Biocultural Diversity

Goddess Communities in Australia by Patricia Rose

by Feminism and Religion

Originally published on the Feminism and Religion project

Australia has a very diverse and rapidly expanding number of people for whom the Goddess, however She is understood,... more Australia has a very diverse and rapidly expanding number of people for whom the Goddess, however She is understood, is significant. The 2006 census revealed that there were over 30,000 Pagans or followers of other earth-based religious traditions in Australia and, given the way in which religions are classified in the census, this is undoubtedly a serious underestimation. We await the findings of the 2011 census with great interest.

Prior to European settlement in Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples followed their own rich spiritual beliefs, which were based on the forces of nature, a reverence for the land and its creatures, and the influence of ancestral spiritual beings. Recently, non-indigenous Australians have become increasingly interested in the indigenous connection to the land and indigenous spirituality.

While it is important not to appropriate indigenous culture, Goddess women and men in Australia are keen to express their spirituality in ways that are relevant to this land and to the Australian culture. We recognize the need to become more attuned to the ways of Australia, to her seasons and her natural cycles, and we can learn from the experiences of indigenous peoples, garnered from millennia of living on and with this land.

Introducing Ethnobiology Letters

by Steve Wolverton

Steve Wolverton, Cynthia Fowler, David Cozzo

Ethnobiology Letters (EBL) is a peer-reviewed journal for short papers on topics related to ‘the study of human and... more Ethnobiology Letters (EBL) is a peer-reviewed journal for short papers on topics related to ‘the study of human and plant and animal interactions.’ The journal was created to address a few needs that were explicated during the Society of Ethnobiology annual board meeting in 2010 in Victoria, BC. First, there is no outlet dedicated to publishing short papers for ethnobiologists. Second, the Journal of Ethnobiology, from time to time, receives papers that present important data but that do not fit the mission of the journal to publish full-length, problem-oriented articles. Finally, the Journal of Ethnobiology is published twice per year; an open-access journal will publish a stream of papers between the two issues. To address these concerns, we decided to create a new complementary journal for the purpose of partnering with the Journal of Ethnobiology and our new, online monograph series Contributions in Ethnobiology. We immediately envisioned an open-access fully online journal to fill this niche, and EBL was born. We are interested in publishing a variety of types of papers, which we discuss in the rest of this letter.

Cultural Conservation of Medicinal Plant Use In the Ozarks

by Justin Nolan

Biocultural Diversity in Ecuador

by Emanuele Serrelli

Pievani T, Serrelli E (2007). Gli strani intrecci della biodiversità. Le Scienze (Italian edition of Scientific American), n. 466, pp. 96-101. ISSN 0036-8083 [http://hdl.handle.net/10281/4451]

Ecuador is one of the richest treasures of biodiversity in the world, with its variety of ecosystems and species. This... more Ecuador is one of the richest treasures of biodiversity in the world, with its variety of ecosystems and species. This is even more surprising if one considers the small extension of its territory. The secret of such evolutionary engine is all in the backbone of mountains running north to south and separating the country in three different ecosystems, with many transition areas in between.Moreover, natural richness goes along with an exuberant linguistic, ethnic, and cultural diversity. Not by chance, scholars adopt more and more often the term "biocultural diversity": causes of biological and cultural diversification are probably intertwined, forming a node of interrelationships. We observe and tell about this in the first mainland stage of "Velisti per caso" in South America, following Darwin's path.

Some Potential Benefits of a Universal System

by Poppy Valentine

This is a thought paper on the power of the fusion of knowledge, love and diversity and what I believe that has to... more This is a thought paper on the power of the fusion of knowledge, love and diversity and what I believe that has to offer humanity.

The intersections of biological diversity and cultural diversity: towards integration

by Simone Athayde

L'evoluzione delle culture: come fermare l'estinzione

by Emanuele Serrelli

Emanuele Serrelli (2010), “L’evoluzione delle culture: come fermare l’estinzione”, in T. Pievani, N. Eldredge, a cura di, Ecosphera. Il Futuro della Terra, UTET-DeAgostini, Torino, vol. 1 pp. 320-333. ISBN 978-88-02-08379-7. http://hdl.handle.net/10281/9928

The reflection on human cultures delivers more and more a critical and complex vision that makes it difficult to... more The reflection on human cultures delivers more and more a critical and complex vision that makes it difficult to imagine ourselves counting, describe or analytically decompose cultures. Bypassing questions like "what is a culture", "which and how many cultures are there", and "how important is each culture", anthropology and ethnography give scientific form to the comparative impetus that puts diversities - the many colors of a caleidoscope - in relation and dialogue. This is an open enterprise that drops any aim of completeness and systematicity, in favor of critical reflection on what does it mean to be human and to inhabit the Earth together. By the way, diversity can be studied and understood from different points of view, e.g. borrowing methods and concepts from evolutionary biology in order to reconstruct the world tree of common descent of cultures, with migrations and diasporas, where similarities (inherited or convergent) and differences among peoples got channeled. Meanwhile, however, in face of the insufficiency of analysis, the disappearance of cultural varieties is more and more evident. What's worst, this happens in parallel to growing awareness of their importance for the survival of our species. Locating, measuring, and contrasting the loss of cultural diversity is a challenge which, for example, the UN have tried to address through the definition of "intangible cultural heritage". Biocultural diversity, a young and promising field, promotes an integrated approach to the conservation of diversity, comprising cultural and biological aspects.

Diversità Bioculturale

by Emanuele Serrelli

Serrelli E (2010). Diversità bioculturale. In N. Eldredge, T. Pievani, eds., Ecosphera. Il Futuro della Terra, UTET-DeAgostini, Torino, Atlante vol. 1 (A-L), pp. 143-148. ISBN 978-88-02-08383-4. Reprinted in Aggiornamento enciclopedico 2011, UTET-DeAgostini, Torino. http://hdl.handle.net/10281/16655

Biodiversity shapes cultural diversity. Culture shapes the environment. But according to the biocultural paradigm of... more Biodiversity shapes cultural diversity. Culture shapes the environment. But according to the biocultural paradigm of the "inextricable link", such bidirectional co-determination in fact prevents the analytical distinction of the two. We must, indeed, talk about a unified type of diversity: biocultural diversity. The field aims to conserve, defend rights of indigenous people, and obtain political decisions that respect them. A field explicitly "militant", giving up the conventional acadamic neutrality to embrace strong ethical commitments concerning human rights, seen in intimate connection with the responsibilities about the natural and cultural heritage of humanity.

Ecological niche modeling of customary medicinal plant species used by Australian Aborigines to identify species-rich and culturally valuable areas for conservation

by Jitendra Gaikwad

I am very thankful to Dr Peter Wilson (second-author) for helping and supervising me while conducting this study. Brainstorming sessions with him helped me to develop this idea, design the methodology, analyze the data and write the manuscript. Also thanks to my PhD supervisor (corresponding author) for providing me access to computational infrastructure

Customary medicinal plant species used by Australian Aborigines are disappearing rapidly with its associatedmore Customary medicinal plant species used by Australian Aborigines are disappearing rapidly with its associated
knowledge, due to the loss of habitats. Conservation and protection of these species is important as they represent sources of novel therapeutic phytochemical compounds and are culturally valuable. Information on the spatial distribution and use of customary medicinal plants is often inadequate and fragmented, posing limitations on the identification and conservation of species-rich areas and culturally valuable habitats.

In this study, the habitat suitability modeling program, MaxEnt, was used to predict the potential ecological niches of 431 customary medicinal plant species, based on bioclimatic variables. Specimen locality records were obtained from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) data portal and
from Australia’s Virtual Herbarium (AVH). Ecological niche models of 414 predicted species, which had 30 or more occurrence points, were used to produce maps indicating areas that were ecologically suitable for multiple species (concordance of high predicted ecological suitability) and having cultural values. For the concordance map, individual species niche models were thresholded and summed. To derive a map of culturally valuable areas, customary medicinal uses from Customary Medicinal Knowledgebase (CMKb) (www.biolinfo.org/cmkb) were used
to weight individual species models, resulting in a value within each grid cell reflecting its cultural worth.

Even though the available information is scarce and fragmented, our approach provides an opportunity to infer areas predicted to be suitable for multiple species (i.e. concordance hotspots) and to estimate the cultural value of a particular geographical area.

Our results also indicate that to conserve bio-cultural diversity, comprehensive information and active participation of Aboriginal communities is indispensable.

Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and Biocultural Diversity: A Close-up Look at Linkages, Delearning Trends, and Changing Patterns of Transmission.

by Stanford & Eglee Zent

Zent, S. En P. Bates, M. Chiba, S. Kube & D. Nakashima (eds.) Learning and Knowing in Indigenous Societies Today. Paris: UNESCO. pp. 39-58. 2009.

Review of Ethnobiology and the Science of Humankind

by Justin Nolan