and analyzing the overlaps. Whether by
looking at the coincidence of “megadiverse
countries” for both species and language
richness,^26 or showing the concentration of
high linguistic diversity in WWF’s “Global
200” priority ecoregions,^27 or going beyond
the boundaries of both countries and eco-
regions and concentrating on the distribu-
tion of languages in “plant diversity
zones”,^28 these studies have clearly illustrat-
ed a basic point: linguistic and biological
diversity are spatially related, with the high-
est overlaps in the tropics, and particularly
in the Amazon Basin, Central Africa, and
Indomalaysia/Melanesia.^29 GIS (Global
Information Systems) technology has
emerged as a useful tool not only to devel-
op the mappings, but also, and above all, to
test hypotheses and begin to address issues
of correlation andmutual influenceconcern-
ing the nature of these overlaps.^30 Figure 2
(reproduced in colour on the back cover of
this journal), is one example of the use of
GIS in mapping biocultural diversity.In this work, linguistic diversity (the rich-
ness of distinct languages spoken on earth,
approximately 6,800
today) is commonly used
as representative of cul-
tural diversity. Although in
many cases there is no
one-to-one correspon-
dence between languages
and ethnic groups, there
is general agreement that
languages are a valid
proxy for cultural diversity,
as they tend to constitute
a strong marker of cultural
identity.^31 More recent
biocultural work has
begun to incorporate
other indicators of cultural diversity, such as
richness of ethnic groups and religions, in
the attempt to develop more sophisticated
analyses of the relationships between bio-
logical and cultural diversity and to quantifythese relationships by means of integrated
biocultural indexes.^32 Just as biodiversity is
measured in a variety of ways, the goal
here is to begin to reflect more of the com-
plexity of the “culture” concept and to com-
bine all these measures in order to gauge
the state of biocultural diversity worldwide.So far, available data have only allowed rep-
resenting the current state of biocultural
diversity. An important future aim of such
analyses is to move beyond static represen-
tations, through the elaboration of time-
series data that will provide a picture of his-
toric trends in biocultural diversity. The
future development of these analyses will
also greatly benefit from the incorporation
of other key indicators of cultural diversity.
Especially relevant among these will be
quantitative measures of persistence and
loss of traditional ecological knowledge,
such as ethnobiologists have begun to
devise.^33Biocultural diversity in internation-
al policy
Global cross-mappings and analyses of bio-
logical and linguistic diversity are powerful
in illustrating at a glance the biocultural
diversity concepts, and global biocultural
indexes can significantly aid the overall
assessment and monitoring of biocultural
diversity. Both kinds of tools can and should
be incorporated in the making of national
and international policies concerned with
conservation and sustainable development
and with the links between environmental
and societal goals. There are signs of move-
ment in that direction. In the case of the
implementation of the Convention on
Biological Diversity (CBD), recent CBD direc-
tives have specifically identified the mainte-
nance of diversity of indigenous and local
communities as an intrinsic part of the goal
of reducing global biodiversity loss, and
called for indicators of the status and trends
of cultural diversity (and particularly of tra-
ditional knowledge and practices). TheHistory, cculture aand cconservation
Global ccross-mmap-
pings aand aanalyses
of bbiological aand llin-
guistic ddiversity ccan
and sshould bbe iincor-
porated iin tthe mmak-
ing oof nnational aand
international ppolicies
concerned wwith ccon-
servation aand ssus-
tainable ddevelopment
and wwith tthe llinks
between eenvironmen-
tal aand ssocietal ggoals.