POLLINATORS POLLINATION AND FOOD PRODUCTION

THE ASSESSMENT REPORT ON POLLINATORS, POLLINATION AND FOOD PRODUCTION
biodiversity hotspots and five high biodiversity wilderness
areas globally, suggesting that cultural practices of the
speakers of particular indigenous languages tend to be
compatible with high biodiversity (Gorenflo et al., 2012). Local
communities also play key roles in shaping and maintaining
agrobiodiversity, including through fine-scale geographical
variations in management related to cultural identity, seed
exchange, use of locally-adapted landraces, women’s
networks to exchange cultivars for specific culinary practices,
and adherence to traditional foods for daily consumption
(Padmanabhan, 2011; Velásquez-Milla et al., 2011; Botelho
et al., 2012; Calvet-Mir et al., 2012; Skarbo, 2015).
Worldwide, local and indigenous cultures have developed
unique biocultural associations with pollinators through
multiple management, social and farming practices and
in the process developed an intrinsic knowledge of their
biology and ecology (Quezada-Euán et al., 2001, Stearman
et al., 2008). People and communities of interest in
industrialized urban settings also interact with pollinators,
for example through keeping bees, and running community
gardens (Ratnieks and Alton, 2013). Pollinators have
become part of biocultural diversity around the world, even
in human-dominated contexts such as cities. Claude Lévi-
Strauss’ (Lévi-Strauss, 1966) analysis of South American
mythology of pollinators describes biocultural associations
with the diversity of ecosystems. Minute attention to species
diversity and habits makes them, as Lévi-Strauss (Lévi-
Strauss, 1962) famously put it, not only food for eating but
also food for thought (Case example 5-1).
CASE EXAMPLE 5-1
BIOCULTURAL CONNECTIONS “FROM HONEY TO ASHES”
Location: South America
Indigenous people of the South American lowlands (Lévi-Strauss, 1966)
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The second volume of Lévi-Strauss´ Mythologiques, titled “Du
miel aux cendres” (“From Honey to Ashes”) (1966) analyses
several dozen myths where honey or bees are present. These
myths cover a very large and diverse range of South American
lowland indigenous biocultural areas, among them the Chaco,
Central Brazil Gê-speaking people, Amazonian tupi-speakers
and Arawak-speakers in the Guyana shield. Lévi-Strauss’
analysis shows how transformations of these myths, as they
travel from one region to another, use an intimate knowledge of
FIGURE 5-4
Linguistic diversity and plant diversity map. Source: Loh and Harmon (2014).
biological, climatic and ecosystem specificities. For example,
a set of myths, many versions of which were recorded in the
Chaco and in Central Brazil, tells the story of a young woman
who craved for honey and espoused woodpecker (Family
Picidae) master of honey. This position attributed to the
woodpecker in several Gê-speaking societies is based on the
observation of the extraordinary techniques and stratagems
this bird uses for capturing bees’ larvae.
5. BIOCULTURAL DIVERSITY, POLLINATORS AND
THEIR SOCIO-CULTURAL VALUES