between the “two cultures” of conservation-
ists and social scientists
concerning environmental
issues. On the one hand,
Leopold’s concern for
ensuring that the land is
bothused andnot ren-
dered dysfunctional for
future generations, as well
as his focus on an active
infusion of “skill and insight” rather than
mere negative “abstinence and caution”,
provide a perspective that is germane to the
original ideals of sustainable development.
This perspective also seems more in tune
with indigenous notions of relationships with
the environment than the “berries-in-jars-
and-salmon-in-cans” preservationism. In
particular, it resonates with certain indige-
nous concepts and values, such as the
Native American and First Nation principle
that the actions of present generations must
take into account the consequences for
seven generations to come.On the other hand, for present purposes it
might be fruitful to extend Leopold’s active,
humans-in approach to conservation beyond
its original intended scope, to holistically
encompass the maintenance and restoration
of cultural traditions and languages. This
would lead to recognizing both the diversity
of ecological knowledge that could be used
to “harness nature’s own powers of recov-
ery”, and the importance (for conservation
as well as for human rights!) of “reversing
the history of abuse” that has affected not
only the world’s ecosystems, but also the
world’s indigenous and minority peoples and
other local communities in relation to access
to and use of their lands and territories.Biocultural diversity: an emerging
synthesis
Such a holistic approach is enshrined in the
emerging field of biocultural diversity.^23 This
perspective, which has some of its
antecedents in international documentssuch as IUCN’s Caring for the Earth^24 and
those ensuing from the 1992 Rio Summit
(Rio Declaration, Agenda 21, Convention on
Biological Diversity), sees the diversity of
cultures and languages as facets of the
diversity of life on earth, along with biodi-
versity. It argues that the world’s richness
of cultures and languages should be under-
stood as an intrinsic component of the glob-
al human-environment complex. It also pro-
poses that this richness arises as the prod-
uct of millennia of symbiotic, quasi-co-evo-
lutionary relationships of human communi-
ties with their surrounds— humans depend-
ing on the environment for their survival
while modifying it in the course of adapta-
tion.Seen this way, cultures and languages are
at one and the same time essential ele-
ments of what it means to be human, and
an essential tool for humans’ interactions
with nature. For this cultural and linguistic
richness to continue to thrive and to be in a
mutually supportive relation with the diver-
sity of the natural world, traditional knowl-
edge and linguistic competence must con-
tinue to be transferred from one generation
to the next within each of the world’s
diverse human communities, thus ensuring
a healthy, dynamic, and
productive link between
the past and the future.^25
Maintaining and restoring
cultural and linguistic diver-
sity then becomes an
intrinsic part of the work of
conservation— if the latter
is understood in the
extended Leopoldian sense
proposed above.The foundational work in
the field of biocultural diversity has looked
at the relationships between biodiversity
and cultural-linguistic diversity on a global
scale, in particular by cross-mapping the
worldwide distributions of these diversitiesUnderstanding aand mmeasuring bbiocultural ddiversity
The wway LLeopold ssaw
it, cconservation iis ““a
positive eexercise oof
skill aand iinsight, nnot
merely aa nnegative
exercise oof aabstinence
or ccaution”
...linguistic aand bbio-
logical ddiversity aare
spatially rrelated,
with tthe hhighest oover-
laps iin tthe ttropics,
and pparticularly iin
the AAmazon BBasin,
Central AAfrica, aand
Indomalaysia/Melan
esia