DECLINING DIVERSITY OF CULTURES AND ECOSYSTEMS ARE CLOSELY RELATED

By Mark Sommer and - - Reprint | | Print |

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ARCATA, CALIFORNIA, Jun 4 2008 (IPS) - We humans speak some seven thousand languages. The great majority are spoken by a vanishingly small number of people in isolated jungles and mountains while a few are spoken by billions. Languages, and with them cultures, are disappearing at an alarming rate; we may lose half in just the next generation. At the same time, plant and animal species are vanishing at an equally rapid pace. These two trends are closely related, writes Mark Sommer, host of A World of Possibilities, an award-winning, internationally syndicated radio program. Both anthropologists and biologists are finding that the diversity of plant and animal life is central to the richness of a culture ­ and to its long-term survival. Monocultures, be they in culture or agriculture, may be more efficient in good times but they are more vulnerable if and when attacked by disease and pestilence. In diversity lies resilience, the capacity to remain vital and viable even one some components are lost. Just as the smart investor diversifies her portfolio, a wise steward cultivates a diversity of flora, fauna and cultures so that if some are lost others will take their place. But as a species we’ve been remarkably heedless of this axiom. “Nature no longer trusts us,” says Vyacheslav Shadrin, head of the Yukaghir Elders Council in the Russian Far North. It’s a haunting commentary on modernity’s betrayal of ancient ways. Like thousands of other isolated peoples, his is under threat of being swallowed by the larger empire that surrounds them.

In April 2008 a diverse range of top scientists gathered for a landmark conference at New York’s Museum of Natural History to focus on these twin extinctions. In striking multicolor maps of the planet, ethnobiologists have tracked the correlation between biological and cultural diversity (which together they call “biocultural diversity”) in a band of brightness girdling the earth’s tropical middle. In mountains and jungles, isolation prompts people to develop their own ways of saying and doing things, their unique ways of seeing and interpreting the world. Just so, plants and animals in isolation adapt to the peculiarities of their environments. Think of the remote island of Galapagos and its strange giant turtles. In a boundary-less world, even those turtles are in danger.

But we’ve got plenty of turtles, right? Why does diversity matter? Both anthropologists and biologists are finding that the diversity of plant and animal life is central to the richness of a culture ­ and to its long-term survival. Monocultures, be they in culture or agriculture, may be more efficient in good times but they are more vulnerable if and when attacked by disease and pestilence. In diversity lies resilience, the capacity to remain vital and viable even if some components are lost. Just as the smart investor diversifies her portfolio, a wise steward cultivates a diversity of flora, fauna and cultures so that if some are lost others will take their place.

But as a species we’ve been remarkably heedless of this axiom. “Nature no longer trusts us,” says Vyacheslav Shadrin, head of the Yukaghir Elders Council in the Russian Far North. It’s a haunting commentary on modernity’s betrayal of ancient ways. Like thousands of other isolated peoples, his is under threat of being swallowed by the larger empire that surrounds them.

Yet modern technologies may also offer one of the few paths not only to preserve vanishing cultures and ecosystems but to disseminate their knowledge and wisdom to a wider world much in need of both. Vyacheslav communicates with his colleague Tero Mustonen in Northern Finland via email, the Internet and cell phone. And they jet to New York together to forge common strategies with other isolated peoples in defense of their endangered cultures and ecosystems.

Like it or not, there’s no isolated cultures or ecosystems from both the blights and blessings of modernity. Most teenagers, whether living in Manhattan or Mumbai, now long for or listen to an iPod or its equivalent and text their friends on cell phones. For Eleanor Sterling it’s all one world. As director of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, she moves easily between ancient and modern cultures. Indeed, she is less interested in cultural purity than cultural vitality, the kind of vibrant interchange that occurs when and where cultures meet, mix, and produce something new and vital in its own right. Strolling through the Central American wing of the museum past Aztec and Mayan carvings, she gestures in their direction. “I’m not interested in cultures as museum pieces,” she told me. “Cultures are living things. They don’t vanish. They evolve.”

I came to the conference on biocultural diversity thinking we were going to document the dual disappearance of fragile, isolated cultures and ecosystems in a kind of rear-guard action to stop the onslaught of all things modern. But I came away with a very different impression. It’s absolutely true and tragic that cultures and ecosystems of great richness and diversity are being plowed under and assimilated at an astonishing rate. It’s also true that they hold within them clues to a more viable future that we can’t afford to lose. These include medicinal herbs that could help heal our post-modern maladies and wisdom traditions that could help guide us through the rapids of unpredictable change.

It’s also true, however, that we can’t prevent change any more than we can reverse the course of the mighty Amazon. Nor can we prevent our youth or those from traditional cultures from wanting the many goodies ­ and baddies ­ of modern life. But it may be that the best outcome we can hope and work for is an artful blend of traditional and modern that utilizes the most sophisticated technologies and techniques of modern life to protect, promote and disseminate the most valuable gifts from all our varied traditions. Modernity offers a set of tools that rightly used can actually help us re-diversify our cultures and ecosystems. Rediversify among and within each one of us so that each can enjoy the opportunity to mix and match from the irrepressible richness of biological and cultural variety. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)