Biocultural Diversity and Sustainability
18-Pretty-Ch18 6/22/07 3:18 PM Page 267 18 Biocultural Diversity and Sustainability Luisa Maffi with the environment and thus of the relationships INTRODUCTION between the state of the environment, the threats or pressures on it, and the response options to Conventional approaches to environmental con- counter or alleviate the threats. Three will be men- servation have tended to consider the role of tioned here in particular. humans only or mostly in terms of the threats that In the natural sciences, the field of ecosystem the intensification of human extractive and trans- health (Rapport, 1998, 2007) embraces a formative activities poses for the environment. “humans-in-environment” approach which, while From this perspective, finding solutions to envi- acknowledging that the global commons are ronmental problems largely means seeking to put severely imperiled by human action, takes as its a halt to those activities by “taking human hands main goal to address Aldo Leopold’s challenging off ” what is seen as the last remaining pristine question: how can we humanly occupy the Earth environments on the planet (Terborgh, 1999). without rendering it dysfunctional? In the social Underlying this perspective is a philosophical sciences, the field of biocultural diversity (Maffi, view that depicts humans as external to, and sepa- 2001a, 2005) – drawing from anthropological, rate from, nature, and interacting with it mostly in ethnobiological, and ethnoecological insights an effort to establish dominion over it (Eldredge, about the relationships of human language, 1995). Complementarily, nature is seen as sepa- knowledge, and practices with the environment – rate from humans and as existing in a primordial, takes as its fundamental assumption the existence “virgin” state unless and until they are encroached of an “inextricable link” between biological and upon by humans.
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