Conserving Biodiversity A Research Agenda for Development Agencies (1992) / Chapter Skim
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4 BIODIVERSITY RESEARCH: THE CULTURAL CONTEXT
4 BIODIVERSITY RESEARCH: THE CULTURAL CONTEXT
Pages 90-111
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From page 90... ...
Relatively sparse human populations; subsistence technologies; local control over resources; land ownership by clans, ancestors, or lineages rather than individuals; and other social mechanisms protected much of the natural world from the massive degradation that is now leading to widespread loss of biological diversity. This, however, was never an ideal world; the `'Garden of Eden" vision contains its weeds.
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From page 91... ...
Its members are able to earn virtually all the immediate cash benefits of a forest, for example, but pay almost none of the longterm environmental costs. Ire addition, they capture a very small fraction of the potential cash benefits from the forest through shortterm exploitation, rather than greater income from judicious long-term management in cooperation with local peoples.
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From page 92... ...
As more consumptive exploitation of biological resources occurs, cultural diversity is often reduced, for two main reasons. First, a significant component of cultural diversity that enables people to earn a living from the local biological environment is no longer functional; second, subordinated groups must often imitate the culture of the dominant group, thereby losing a substantial portion of their cultural identity and, hence, their diversity.
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From page 93... ...
The social sciences help identify not only the components of the local knowledge system, but also the timing, behavioral processes, and structural characteristics that result in the conservation or reduction of biological diversity.
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From page 94... ...
As development agencies have come to understand the need to conserve biodiversity and the complexity of the ecosystems and cultures that this task entails, they have recognized the vital role that local peoples defined variously as indigenous, tnbal, traditional, or subsistence must play in the conservation process if it is to succeed. Yet this recognition has rarely been extended to include the belief that local people can contribute more to the conservation process than simply their acquiescence.
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From page 95... ...
Local resource use patterns, then, are not static, outmoded, or unsophisticated, but neither are they suitable to institutionalization in the manner generally promoted by development agencies. There is no single traditional knowledge system that can be used to preserve biological diversity in all rain forests or on all semiarid rangelands, but no modern technological system can perform this function either.
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From page 96... ...
. In its traditional for, shifting agriculture depends on the biological diversity of surrounding areas to sustain the natural cycle of clearing and revegetation.
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From page 97... ...
The reduction in diversity often means special losses to the local people, who may depend on regrowing areas for supplements to their diets (seasonal fruits, nuts, small animalsJ and for a wealth of useful natural products (herbs, dyes, tannins, creepers for cordage, leaves for thatch, and traditional remedies for a wide variety of ailments)
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From page 98... ...
Like shifting cultivators and other traditional agriculturists throughout the world, the Lun Dayeh of East Kalimantan's Kerayan Subdistrict weigh a number of environmental variables before selecting a site for a new agricultural field. Although the environmental variables most important to swiddeners including the composition and height of the vegetation covering the area are taken into account, Lun Dayeh permanent field cultivators tend to be more concerned with other environmental characteristics including slope, water quality and availability, drainage, and soil quality both on and below the surface.
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From page 99... ...
In the Ifugao case, cultivators expect not to find, but rather to create, most of the conditions necessary for pond-field farming; their fields, in contrast to those found in the Kerayan, can be considered largely artifacts, because the soil, including subsoil and the entire surface of each terrace, has been created with human labor. The willingness and ability to alter environmental conditions, which in large measure distinguish Lun Dayeh pondfield farmers from their swiddening counterparts, are considerably more developed among wet rice farmers such as the Ifugao whose homelands offer fewer unexploited ideal sites for irrigated cultivation.
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From page 100... ...
Recent studies of the Peruvian Amazon have shown that the value of products obtained from extractive reserves of forest can exceed the value of production of food crops or ranching on converted forest areas (Peters et al., 1989~. Extensive Systems Pastoral nomadism is another type of cultural adaptation to drought or aridity and, in many cases, to the health and pest problems associated with settled agriculture.
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From page 101... ...
They are assets that can reproduce and can be liquidated should cash be required. In addition to supporting livestock, rangelands serve as sources of other significant economic products: bushmeat, fruits, berries, nuts, leaves, flowers, tubers, and other food for human populations, as well as medicinal plants, building materials, thatch, fencing, gums, tannin, incense, and other products important to the economies of rural populations (Sale, 1981; Malhora et al., 1983, National Research Council, 19831.
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From page 102... ...
In drylands, agricultural expansion results in increased pressure on rangelands because conversion of the more productive forage reserves to cropland forces pastoralists to overgraze the remaining land base (Thomas, 19801. Moreover, grain crops deplete soil nutrients at a rate 30 times greater than the rate of nutrient loss in a properly stocked range ecosystem.
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From page 103... ...
At the sides and against the swidden fences grow low climbing or sprawling legumes- asparagus beans, sieve beans, hyacinth beans, string beans, cowpeas. Toward the center of the swidden, ripening grain crops dominate, but many maturing root crops, shrub legumes, and tree crops are also found.
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From page 104... ...
Hence, reduced vegetative cover and decreased soil moisture would result in reduced local precipitation. Finally, losses of vegetation affect surface roughness in the atmospheric boundary layer.
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From page 105... ...
The widespread belief that pastoral systems are simply artifacts of the past requires reexamination. The view that range improvement in the tropics and subtropics should focus narrowly on the increased per unit productivity of selected forms of livestock, usually cattle, at the expense of the biological diversity basic to the maintenance of local coping strategies and economies should similarly be reexamined.
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From page 106... ...
Based on this information, development agencies would be able to design projects that benefit indigenous people and that benefit from local knowledge. The agencies should identify opportunities to demonstrate how local knowledge can be combined with science in designing systems for sustainable resource use and developing such projects for external funding.
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From page 107... ...
Marine conservation and inshore fisheries development programs should be based on established rights and tenure systems, and should incorporate local ecological and management knowledge. Where traditional tenure systems appear to be inadequate for markedly changed conditions (in the case of greatly increased human population or resource degradation)
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From page 108... ...
The central question that social sciences can help illuminate in the effort to conserve biodiversity is, How do local people affect the biological diversity of the ecosystems they inhabit? More specifically, · How do local people use ecological resources, and why?
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From page 109... ...
~ Devise simple methods for assessing the genetic diversity of local crops and animals, and means by which this information can be used to add to local understanding of genetic variability. Effects of Land or Resource Tenure and Uses on Biological Diversity Research on the effect of traditional and nontraditional resource use on biological diversity builds on the baseline information outlined above to help us understand the relationship between social actions and ecological consequences.
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From page 110... ...
Understand how local institutions deal with, or are altered by, the massive shifts in landscape use resulting from large development projects. ~ Determine how national and international conservation priorities can be reconciled when they are at odds (Peru, for example, may want to concentrate on saving high-elevation crop germ plasm, whereas the World Wildlife Fund will give higher priority to the Peruvian Amazon)
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From page 111... ...
· Identify and characterize local and national institutions that currently record local knowledge and are most appropriate for recording and disseminating it. · Determine the intellectual property rights issues associated with local knowledge and whether local or national institutions can ensure these rights.
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