions and needs mentioned above. A review of the key literature follows, along with a discussion of some of the gaps that call for further study.

ADVANCES AND GAPS IN BIOCULTURAL DIVERSITY RESEARCH

The main lines of work that have so far been developed in this field can be grouped under three headings: global and regional analyses of the correlations between linguistic and biological diversity; tools for measuring and assessing the state of biocultural diversity; and studies about the persistence and loss of biocultural diversity. Harmons initial work on global biodiversity linguistic diversity correlations (Harmon, 1996) pointed to several large-scale biogeographic factors that might account for these correlations, in that they might comparably affect the development of both biological and linguistic diversity (such as extensive land masses with a variety of terrains, climates, and ecosystems; island territories, especially with internal geophysical barriers; tropical climates, fostering higher numbers and densities of species). In addition, Harmon hypothesized a process of coevolution of small human populations with their local ecosystems. Such a process would have developed over time, as humans interacted closely with the environment,

modifying it as they adapted to it and developing specialized knowledge of it, as well as specialized ways of talking about it. Thus, the local languages, through which this knowledge was encoded and transmitted, would in turn have become molded by and specifically adapted to their socioecological environments. On the other hand, Mhlhusler (1996) called attention to the fact that linguistic and cultural distinctiveness can develop also in the absence of mutual isolation: for example, among human groups who belong to the same broadly defined cultural area (i.e. groups sharing many cultural traits), or whose languages are considered to be historically related or to have undergone extensive mutual contact, and who occupy the same or contiguous ecological niches. Such circumstances high concentrations of linguistically distinct communities coexisting side by side in the same areas and communicating through complex networks of multilingualism appear to have occurred frequently throughout human history (Hill, 1997), and still exist today in many parts of the world (the Pacific being a prime example). This points to the role of sociocultural factors, along with biogeographic factors, in the development of linguistic diversity. Numerous other researchers, using databases of the worlds languages or the worlds cultures, have sought to correlate the global or regional distribution of linguistic or cultural diversity with both environmental and social factors (Nichols, 1990, 1992; Chapin, 1992 [2003]; Mace and Pagel, 1995; Wilcox and Duin, 1995; Nettle, 1996, 1998, 1999; Oviedo et al., 2000; Lizarralde, 2001; Smith, 2001; Collard and Foley, 2002; Moore et al., 2002; Manne, 2003; SkutnabbKangas et al., 2003; Sutherland, 2003; Stepp et al., 2004, 2005). Some of the same geographic and climatic factors, such as low latitude, higher rainfall, higher temperatures, coastlines, and mountains, have been repeatedly identified as positively correlated with both high linguistic diversity and high biological diversity. Higher latitudes, plains, and drier climates tend to correlate with lower diversity in both realms. One of the social factors that have been invoked to account for these patterns is the difference in modes of subsistence (more localized versus ranging over larger territories) influenced by how geography and climate affect the carrying capacity of a given area and access to resources for human use. Ease of access to abundant resources found in place seems to favor localized boundary formation and diversification of larger numbers of small human societies (and languages). Where resources are scarce, the necessity to have access to a larger territory to meet subsistence needs favors smaller numbers of widely distributed

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Map 2 Plant diversity and language distribution Source: from Stepp et al. (2004), based in part on data from Barthlott et al. (1999).

populations (and languages). The development of complex societies and large-scale economies, which tend to spread and expand beyond their borders, has also been found to correlate with a lowering of both linguistic and biological diversity. There is a significant overlap between the location of threatened ecosystems and threatened languages (Skutnabb-Kangas et al., 2003). On the other hand, low population density, at least in tropical areas, seems to correlate positively with high biocultural diversity. Map 2 shows the overlap of global language distribution and plant biodiversity zones. It is important to note that, while the correlations in the distribution of biological and linguistic/cultural diversity show clear patterns at the global level, analysis at smaller scales reveals significant variation from region to region and sometimes presents a mixed picture in terms of the patterning of these diversities. While Central and South America, West and Central Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and the Pacific consistently stand out as hotspots of biocultural diversity, even in these regions these correlations may occasionally weaken or even disappear when zooming in at higher degrees of resolution. Researchers involved in these studies point to the need for finer-grained analyses that will be more sensitive to the role of local biogeographic and sociocultural factors in producing deviations from global patterns of diversity. More detailed studies on a regional scale will improve our ability to identify correlations and mutual influences and perhaps to discern causal factors that link cultural diversity with biodiversity and affect the development, maintenance, and loss of biocultural diversity. Especially needed is a historical

perspective both on processes of environmental change and on human population movements and expansions and other social, economic, and political factors that may have affected the location and numbers of human populations and their relationships with and effects on the environment. Other critical issues highlighted by this research are the need for a better understanding of how environmental factors may similarly or differentially affect cultural groups and species, and the role of scale and degree of resolution in the analysis of biodiversitycultural/linguistic diversity correlations. Advances in the use of GIS as a research tool promise to propel this agenda forward in new and insightful ways (Stepp et al., 2004, 2005). Issues of scale and level of analysis also arise in another realm of the field of biocultural diversity, that related to the development of indicators for the joint measurement and assessment of global conditions and trends of biodiversity and cultural diversity. The earliest efforts to develop such tools were carried out by David Harmon in the early 1990s (Harmon, 1992). Indicators of biodiversity were by then commonly used to monitor the state of the natural world. Harmon set out to identify indicators that might allow for gauging the state of cultural diversity in relation to the state of biodiversity, and thus for determining whether cultural diversity is indeed diminishing as various reports were suggesting (e.g. Krauss, 1992; Miller, 1993) and whether it is diminishing in tandem with biodiversity. He proposed a number of aspects of culture for which indicators might be developed: from language, ethnicity, and religion to diet, crops, land management practices, medical practices, social organization, and forms of artistic expression.

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The ability to develop indicators depends, of course, on the availability of reliable data sets on the entity to be measured, at whatever scale is appropriate. In order to match biodiversity data on a global scale, therefore, the choice for cultural indicators had to fall on those aspects of culture for which global data exist: languages (Grimes, 2000; now see Gordon, 2005), and ethnicities and religions (Barrett et al., 2001). In a collaborative effort, Harmon and Loh (Harmon and Loh, 2004; Loh and Harmon, 2005) developed the blueprint for an Index of Biocultural Diversity (IBCD), whose purpose is to measure the condition and trends in biocultural diversity on a country-tocountry basis (the level at which the available data sets are organized). This is accomplished by aggregating data on the three cultural indicators with data on the diversity of bird/mammal species and plant species as indicators for biodiversity (also selected on the basis of global data availability). The IBCD features three components: a biocultural diversity richness component (IBCD-RICH), which is the sheer aggregated measure of a countrys richness in cultural and biological diversity; an areal component (IBCD-AREA), which adjusts the indicators for a countrys land area and thus measures biocultural diversity relative to the countrys physical extent; and a population component (IBCD-POP), which adjusts the indicators

for a countrys human population and thus measures biocultural diversity in relation to a countrys population size. For each country, the overall IBCD then aggregates the figures for these three components, yielding a global picture of the state of biocultural diversity in which three areas emerge as core regions of exceptionally high biocultural diversity: the Amazon Basin, Central Africa, and Indomalaysia/ Melanesia (see Map 3). This largely confirms the geographical correlations found in other work reviewed above, in which only either languages or ethnicities were used as proxies for cultural diversity. Harmon and Loh point to a number of limitations of the IBCD and caveats concerning its use. They make it clear that this index, like any index, should only be used to measure general conditions and trends and should not be expected to provide an in-depth analysis of the phenomenon at hand, particularly as concerns within-country variation in biocultural diversity. They also point out that, in its current version, the IBCD only provides a snapshot of the state of biocultural diversity at the beginning of the 21st century, while data on trends are as yet missing and are the object of future research (see below). They conclude that these latter data, used in conjunction with careful qualitative analyses, will ultimately provide a more adequate and accurate picture of the global state of biocultural diversity. At the same time,

Map 3 The core areas of global biocultural diversity Source: Loh and Harmon (2005).

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they acknowledge that the main value of such an index will be largely practical and political, such as to raise awareness about biocultural diversity among decision-makers, opinion-makers, and the general public, and promote needed action for its protection and restoration. It is in fact notable that the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) has recently set a goal to develop indicators to monitor progress toward its 2010 Target of significantly reducing the loss of biodiversity by the year 2010 (Balmford et al., 2005), and among these indicators has included one of the status and trends of linguistic diversity. This is because the CBD has within its mandate the protection and promotion of indigenous and local knowledge relevant to the conservation of biodiversity. Global data on the status and trends of traditional knowledge do not currently exist. Because of the close link between language and knowledge, the status and trends of languages is to be used in this context as a proxy for the status and trends of traditional knowledge. Efforts are now underway to develop time-series data on linguistic diversity, as well as the methodology for a locally appropriate, globally applicable indicator directly focused on trends of retention or loss of traditional environmental knowledge (TEK) over time (Terralingua, 2006). Both of these indicators might contribute to the needs of the CBD and other stakeholders, and will illuminate one of the basic questions in the field of biocultural diversity: is the worlds cultural diversity indeed in decline, and, if so, how fast? Correlated with timeseries data on biodiversity, these new indicators will also show whether trends in cultural diversity and biodiversity mirror each other. Cultural indicators that provide valuable information at global, regional, or country levels need to be complemented by others that will be useful in elucidating the relationships among language, culture, and the environment at local scales. Indicators that will be relevant here include ones for measuring persistence and resilience of institutions for knowledge transmission and language vitality, livelihoods and subsistence practices, resource use and management practices, land and resource tenure, social organization and decisionmaking capacity, and so forth. The development of such indicators is still in its infancy, but there is a growing interest in this endeavor in both academic and international circles. Very relevant in this connection is some of the recent quantitative work carried out by ethnobiologists to measure the retention and loss of TEK. Researchers such as Zent (1999, 2001), Lizarralde (2001), Ross (2002), Zarger and Stepp (2004), Zent and Lpez-Zent (2004), and others are contributing to the development of quantitative methods for the investigation of the acquisition

and transmission of ethnobotanical and ethnoecological knowledge and for the identification of factors (such as age, formal education, bilingual ability, length of residency, change in subsistence practice, and so forth) that may affect the maintenance or loss of TEK. Also, an expert group on language endangerment and language maintenance gathered by UNESCO has put forth a set of recommendations for the assessment of linguistic vitality (UNESCO, 2003) that should provide useful guidance also for the development of linguistic diversity indicators. They point out that sheer trends in language richness (number of different languages) are not a fully adequate indicator of the state of languages. Better data on numbers of speakers over time and other sociolinguistic vital statistics, particularly on intergenerational language transmission, contexts of use, availability of mother tongue education, and so forth, will be needed for this purpose. A methodology has recently been developed for testing linguistic vitality at the local level and identifying the factors (such as age, gender, special roles, etc.) that affect linguistic ability (Florey, 2006). Last but not least, explaining the links between language, knowledge, beliefs, practices, and the environment at the local level also requires delving into indigenous and other local societies understandings of humanenvironment relationships. A view of humans as part of, rather than separate from, the natural world is pervasive in indigenous societies, and so is the perception of a link between language, cultural identity, and land (rather than an abstract notion such as nature; see e.g. Blythe and Brown, 2004). It is no surprise, then, that many of the most explicit efforts to jointly maintain and revitalize cultural resilience, linguistic vitality, and biological diversity are grassroots efforts, whether entirely endogenous or promoted and assisted by national and international organizations. Learning about these worldviews and efforts and making the lessons as widely available as possible is one of the goals of ongoing work in biocultural diversity (Maffi and Woodley, in preparation). Such studies of the factors of persistence or loss of local languages and traditional knowledge and practices, and of how these dynamics relate to the maintenance or erosion of biodiversity locally, are increasingly needed to ground the conceptual framework of the biocultural diversity field. They will significantly help address the many open questions of causality, history, scale and levels of analysis, as well as means of representation, measurement, and assessment, that confront this field. Undoubtedly, they will also contribute to a new generation of biocultural studies at the global level, injecting bottomup data into what so far has been largely, due to the nature of available data,

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a topdown approach. This should in turn promote a better understanding of the nature, state, and trends of biocultural diversity, and thus foster the development of better policies in support of biocultural diversity nationally and internationally. Ultimately, the most fundamental impetus for the protection and maintenance of biocultural diversity can only come not from topdown efforts, but from the groundup action of indigenous and other societies worldwide whose languages, cultural identities, and lands are being threatened by national and global forces. Wilhelm Meya, Director of the Lakota Language Consortium (Meya, 2006), puts it eloquently, speaking of the situation in his country, the USA but his words have universal applicability:
In the same way that a healthy planet requires biological diversity, a healthy cultural world requires linguistic diversity. Yet, language is also an elaborate phenomenon tied to real people and cultures. Language loss threatens a fundamental human right that of expression of the life and life ways of a people.

the rights of humans. The ethical stance of the field of biocultural diversity posits that, when doubts arise about potential damage to the web of biocultural diversity, a precautionary approach ought to be taken.

BIOCULTURAL DIVERSITY FOR SUSTAINABILITY

This ethical component aligns the biocultural diversity field with other paradigms such as ecosystem health and sustainable development in terms of a shared perception of the relevance of seeking directly to influence policy and public opinion. This approach gives these paradigms a characteristic mixture of theory and practice, research and advocacy, knowledge production and knowledge dissemination. The common goal, of course, is to help achieve (or recover) a sustainable world for the sake of future generations. From the perspective of biocultural diversity, a sustainable world means a world in which not only biological diversity, but also cultural and linguistic diversity thrive, as critical components of the web of life and contributing factors in the vitality, organization, and resilience of the ecosystems that sustain life. Harmon (2002) points to the interwoven (and possibly coevolved) diversity in nature and culture as the preeminent fact of existence, the basic condition of life on earth. The continued decrease of biocultural diversity, he warns, would staunch the historical flow of being itself, the evolutionary processes through which the vitality of all life has come down to us through the ages (Harmon, 2002, p. xiii). Others have similarly stressed the evolutionary significance of diversity not only in nature but also in culture and language, as a way of keeping options alive for the future of humanity and the Earth (Maffi, 1998, 2001a). Bernard (1992, p. 82) has suggested that [l]inguistic diversity ... is at least the correlate of (though not the cause of) diversity of adaptational ideas and that therefore any reduction of language diversity diminishes the adaptational strength of our species because it lowers the pool of knowledge from which we can draw. Mhlhusler (1995, p. 160) has argued that convergence toward majority cultural models increases the likelihood that more and more people will encounter the same cultural blind spots undetected instances in which the prevailing cultural model fails to provide adequate solutions to societal problems. Instead, he proposes, [i]t is by pooling the resources of many understandings that more reliable knowledge can arise; and access to these perspectives is best gained through a diversity of languages (p. 160). Along similar lines, Krauss (1996) has proposed that global

Each language relates ideas that can be expressed in that language and no other. Thus, when an indigenous community is no longer allowed to pray, sing, or tell stories in its language, it is denied a fundamental human right. Unfortunately, linguistic rights have been seriously abused for hundreds of years by banning specific languages and indirectly by assaulting language-support structures such as land, economies, and religions.
... Languages today are the next frontier in setting the country [indeed the world] into moral and environmental symmetry (Meya, 2006).

In this connection, the field of biocultural diversity has not adopted the conventional academic neutrality. From its inception, it has embraced a strong ethics and human rights component, and has promoted a vision in which the protection of human rights (both individual and collective) is intimately connected to the affirmation of human responsibilities toward and stewardship over humanitys heritage in nature and culture (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000; Maffi, 2001c; Posey, 2001; Harmon, 2002). In this view, the biocultural diversity of life has intrinsic value, as diversity is the expression of lifes evolutionary potential, and it ought to be protected and maintained. Any damage to it ought to be remedied, and any further damage ought to be prevented. This requires a complex but necessary, and ultimately winning, balance between nature conservation and human development, and between the rights of nature and

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linguistic diversity constitutes an intellectual web of life, or logosphere, that envelops the planet and is as essential to human survival as the biosphere a concept of course reminiscent of Teilhard de Chardins noosphere and of the classic notion of the Logos. Over the past decade, international organizations concerned with the conservation of biodiversity and cultural heritage have begun to listen. In particular, UNESCO, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the CBD, and IUCN The World Conservation Union, have variously included in their priorities and action plans the improved understanding of the links and synergies between biological diversity and cultural diversity, as well as the role of culture and traditional knowledge and local languages in the conservation of biodiversity. We are perhaps approaching a stage at which it will be recognized that the traditional three-legged stool of sustainable development environment, society, and economy should be turned into a four-legged one by the addition of a fourth pillar culture. These are significant achievements for a field like that of biocultural diversity, that is barely more than a decade old. Yet, there is no singing victory. The momentum may be building in some quarters, but the global political will to act to protect and restore biocultural diversity has yet to materialize. Even within conservation and other international organizations that have adopted the topic, the idea that the conservation of biodiversity should go hand in hand with support for the maintenance and revitalization of local cultures and languages remains sometimes controversial. And many countries still balk at the very idea of acknowledging the cultural and linguistic diversity within their borders, or are only prepared to celebrate it as a treasure from the past, disconnected from present realities and irrelevant to issues of environmental protection and sustainability (if such issues are on the agenda at all, in a world that continues to be dominated by materialism and the pursuit of unbridled economic growth). The general Zeitgeist also causes public opinion the key to political will to continue to be largely unaware or even oblivious of the growing deterioration of our biocultural world. If there is hope that the efforts of grassroots communities and of those researchers, practitioners, and activists who embrace a biocultural perspective will be more broadly supported, this hope resides in capacity building and education about conservation in both nature and culture. [The concept of ] conservation reminds us of our duties to nature and to the future, without which the pace of economic growth will merely be a measure of the speed at which we approach the abyss (Sacks, 2002, p. 174). If people in the biocultural

trenches can have access to the conceptual and political tools they need, and if a new generation of people can be raised with a firm understanding that, as Harmon (2002) puts it, diversity in nature and culture makes us human, then humanity will have a chance to pull back from the brink of the abyss and go on to chart a new path toward ecological and cultural sustainability.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This paper is based in part on materials prepared by the author for the workshop Gaps and Needs in Biocultural Diversity Research? , co-organized by Terralingua and the University of Florida and held in Gainesville, Florida, USA, on April 2122, 2005, with support from The Christensen Fund (TCF). It benefited from discussions with and contributions by the participants. These inputs and TCFs support are gratefully acknowledged.

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