The conceptual scheme - The cultural context of biodiversity conservation

Unconscious values and hidden agendas will need to be brought into the light of critical review. (Metzner 1993: 168)

In general terms, it has been stated by Richard Howitt that for many indigenous peo-ple, the landscape in which they live is a »seamless fabric of physical, spiritual and cul-tural threads« (2001: 173). Anthropological engagement attempts to unravel these multiple threads and to document how knowledge and its modes of representation connect into some larger whole. This venture presents considerable analytical diffi-culties, since the study raises questions of how people view, know and use their envi-ronment and touches on the most far-reaching ideas about reality and meanings. The challenging encounter with these highly complex phenomena informed the underta-king of ›weaving together‹ the multi-layered threads to address various spatial and tem-poral scales. In organising these threads, the structure of the thesis is intended to high-light the point that the study offers a significant way of linking levels of analysis. Re-search at each level feeds into, and illuminates findings of other levels. However, dea-ling with material and symbolic dimensions of social phenomena means inevitably to deal with complexity that often makes conventional narrative styles difficult to write

adequately about the diversity of interrelated themes. The following outline may pro-vide a guide on how to follow the entire texture of the succeeding chapters, each of them identifying specific contexts within which people communicate by means of po-licies, discourses, representations of the environment and actions related to knowledge production and resource use.

The thesis consists of four major parts. Following the present introductory chap-ter, the second chapter sets the scene by dealing with the issue of biodiversity conser-vation and global environmental regimes. Within the global context in terms of policy discourse, the chapter compiles relevant provisions as specified within the CBD. It re-flects on protected area management as a widely established conservation tool and highlights the initial starting point that focuses on the value of indigenous knowledge, which has been increasingly recognised as an alternative information source, providing insights for the sustainable use and conservation of biodiversity.

Although biodiversity has concrete biophysical referents, it has to be seen as a dis-cursive invention of recent origins at the same time. Starting with this assumption, the third chapter moves to the production of academic discourse leading to questions of how the topics related to biodiversity, protected area management and indigenous knowledge have been approached from distinct perspectives in environmental anthropol-ogy. As to the role of anthropology in environmentalism, it has been argued that knowledge gained by physical or biological science is essential, but not sufficient to understand the driving forces underlying environmental change and biodiversity loss.

Thus, discussions concerning the cultural dimensions of human adaptation to the natural ambit were addressed increasingly within different subfields of the discipline, which will be dealt with in the discursive context. Including methodological considera-tions on multi-sited ethnography, this chapter reviews conceptual lines recently developed within the discipline that establish the theoretical boundaries for the analysis of the data obtained during the field research. One of the main ways in which our discipline has contributed to environmental discourse is through constructive critique. By ana-lysing basic suppositions and exposing contradictions, anthropologists have examined the credibility of arguments and key concepts that commonly remain unquestioned. In this way, critical assumptions on protected area management will be followed by con-siderations concerned with the question of place as it has been raised in recent years from a variety of anthropological perspectives. The view of landscape as cultural struction may be of importance for renewing the critique of eurocentrism in the con-ceptualisation of place-based models of nature, culture and politics. These findings de-rived from an emerging anthropology of landscape connect with approaches provided by scholars engaged in anthropology of indigenous knowledge. In particular, the concepts and ideas discussed in this last section lay out the main dimensions relevant for the adapta-tion of the research outcomes.

Chapter four moves from theoretical and conceptual reflections and understand-ings through anthropological perspectives and methods to the actualities of lived real-ity and situated social practice embedded in the local context. Considered from a

tional perspective, it is assumed that issues of environmental interest at community level are not to be separated from the larger social background. Thus, the chapter provides a historical, political and socio-economic backdrop for the data resulting from the fieldwork. Given these prevailing conditions, the chapter then moves to the sites of ethnographic inquiry and elicits methodological considerations arising from the specific locations.

Building on the diverse arrays of global, national, regional and local frames, the fifth chapter finally integrates the major findings of my field study concerned with local expressions of indigenous knowledge. It is divided into three major sections related to differ-ent dimensions of human-nature interaction as observed in the peasant communities.

The first part on the empirical dimension explores forms in which the practical aspects of indigenous knowledge become most evident. As the focus altered during the investi-gation from the seen constituents to the inherent unseen meanings, the second part turns to the symbolic dimension and raises questions concerning perceptions of nature and social values linked to the indigenous worldview and expressed in ritual practice.

Within this context of meaning, the construction of identity bound to particular landscape features will be emphasised, whereas the third part of the chapter is intended to reveal the processual dynamics of indigenous knowledge. The context of change deals with dif-ferent forms of knowledge assemblies and patterns of knowledge transmission. By considering the foundational nature of historical events and their continued influence on the current environmental and social relations, underlying causes of transforma-tional processes will be further explored. The chapter concludes with an integrated summary of the seminal outcomes, assessing various perspectives and dimensions dis-cussed throughout the thesis. It combines concluding remarks and recalls theoretical premises framing the main arguments of the thesis. It is reflexive in that it considers assumptions underlying scientific thinking and turns back to the question of how lo-cally derived findings and insights may be transferred to general questions concerned with in situ conservation and meta-narratives of the global environmental discourse.

As initially outlined, the fundamental question giving rise to the present study aims at understanding different ways of seeing, perceiving and endowing the world with meaning. Departing from this point, the attempt to weave together the multiple out-lined threads is illustrated by photographs taken by the author during the time she spent in Guatemala.⁴ They reflect the view that the visual should play a more promi-nent role in anthropological descriptions and analyses. The visualised moments I ex-perienced may remind the reader that the study, although a contribution to social sci-ence and thus also made up of analytical schemes and theoretical abstractions, is committed to an indigenous world, which is not perceived in scientifically constructed categories such as ›structures‹, ›systems‹ or ›models‹. The study is not about ›meta-referential parameters‹ or ›cosmological paradigms‹ embedded in a ›cultural logic‹ en-tailing ›generative principles‹ realised through ›cognitive schemas‹ that promote

›inter-4 All but one of the photographs were taken by the author during fieldwork in Alta Verapaz.

subjective continuity‹ and are conditioned by ›unique contingencies‹ of life histories and ›structural positions‹ in political-economic systems as abstractly termed by authors such as Fischer (1999). I have written the thesis with the intention to document con-nections related to personal lives of people, who cannot be reduced to ›anthropogenic factors‹, ›stakeholders‹ or even objectified as ›human capital‹. They live within complex real-world relations made up of a dynamic entity of occasions and dialogues between human beings, nature and deities intimately related to each other.

Fig. 1.1 Traditional masked dance-drama performed in Cobán

2 T

HE GLOBAL CONTEXT–international policies and local environments

In recent decades, environmental issues have become increasingly recognised in inter-national politics. In particular, the effort to protect the ›global commons‹ became a major theme of contemporary debate. Since the late 1980s, conservation and sustain-able development appeared as key concepts in contemporary discursive strategies on the global agenda.¹ Within this frame, the term biological diversity, or biodiversity in its abbreviated form, gained significant weight and has determined discussions in the 1990s. In general, its notion encompasses the variety of life on earth, ranging from genetic diversity and the diversity of species to the diversity of ecosystems.² As a sci-entific concept, biodiversity originated in conservation biology. Biologists have drawn attention to the fact that biodiversity as a repository of genetic information is highly valuable. In conservationist thought, a basic conviction is that diversity benefits the

1 According to the definition of IUCN, conservation may be understood as »the management of human use of organisms or ecosystems to ensure such use is sustainable« (Kalland 2000: 330). The term sustainable development was introduced in the Brundtland report Our common future presented in 1987 by the World Commission for Environment and Development as a concept, »which meets the needs and aspirations of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs« (cited by Arts 1994: 328).

2 A more detailed definition is provided by the international Convention on Biological Diversity (see chap-ter 2.2), which defines biological diversity as »the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems«. Eco-system means »a dynamic complex of plant, animals and micro-organism communities and their non-living environment acting as a functional unit« (Gündling 2002: 35).

process of evolution; the more diversity there is, the greater is the chance that life forms will be able to adapt to changing conditions and that life itself will continue (Milton 1997: 74). Moreover, biodiversity contributes to the regulation of atmospheric chemical composition, temperature and hydrological cycles, as well as to soil forma-tion, nutrient cycling, pollinaforma-tion, biological control, primary food production and other major ecosystem functions (Mittermeier & Konstant 2001: 11).

Since the environmental discourse entered the public domain, it has been widely assumed that the world's natural diversity in all its essential parts is declining rapidly due to anthropogenic impacts. The proximate causes have been examined in conser-vation literature and include habitat alteration, over-harvesting, species and disease in-troduction, pollution and the pervasive trend toward climate change. Of these im-pacts, the destruction of wild habitats is mentioned as the primary cause of biodiver-sity loss (Stedman-Edwards 1998: 2). Essentially, the modification of land cover for human use entails the fragmentation of complex ecosystems world-wide and the ubiquitous disappearance of plant and animal wealth. In particular, this process has been attributed to ongoing deforestation in developing countries, most of which are in the tropics.³ Tropical forests account for nearly half of the world's remaining forests;

the main forested regions being found in Central and South America, Central Africa and South and Southeast Asia (Jackson & Jackson 1996: 227). Although covering just seven percent of the earth's surface, these ecosystems are home to around half of the estimated five to thirteen million species (Goodland 1992: 416).⁴ Over 90 percent of forest loss is occurring in the tropics, and nowhere more than in Latin America. Given the exacerbation of climate change as the primary global consequence of deforestation (25 to 30 percent of global warming is attributed to tropical deforestation), Hallum (2003) also points to the negative consequences at the local level, as deforestation leads directly to soil erosion and the sedimentation of waterways and flooding. Since tropical soils are generally poor in nutrients, such ecosystems are characterised by the fact that most nutrients cycled in the system are stored in the vegetation. Due to an almost self-contained nature of this cycle, the elimination of the vegetative cover brings about a decrease of soil fertility and thus diminishes the productive potential of these ecosystems.

3 Ninety percent of the earth's genetic diversity is found in developing countries (GTZ 2001: 1). The annual deforestation rate in the tropics is thought to be 17 to 20 million ha, entailing an estimated loss of 10,000 species each year (Hellier et al. 1999: 869). Pointing the way forward, IUCN estimates that over 34,000 species of plants are currently threatened with extinction, which corresponds with 12.5 percent of the entire world's flora (Townsend 2000: 82).

4 Most sources point to the increasing extinction rate as a clear indicator of biodiversity loss. How-ever, it is impossible to assess accurately the number of species existing in the world. So far, 1.6 to 1.7 million species have been scientifically identified (Jackson & Jackson 1996: 230).

Fig. 2.1 Epiphytes are part of the highly diverse ecosystems of tropical rainforests

These observations and predictions, particularly in view of the significant forest clear-ance in the tropics, have given cause for international concern; the need to conserve biological resources has become widely agreed upon. As the world's biodiversity is not only restricted to wild flora and fauna, the growing concern also applies to the impor-tance of plant genetic diversity as cultivated in agriculture and agroforestry. The phe-nomenon of biodiversity loss does not only take place in natural environments, biodi-versity has also decreased in agricultural landscapes. Since the origin of agriculture some 10,000 years ago, farmers have maintained numerous varieties of important food crops.⁵ Due to the ongoing alteration of ecosystems, the genetic base of many food commodities is rapidly eroding. Agricultural intensification has encouraged a se-vere depletion of varieties of domestic plants.⁶ Altered patterns of consumption, cli-mate change, civil strife, wars and the resulting migration are further causes of the loss of resources and associated knowledge. This erosion is increasingly curtailing access by present and future generations to the genetic material needed for adaptation through selective breeding; the associated risks are undermining local and regional food security (GTZ 2000: 4).⁷

5 Diversification of crops and varied patterns of plant management tend to keep pest populations relatively low, even under conditions of intensive cultivation (Ellen 2003: 61).

6 It has been assumed that the diversity of cultivated plants has declined by some 75 percent since the middle of the 19^th century. This process accelerated in the course of the Green Revolution begin-ning in the 1960s, which encouraged the planting of high-yield varieties and fast-growing species de-pendent on fertilisers, pesticides and irrigation to increase productivity and enhance capacity accord-ing to a template of progress deemed universally valid. In disseminataccord-ing science-based agriculture to developing countries, this ideology has led to the replacing of numerous species and varieties of crops, plants and trees with monocultures vulnerable to pests and diseases. Shiva (1994) critically sees in this deliberate replacement of biological diversity with biological homogeneity in forestry, ag-riculture, fisheries and animal husbandry a primary cause for the large-scale destruction of biodiversity.

7 The number of seed varieties used in modern agriculture is diminishing and traditional varieties are increasingly becoming extinct. At present, it is estimated that global crop diversity is decreasing at one to two percent annually; likewise, endangered livestock breeds are vanishing at rates of about five percent a year (Christie & Mooney 2000: 321).

As suggested by Jackson and Jackson (1996: 230), the loss of agro-biodiversity through crop monoculture is a primary cause of concern as the world's population is dependent on only a minimal percentage of the 250,000 plant species as staple food crops. Thus, the conservation of genetic diversity found in related wild strains is es-sential to the continuing development of crop plant cultivars, in terms of disease- and pest-resistance and productivity.⁸ Agro-biodiversity safeguards the potential for natu-ral adaptation to changes in the environment and ecosystems and for adaptation to shifts in human nutritional requirements (GTZ 2000: 3).⁹

The recognition of an accelerating process of biodiversity erosion in all its dimen-sions has transformed the term biodiversity, which currently appears as a core element in national and international movements and politics. Like few other terms, it has be-come ubiquitous in scientific and non-academic writing. The effort to conserve biodi-versity has become a major component of contemporary environmentalism and ar-ticulates, as Escobar (2006: 244) writes, a »master narrative of biological crisis« in the last decade. Although the conservation movement originally began with a focus on endangered species and protected areas, much of the emphasis in recent years has been on community development, conservation-oriented enterprises, education, pub-lic awareness and popub-licy matters such as international treaties like the CBD (Mitter-meier & Constant 2001: 24). Following the latest trend, which implies that environ-mental deterioration can best be reversed by involving the local population, commu-nity-based institutions are increasingly the focus of attempts to manage natural re-sources in developing countries.

On the global level, a host of institutions engaged in conservational politics have emerged. Among others, internationally operating conservation NGOs such as IUCN or WWF, funding agencies linked to the United Nations such as UNDP, UNEP or UNESCO and the FAO offer programming and financial support in many countries.

Bilateral development organisations like the United States Agency for International Devel-opment (USAID) or the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) also play an essential role in structuring development and conservation initiatives on the transnational level. Multi-lateral lending organisations such as the World Bank add to the list of institutions global governance structures are composed of. Although using different approaches, these organisations to be effective need to collaborate with national, regional and local counterparts, including state agencies and private associations (Brechin et al. 2003:

159f.). In this context, a growing global integration is emerging beyond national boundaries; local actors become involved in global circuits of goods and capital, communication and meanings via international policies, social movements and envi-ronmental transformation.

8 Basic human nutrition is dependent largely on seven domesticated species (rice, wheat, barley, oats, sorghum, millet and corn), all of which require continued genetic input from wild relatives to main-tain their resistance to disease and pests (Mittermeier & Konstant 2001: 12).

9 Orlove and Brush (1996: 342) distinguish four types of plant genetic resources: a) landraces of crop species, b) semi-domesticated (weedy) crop relatives, c) wild crop relatives and d) non-domesticated perennial species.

This chapter concentrates on two key issues relevant for anthropological analysis.

First, it deals with the links between indigenous resource-use patterns and biodiversity conservation. It then proceeds to selected aspects within the framework of the CBD aimed at in situ conservation through protected area management and the acknowl-edgement of specific knowledge systems generated by local and indigenous communi-ties whose existence is largely determined by their natural environments.

2.1 Biodiversity and indigenous communities

The core idea [...] is that the existence and the future course of biodiversity is dependent upon both biologi-cal and socio-cultural processes. [...] it is essential to see biodiversity in its multilevel process of conditions

Im Dokument The cultural context of biodiversity conservation (Seite 25-0)