From prestonh@home.com Sun Nov 26 16:05:51 2000 Received: from mxu1.u.washington.edu (mxu1.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id QAA281156 for ; Sun, 26 Nov 2000 16:05:50 -0800 Received: from femail7.sdc1.sfba.home.com (femail7.sdc1.sfba.home.com [24.0.95.87]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id QAA12939 for ; Sun, 26 Nov 2000 16:05:50 -0800 Received: from C931275-A.home.com ([24.0.234.36]) by femail7.sdc1.sfba.home.com (InterMail vM.4.01.03.00 201-229-121) with ESMTP id <20001127000549.SZTG2350.femail7.sdc1.sfba.home.com@C931275-A.home.com> for ; Sun, 26 Nov 2000 16:05:49 -0800 Message-Id: <5.0.0.25.2.20001126155810.025e2410@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: prestonh/mail.sttln1.wa.home.com@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.0 Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 16:01:35 -0800 To: indknow@u.washington.edu From: Preston Hardison Subject: Biodiversity and Cultural Diversity Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed From: "Dionne Stout,Tamara [NCR]" [The report Summary and additional materials can be found at the WWF Site: Indigenous and Traditional Peoples of the World and the Global 2000 Ecoregions: http://www.panda.org/resources/publications/sustainability/indigenous3/eco_intro.htm] Produced by WWF International in partnership with Terralingua ------------------------------------------------------------------- Environmental degradation aggravated by loss of traditional knowledge, WWF says http://www.panda.org/news/press/news.cfm?id=2130 23 November, 2000 Gland, Switzerland - A new report and a unique map released today by WWF, the conservation organization, show that the world's most biodiverse areas are inhabited by high concentrations of native cultures, and warn that the loss of traditional languages and knowledge may lead to further environmental degradation. The report Indigenous and Traditional Peoples of the World and Ecoregion Conservation: An Integrated Approach to Conserving the World's Biological and Cultural Diversity and the map are the results of a research project that has found a total number of 4,635 ethnolinguistic groups living in 225 regions of the highest biological importance, which represents 67 percent of an approximate global total of 6,867 ethnolinguistic groups. The study highlights that languages spoken by indigenous and traditional peoples are rapidly disappearing. Since the ecological knowledge accumulated by indigenous people in their long history of managing the environment is embodied in languages, language extinction is leading to loss of ecological knowledge, especially since in most traditional cultures this knowledge is only passed on to other groups or new generations orally. "As a conservation organization, WWF is concerned about the loss of biodiversity," said Gonzalo Oviedo, head of People and Conservation at WWF International. "But it is also increasingly worried about the disappearance of traditional ecological knowledge. Governments and the international community should decidedly support indigenous and traditional peoples to strengthen their cultures and societies while managing their resources sustainably". In one century, the world has lost about 600 languages. Today, half of the approximately 6,000 remaining languages are either extinct or highly threatened, and at current rates, 90 percent will be lost in the 21st century. The majority of these are languages spoken by indigenous and traditional peoples. They - and their associated ecological knowledge - are being lost at growing speed because of the expansion of markets, global communications, and other aspects of globalization that promote dominant languages at the expense of native ones. "WWF recognizes the right of traditional peoples to development options that are culturally determined and not imposed from outside, and that incorporate customary, sustainable resource use" adds Gonzalo Oviedo. "Achieving this objective is a difficult and complex challenge in times of globalization and expanding economic and market forces. It requires co-operation and alliances, both locally and globally. In terms of conservation and development, this implies the participation of indigenous and traditional peoples in projects affecting them." The map shows that tropical forests are not only the biologically richest areas on Earth, but also the most culturally diverse ones, as 42 percent of all ethnolinguistic groups world-wide are living in or around these ecosystems. This makes conservation of tropical forests of utmost importance both for biodiversity and for the survival of the cultural diversity represented by forest-dependent peoples. WWF produced the map and the report in collaboration with the international non-governemental organization Terralingua. For further information: Gonzalo Oviedo, Head, People & Conservation, WWF International, tel.: +41 22 364 9542 Olivier van Bogaert, Press Officer, WWF International, tel.: +41 22 364 9554 NOTES WWF works with indigenous and traditional peoples in all regions of the world. As examples, it supports sustainable wildlife management with indigenous communities in Brazil, Cameroon, Namibia, Central African Republic, Thailand and Zimbabwe; traditional resource use and collaborative management of protected areas in Mongolia and in Koryak Autonomous Region of Northern Russia; community-based projects for the preservation of traditional ethnobotanical knowledge in India; culture-based freshwater and wetland conservation in Australia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea; research and valuation of traditional knowledge of predators in Sweden; integration of cultural and spiritual values of traditional land management in protected areas of Canada; conservation and sustainable use of wetlands in Malaysia; conservation of marine biological diversity in the Miskito region of Nicaragua; traditional weaving and salt-making by women in Fiji; community resource management and development in Solomon Islands; community land-care in Papua New Guinea; conservation of sacred sites and traditional pilgrimage routes of the Huichol people within a protected area in Mexico. These are only some examples of WWF's work with indigenous and traditional peoples. Summary information on them is available on request. --------------------------- Indigenous Peoples' Secretariat (Canada) on the Convention on Biological Diversity Place Vincent Massey, 9th Floor 351 St. Joseph Blvd. Hull, PQ K1A 0H3 Canada Tel: 819.953.5819 Fax: 819.953.1765tamara.dionnestout@ec.gc.ca .