ENDANGERED LANGUAGES, ENDANGERED KNOWLEDGE, ENDANGERED ENVIRONMENTS

To appear in 2001 from Smithsonian Institution Press
Position paper by Luisa Maffi (University of California, Berkeley)
This working conference was the first international joint meeting of linguists, anthropologists, ethnobiologists, cognitive psychologists, cultural geographers, economists, biologists, ecologists, natural resource conservationists and managers, and indigenous rights advocates to discuss the interrelated threats faced by the linguistic/cultural and biological diversity of the planet. The goal was to identify a common framework and to formulate integrated plans for systematic research, training, and action aimed at addressing urgent preservation and promotion needs in this biocultural sphere. A special focus was on the role of traditional environmental knowledge and the languages in which it is encoded in the conservation of the world's ecosystems and the maintenance of sustainable human-environment interactions.
In their respective fields, these various communities of researchers and activists have called attention to the effects of rapidly occurring global processes of socioeconomic and ecological change on the very objects of their concerns: human cultural and linguistic groups and their traditional knowledge; biological species; and the world's environments. An ever growing body of literature on endangered languages, vanishing cultures, and biodiversity loss has been accumulating in recent years, attesting to the perceived gravity and urgency of such issues. Underlying this concern is a common interest in the future of humanity and the earth's ecosystems. However, communication among all of these research and advocacy communities, while highly desirable and indeed necessary in this context, has been slow in developing.
Given the comparable magnitude and exponential increase of the threat faced by human groups, their languages and cultures, on the one hand, and the world's biodiversity, on the other; and given the complexity of human environment interrelationships on earth, an effective and sustained exchange of information is crucial at this time among these intellectual communities. In particular, strong evidence has emerged of remarkable overlaps between areas of greatest biological and greatest linguistic/cultural diversity around the world. These striking correlations require close examination and must be accounted for. Issues of human/environment coevolution may be involved, and if so, the foreseeable consequences of massive disruption of such long-standing interactions need to be addressed. We do not have the key to what holds the web of life together. Drastic change, if not outright loss, in one place in the web can (and demonstrably does) trigger chain effects of often unmeasurable proportions throughout the system.
From this perspective, loss of linguistic/cultural diversity, with its frequent corollary of loss of traditional knowledge, is just as much a part of overall ecological processes as the negative changes affecting biodiversity. And loss of environmental knowledge is clearly most damaging in this connection. Most of the time, these phenomena affect human groups inhabiting areas whose biodiversity is still poorly known to science, while local people have consistently been shown to possess detailed and accurate traditional knowledge of their ecological niches and ways to manage them sustainably. This knowledge represents a capital and indispensable resource for any effort to preserve biodiversity and promote sustainability, both locally and globally. However, it is at high risk of being rapidly lost as global socioeconomic factors disrupt traditional ways of life, promoting poverty, population growth, and overexploitation of the environment by both local groups and outside forces. External pressures commonly promote tensions and conflicts over local peoples' land rights and impinge on these peoples' human, including cultural and linguistic, rights. They also foster change in perceptions and attitudes on the part of local peoples, often leading to the disvaluing and abandonment of traditional knowledge and behaviors and of the languages that are the repositories and means of transmission of such knowledge. A better understanding of the social and cognitive factors involved in such processes, and devising ways of preserving these human resources to ensure sustainability, are therefore crucial goals for any program for biocultural diversity maintenance. The distinct lines of thinking, research, and action that have been pursued on the threats faced by linguistic, cultural, and biological diversity thus need to be decisively brought together within a common framework to adequately address these global challenges.
To this purpose, selected representatives of the fields mentioned above convened in Berkeley, California, in October 1996. Participants in this three-day intensive workshop are among the major senior and junior experts in their respective domains who have done work relevant to the issues in question in a variety of the areas of greatest linguistic/cultural and biological diversity -- from the Americas to Oceania to Southeast Asia to Africa. They included experts who are natives of such areas and have been involved in biocultural maintenance and promotion activities at both the local and global level. These people combined their intellectual resources to set forth common avenues for research, training, and action. To foster fruitful interaction, a considerable amount of preparation was done prior to the conference to establish common ground. A position paper and a set of interdisciplinary readings were prepared and distributed by the organizer. Participants also had an opportunity to suggest questions that they considered should be addressed at the conference, and these questions were circulated ahead of time. Also precirculated were the participants' biographical sketches, the abstracts of presentations, and the texts of the introductory papers delivered at the conference, focusing on the main issues and perspectives in the relevant fields. A draft of a "white paper", containing recommendations for integrated research and applied work in biocultural diversity conservation, were prepared by the organizer, that were discussed and revised at the conference.
At the conference, the introductory papers were delivered, followed by commentary by a panel of discussants; papers dealing with specific topics, case studies, and cross-disciplinary interconnections were also be presented. Ensuing discussion focused on the issues that have been raised prior to the conference and by the presentation. A sample of the questions addressed follows: 1) Can evolutionary theory provide a substantive (i.e., not merely formal or metaphorical) framework for understanding language/culture diversity and diversification, as it does for biological (including human) diversity and diversification? 2) If so, what may be the foreseeable consequences of the current rapid and drastic loss of linguistic and cultural diversity around the world? 3) What solid evidence do we have of human-environment symbiotic relationships, and of the consequences of disruption of such relationships? 4) What role does traditional ecological knowledge have in the maintenance of such relationships (or the loss thereof in their disruption)? 5) What role does language have in the acquisition, accumulation, maintenance, and transmission of this knowledge, and how does language loss affect these processes? 6) What are the cognitive underpinnings of attrition due to contact between different linguistic and cultural models, as well as knowledge systems, and how do they affect individual and societal choices and decision-making (with special reference to activities affecting the environment)? 7) What socioeconomic phenomena underlie processes of language/culture shift and changes in ecological knowledge and behavior? 8) How can our understanding of these issues best inform systematic studies of ecological knowledge change/loss as well as action aimed at biocultural diversity maintenance and promotion? 9) How can it best be made available to local communities as a tool for informed decision making, and how can it best be used to educate the general public on the global threats to linguistic and cultural diversity and their relationships to ecosystem endangerment?
Participants were asked what we know on these issues; what we need to know; how we may proceed to find out about what we need to know; and how this knowledge may be applied most fruitfully toward solving problems in biocultural diversity preservation. Recommendations for research and action were drafted jointly by these specialists, included in the "white paper", a final version of which is to be included in the publication that will result from the conference. Based on the experience derived from the conference, participants also outlined a basic interdisciplinary curriculum for later implementation in academic and other training contexts (of which curriculum the conference reader may become an element).
It is also expected that this meeting will foster working relationships between the experts involved and others, as well as students and other trainees--also thanks to the publications and training curriculum that emerged from this event--thus spreading the conference's perspective broadly. Most importantly, the conference outlined a common framework for dealing with some of the most urgent problems facing science and policy on the verge of the 21st century: helping preserve biodiversity and maintain and develop the human wealth represented by indigenous languages and cultures and the environmental (and other) knowledge they embody, for the benefit of local linguistic/cultural communities, humanity at large, and the world's ecosystems.
While the conference itself, was a working conference, not open to the general public, a public symposium by the same title was held on Saturday, October 26 at 7:30 pm in the Auditorium of the Valley Life Sciences Building (rm. 2050) on the Berkeley Campus. This symposium was attended by conference participants and featured some of them as guest speakers. A reception followed at which it was possible to interact with the participants. An exhibit of the participants' books, research projects, and organizations was also set up outside the Auditorium.