The cultural context of biodiversity conservation - Oapen

Local expressions of indigenous knowledge
The Q'eqchi', like any other culture in the world, are in a constant process of identity
construction through ›hybrid‹ representations, which combine external aspects with
their own cultural background. He further establishes:
Today, Q'eqchi' are more culturally diversified than ever before. Paradoxically, this works in two simultaneous
and contradictory ways: on the one hand it weakens group identity within a dominant order
that ideologically, politically and economically struggles to uniformise different societies and cultures.
On the other hand, however, social diversification can also broaden the chances for cultural survival
by combining material and symbolic elements of exchange with the inevitable and constant process
of negotiation with the external world (1999: 195).
5.4.3 Towards a conservation of bio-cultural diversity
Humans' survival as a species depends upon adapting ourselves and our landscapes – settlements, buildings,
rivers, fields, forests – in new, life-sustaining ways, shaping contexts that acknowledge connections to
air, earth, water, life, and to each other, and that help us feel and understand these connections, landscapes
that are functional, sustainable, meaningful, and artful. (Whiston Spirn 1998: 26)
By drawing on examples from multiscale ethnographic experiences, the foregoing
chapters have applied a political ecology approach to the study of cultural contexts of
both global and local aspects of biodiversity conservation and knowledge production.
As has been described, a primary goal of contemporary conservation and development
programmes is to promote biodiversity protection while improving human living
standards. In political and scientific debates, conservation efforts have been discussed
to better accommodate the needs and expectations of local and indigenous communities
living adjacent to protected areas. A co-management approach, it is argued, may
offer an alternative to conventional protectionist strategies that impose restrictions on
resource exploitation. Like many other anthropological studies, my investigation revealed
an inextricable link between cultural and biological diversity. This recognition
leads to the claim that maintaining biological diversity should simultaneously involve
concern for the loss of cultural, linguistic and religious diversity. Here, the point is not
that indigenous peoples should live in ways that outsiders assume to be traditional in
the sense of »frozen in time«, as argued by Minnis and Elisens (2000: 17), but rather
the dynamic nature of cultural and biological adaptations should be acknowledged.
Strategies and policies oriented at community development and mainstreaming indigenous
people's issues in conservation should follow this scheme, as it has been
widely experienced that conflicts and resistance associated with conservation initiatives
surface not only as a result of conflicting interests but also when contravening
institutional and cultural practices interfere in the same setting. This notion underlines
how important it is to study the politics of conservation so as to better understand
such situations as the case of the Laguna Lachuá National Park, where state-mandated
control repeatedly interfered with occupations of landless peasants.
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