The cultural context of biodiversity conservation - Oapen

EPILOGUE
At the end of my last stay in the Guatemalan lowlands, I had a conversation with an
informant in San Benito about the meaning of life. We shared our ideas about what is
of major importance to us regardless of different cultural backgrounds. I asked the
farmer with whom we had been working for a long time: »Don Arturo, please tell me what
does happiness mean to you?« Without hesitation he repeated: »I'm happy when the milpa is
growing well and all the members of my family are healthy.« It took me a long way until I really
understood what identification means in terms of an intimate relationship between
people and land, which leads to an integrated use of the natural environment and to a
high degree of affective concern for all of its parts. In this way, I became aware of the
natural sense of place residing within each of us in terms of an ›inner landscape‹, what
Richard Howitt (1991) meant by ›places of the heart‹, which implies that people would
only be willing to conserve what they appreciate and even love. In this sense, I return
to Eugene Anderson (1996) who wrote that any resource management strategy that
leaves out of account human feelings simply will not work and by citing Edward
Goldsmith's ideas about the revision of paradigms underlying scientific thinking: »The
ecology we need is not the ecology that involves viewing the biosphere on which we
depend for our survival at a distance and with scientific detachment. We will not save
our planet through a conscious, rational and unemotional decision, signing an ecological
contract with it on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis. A moral and emotional
commitment is required« (1993: 77). In the words of Arturo Escobar, »this is to say
we need new narratives of life and culture« (1996: 65).