The cultural context of biodiversity conservation - Oapen

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The cultural context of biodiversity conservation
the development and use of technologies, including indigenous traditional technologies«
(Gündling 2002: 39ff.). 24 Although the CBD does not further specify the concept
of knowledge, its notion becomes clear in other official documents such as the
report Traditional Lifestyles and Biodiversity Use issued by the World Conservation Monitoring
Centre of UNEP, which makes reference to »traditional biodiversity-related knowledge«
(UNEP-WCMC 2003). 25
As previously indicated, the significance of knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous
and local communities becomes most evident in the field of food and agriculture
where it plays a fundamental role in sustaining local resource use practices, whether
they be small-scale farming, hunting, fishing or gathering of wild produce. Almost 90
percent of the food requirements in the ›South‹ are met through local production and
two-thirds are based on community farming systems (Christie & Mooney 2000: 321).
It has been recognised that local crop populations are more diverse in such traditional
farming systems than in agricultural areas dominated by agro-industrial technologies.
The variety of cultivated plants has been framed in terms of agro-biodiversity as »that
part of biodiversity which, within the context of agricultural production, delivers food,
contributes to people's livelihoods and conserves habitats« (GTZ 2000: 3).
The slash and burn agriculture as practiced widely in tropical agro-ecosystems in
parts of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific offers one example of a sustainable
farming system based upon traditional knowledge and practice that enhances biological
diversity (Nakashima & Roué 2002: 318f.). In these countries, small-holders
have developed highly sophisticated knowledge on the selection and improvement of
crops and in most cases have developed agricultural practices with few external inputs.
Thus, agro-biodiversity has been fostered following traditional land use systems that
created a genetic diversity including local cultivars and breeds of crops and animals
best suited to specific local environmental conditions. Such knowledge in not restricted
to subsistence activities, but includes detailed observations of population
ecology and species interactions that arise from long-term association with a particular
flora and fauna. And like biological diversity, such intellectual diversity enhances the
evolution of cultures and their ability to adapt to a changing world (Kimmerer 2002).
In this way peasant communities have maintained modes of production and plant inventories
that contain crop and domestic animal diversity adapted to a wide range of
environmental conditions and complex agro-ecosystems. Thus, peasant landscapes
»are often de facto botanical gardens of incredible complexity – stores of biological
diversity and natural compounds, providing sources of new hybrids« (Brush 1996: 1). 26
24 For an analysis of provisions of the CBD as related to indigenous peoples, see Posey (1996a).
25 Terminological and conceptual approaches will be discussed thoroughly in chapter 3.4.
26 In Mesoamerica, for instance, since communities began to emerge about 6,000 years ago, maize
was domesticated through selective breeding from a wild grain (Carrasco1990: xxi). Over the course
of centuries, the largest number of maize varieties worldwide has been created by farmers inhabiting
rural areas of present day Guatemala. Today around 600 local varieties are threatened by genetically
modified varieties promoted by multinational seed companies. Government policies keep the price
of locally produced maize varieties low while hybrid seeds are imported. Their use severely increases
farmers' dependence on agroindustry (Gómez & Pacay Caal 2003: 204).