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The Future of Sustainability: Have Your Say! Week One - “Global Challenges to Sustainability in the Twenty-First Century”
---- I agree with the ‘big challenges’ to sustainability in the 21st century indicated by McNeely, but include here another major challenge that I foresee as an Anthropologist : Challenging the extermination of cultural diversity. FOS initiatives must consider the challenge to mitigate the destruction of cultural diversity and the need to promote the CONSERVATION OF CULTURAL DIVERSITY. IUCN’s FOS Initiatives must also develop mechanisms to redress the current rate in the double exinction crisis of biodiversity and cultural diversity which implies a redefinition of the conservation of key BIOCULTURAL DIVERSITY dynamics. Nowadays the high rate of anthropogenic destruction of biodiversity is paralell to the trend in the destruction of cultural diversity. This double extinction crisis or process is unique in the history of humanity. It must be mitigated to insure that humanity still exists by the end of this century and the ecosystems which allow human life. There is a need to deter the destruction of major sectors of biodiversity and of the majority of the diversity of human creativity expressed in cultures as templates of beliefs, knowledge systems, practices, languages, worldviews and modes of life that ensure the range of human adaptability and survival and sustainable development systems. Reduced cultural and biological diversity is not only risky in an evolutionary sense, but is also costly in destroying life-support systems. Approximately 7-10 major cultures and languages (UNESCO 1995, Stavenhagen 1998) are expanding with globalization while destroying or transforming many of today’s 10,000 or so cultures, 6,800 languages (Ethnologue 2002) and hundreds of religions. Though this implies also the creation of new forms of cultural diversity, however these do not replace the cultural diversity based on millennia of experieces and of accumulated knowledge and activities that allowed for ecosystem conservation (and communal well-being). Globalisation is often involving violent conflicts between cultures which are antisustainability and those that are for. There are also impositions of cultural hegemony and cultural displacements that involve ‘wars of paradigms’ (Mander and Tauli-Corpuz 2004) and ‘cultural wars’ (Stavenhagen 1998) as dominant cultures&languages seek to absorb or destroy other cultures (Appadurai 2002) or control their lands or natural resources. Ongoing processes of Japanization, Americanization, Russification, Indianization, Vietnamization, Chinification, Indonesianisation (Appadurai op.cit) or Latin-Americanization, among others-including religions and identity politics- often threaten the existence of cultural diversity and indigenous societies.
More than 70% of the world’s ethnolinguistic diversity corresponds to indigenous peoples (Maffi &Oviedo 2002) who are only 400 million people or 5% of the world population. Often indigenous societies have conserved nature and maintained high biodiversity through complex cultural practices. But the majority of indigenous peoples may be dislodged or exterminated within the 21st century and with them the majority of the world’s diversity of languages and cultures. Indigenous cultures have time-proven systems that allow societies to be encouraged or enchanted into caring for nature (and for collective well-being) and modern sustainability paradigms could heed some lessons.
Urgent IUCN strategies&actions are needed to support cultural diversity, and specific action is urgently required for indigenous societies. Suppport for their modes of sustainable development and ecosystem conservation should be encouraged by IUCNs FOS initiatives to halt the destruction of cultures that have unique knowledge and practices about ecosystem conservation and that engage in governance at landscape levels to sustainably use ecosystems. Since IUCN must also deal with conservation & sustainable development issues with the rest of humanity which is 95% of the total world population, and deal with cultural dimensions of sustainability&conservation in alL cultures. the FOS paradigm must influence governance at global, regional and local levels, And also the new governance systems engaging statel and non-statel actors and decision-makers. Though some cultures are territorially based, however there is the problem of seeking sustainability among the many cultures and societies (diaspora, hybrids, transnational communities, virtual, urban etc) that are increasingly de-territorialized and alienated from a sense of responsibility towards nature -adding to the problem that markets and economic prices have not internalized the value of ecosystem services to reveal true prices and also ecosystem impact-. The FOS initiative must engage in disseminating –with both optimism-hope and with urgency-fear the stakes for sustainability, in order to change a critical mass of hearts and minds, And actively cooperate in achieving, monitoring, redressing, and advancing sustainable development and conservation as a global endeavour, while deterring non-sustainability and the destruction of biocultural divesity, if not humanity itself.
To truly harness sustainabiliity or sustainable development processes IUCN’s FOS must empower cultures of sustainability & conservation, and the FOS must engage billions of people, key decision makers, governments, the financial sector and markets, the private sector and TNCs, civil society, media, NGOs et al. And as such a ‘21st Century SUSTAINABLITY’ Initiative, of IUCN’s FOS, should engage initially 3-4 generations to span this XXIst century. |