The cultural context of biodiversity conservation - Oapen

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The cultural context of biodiversity conservation
promote poverty and inequity; and dependence on ever greater resource use because of population
growth and consumption patterns. The failure of the development model to resolve the problems of poverty
and inequity, rapid population growth, and inattention to the value of environmental resources, is
at the root of its impacts on resource use and biodiversity (1998: 82f.).
Stedman-Edwards argues that specialised disciplines provide sophisticated tools for
analysing many aspects of the current questions related to biodiversity conservation,
but interdisciplinary communication is often obstructed by specialised languages, perspectives
and methods. In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the causes
of biodiversity loss that goes beyond a summation of conventional approaches, the
social sciences must be further called on. As theory, methodology and analysis linking
socio-economic variables and environmental degradation are in the early stages, experiences
with truly interdisciplinary work is minimal. Interdisciplinarity is not just a
needed approach in terms of combining variables, which so far have not been brought
together, but it is necessary to become aware of the »unconscious values and hidden
agendas« to be brought into the light of critical review, as has been emphasised by
Metzner (1993: 168). This endeavour will entail redeploying paradigms and reorienting
a technoscientific development approach, as Escobar (1999: 15) puts it, to create a
new »bioculturalism«, which he sees as a new type of transdisciplinarity.
When I was initially offered the research position within the interdisciplinary project
on Valuation and Conservation of Biodiversity, I asked one of the initiators of the programme
about their expectations regarding an anthropological contribution to the
overall research frame. The person suggested: »We thought you could focus on natural resource
use patterns and concepts of nature among primitive people inhabiting areas of conservation concern
in Guatemala.« At first I thought this comment to be meant ironically; I could
hardly imagine that a scientist, even an economist, would today use a pejorative term
such as primitive to refer to an autochthonous population. However, I came to realise
that the term was used in all seriousness and actually reflected inherent ethnocentric
assumptions, which I should repeatedly become confronted with in the following. The
belief in the cultural superiority of science underlying this way of thinking is still to be
found, even though the imposition of values commonly occurs in more subtle manners.
Although the discourse has altered and indigenous knowledge has become a
hallmark of much research and policy in the environmental arena, I became aware that
reality is still reduced to the physical domain and colleagues from the natural sciences
and economics have difficulty in accepting even the possibility of the existence of alternative
worldviews and different values emanating from cultures with ›traditional
lifestyles‹ that were not compatible with their own worldview and values. I was often
taken aback by their refusal to acknowledge that all knowledge, including science, is in
some sense local or situated.
Throughout the joint research process, my experiences confirmed the observation
Anderson (1996) expressed in his book Ecologies of the Heart that academics are ›creatures
of reason‹ who expect people to act on base of enlightened and carefully planned
self-interest. Reason may help humans to decide between conflicting means to an end,