Can there be a sea-change in attitudes and policies around Indigenous People and local knowledge holders towards transformation?
Patricia Howard, Wageningen University and University of Kent
Background and justification: bio-cultural diversity and resilience
Humans have substantially altered some 77 per cent of the Earth’s ice-free land, half of which is in agricultural or urban use (Ellis and Ramankutty 2008). Throughout much of human existence, humans have altered ecosystems and the biodiversity that these contain in the effort to ensure livelihoods and cultural integrity across generations. In the process, humans have often intentionally increased the biodiversity that is useful to them for food, fibre, fodder, fuel, medicinal uses, income, and other cultural purposes, and this has modified landscapes in ways that support a multitude of other life forms. Most of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity exists outside of protected areas in biologically and ecologically complex Indigenous territories and human-dominated landscapes (Garnett et al. 2018).
Biodiversity constitutes the principal form of wealth for a large part of humanity, including about 2.8 billion people (nearly 35% of the world’s population) who live in rural areas of the least developed countries, 2.4 billion of whom subsist from agriculture. Globally, farmers of less than 50 ha produce 51-77% of the volume of major food groups consumed by humans, and 48% of global livestock. Farms of less than 20 ha produce ‘more than 75% of most food commodities in Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and China’ (Herrero et al. 2017, 36). Very small farms (<2 ha) produce around 30% of food in these regions, and more than 50% in China. Ricciardi et al. (2018) estimate that these very small farms produce 30-34% of global food supplies while those of <50 ha produce 62-66%. Small farms have high cropping intensity or higher yields and allocate a greater proportion of their land area to food (versus feed and processing); they also waste less compared with farms >1000 ha. About half of the world’s farmers rely on no- or low-input agroforestry farming systems (‘traditional agriculture’) (World Bank 2002), which generally tend to be biodiversity-rich polycultures (Vandermeer 2002). Nearly 250 million people live in forests and depend on them to a high degree, while some 60 million indigenous people are almost wholly dependent on forest biodiversity for their livelihoods.
It is estimated that about a billion people regularly consume wild foods (Sunderland 2011, citing Pimentel 1997), and another 50 million people in developing countries depend on small-scale fisheries (ICLARM 2001). While there is no global inventory of all plant species that have direct use values for humans, PROSEA (Plant Resources of Southeast Asia) (http://www.prosea.nl/) recorded nearly 6000 species that are used in that region, which Heywood (1999) extrapolated to some 18-25 thousand species for the tropics as a whole - excluding the 25 thousand species that are herbal medicines. The FAO Global Databank on Animal Genetic Resources (covering 182 countries) contains a total of 14 017 livestock breeds (FAO 2007), and it is estimated that humans consume around 1200 insect species (DeFoliart 2012). It is not only tropical biodiversity that directly supports humans - even in the Arctic people consume in excess of 100 local species, which represent the traditional and nutritionally rich components of their diets (Kuhnlein and Receveur 1996). About 1.3 billion people live from ‘environmentally fragile’ lands (World Bank 2003), where environmental disturbances and disequilibria are the rule rather than the exception, and people must be adapted to living with environmental hazard, risk, and extremes. Biological resources constitute the foundations of these peoples’ cultural and material heritage, and the substance of the knowledge and practices that they pass on to future generations (Balée and Erickson 2006; Salick and Byg 2007).
Some small-scale societies are heavily dependent on only a few species, some of which subsist in areas that are relatively poor in biological diversity, as is the case with Touareg camel pastoralists in the Sahara, Inuit caribou hunters in northern Canada, and date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) farmers in the Arabian Peninsula. Even small changes in local biodiversity can present major threats to these populations’ food supply and to the availability of fuel, medicine, fibre, construction materials, and other plant and animal derived resources. Some live in areas that are very rich in biological diversity - such the Nuaulu of Seram who depend on sago palm (Metroxylon sagu), Amerindian swidden gardeners who exchange cassava (Manihot esculenta) in Amazonia, or Ethiopian Aari ensete (E. ventricosum) producers. Such species are considered to be ‘cultural keystones,’ so important are they to livelihoods, social organization, and cultural identity (Garabaldi and Turner 2004). These species have ecological and cultural functions that are not readily substitutable, which renders the populations that depend on them more vulnerable to abrupt change. The loss of such species, or of the species that these same species depend upon (e.g. pasture grasses that camels consume), or an outbreak of a pest or disease that seriously affects the productivity of these species, could create many adverse effects not only for livelihoods, but as well for social organization and demographics. Accordingly, the vulnerability of populations that are dependent on a few species when facing biodiversity change is as yet largely unexplored, so their vulnerability is unrecorded.
The transformative potential of, and threats to, indigenous and local peoples
Highly biodiversity-dependent Indigenous and local communities may offer better prospects for continued evolution and transformation in comparison with systems that are highly dependent on external inputs (e.g. fossil fuels, chemicals, irrigation) and markets, with high population densities and high demands on natural resources and ecosystem services close to ecosystem thresholds. Adapting intensive systems to biodiversity change generally implies ever greater intensification – e.g. pest outbreaks are fought with higher levels of pesticide use, weed invasions with more herbicides, and soil biodiversity loss leads to higher levels of fertilizer use.
Across the globe, many national policies have undermined and continue to threaten the existence and integrity of highly biodiversity-dependent Indigenous and local peoples and their resource systems, characterising these as ‘backwards’, ‘poor’, and resource degrading - manifest, for example, in governments’ ‘ubiquitous efforts to eradicate swiddens’ (Colfer 2017). CABI’s recent thousand-page edited volume entitled Shifting Cultivation Policies (2017) demonstrates that, in spite of the fact that ‘existing local management systems are increasingly being recognized as having under-utilized value,’ ‘simplistic narratives’ and the ‘the will to improve’ continue to threaten and undermine what have otherwise been resilient and adaptive systems.
Human adaptation to environmental change has been shown to be strongly related to historical pathways. We thus continue to assume or propose that our transformative capacity is and will continue to be based largely on innovation (which, in capitalist economies, is driven by concepts of efficiency and productivity), including new technology, knowledge, networks, tempered by new regulations and values. However, our capacities to transform our societies and our planet cannot not be built exclusively on systems that require ever greater resource use to effectuate change (Tainter 1991). Existing Indigenous and local low-input systems indirectly support the rest of humanity by developing and maintaining agrobiodiversity, by providing ecosystem services to the planet, and by providing cultural diversity through vast stores of knowledge, practices, and relations, including alternative ways to understand the universe, human’s place in nature, and social relations that provide diverse and alternative ways to organise social relations and economies.
Two programmes have been developed that are based on the premise that the major custodians of the world’s most valuable and resilient anthromes are those people who have developed these systems and who continue to depend upon them for their livelihoods and cultural integrity. The dynamic conservation of such systems and the in situ conservation of agrobiological diversity contained in them cannot be done without ensuring the welfare of the proprietors of such systems, where welfare is defined not only according to biophysical absolutes, but as well according to the cultural values that are inseparable from these multifaceted systems and their landscapes. The Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Programme (GIAHS) is based on the axiom that, in order to preserve much of the world’s agricultural heritage and agrobiological diversity, much of the world’s cultural diversity must also be conserved - the benefits of GIAHS must accrue principally to those who develop and sustain it. GIAHS does not propose that ‘poor’ traditional and indigenous farmers, herders, forest dwellers, fisherfolk, and foragers be cordoned off in ‘culture-nature reserves’ and expected to maintain agricultural systems and agrobiodiversity for the benefit of humankind and of the plant and animal kingdom while the rest of the globe enjoys the genetic, cultural, and aesthetic by-products of their knowledge and labour. Rather, GIAHS proposes that the forces that are driving the loss of this diversity as well as eroding these cultures and the capacities of these agricultural systems to provide for human and environmental well-being be addressed at their roots (Howard et al. 2006). The Satoyama Initiative (https://satoyama-initiative.org/about/) is a partnership of 253 member organizations that are likewise endeavouring to support the ‘guardians’ of biodiversity and community resilience in the face not only of global environmental change, but as well of policies and values that undermine these systems when they are increasingly essential to ensuring our transformative potential.
Sub-questions
Do Indigenous and local people and their resource and governance systems provide key lessons and knowledge for transformative change beyond their boundaries, at landscape, national, or international scales?
Can the proven sustainability and productivity of these systems be leveraged to change values and attitudes to promote their continued existence and resilience?
How can we learn from experiences of programmes and networks such as the Satoyama Initiative and GIAHS to enhance global, regional, and national policies toward transformative change?
Can Indigenous People and local communities’ political commitment and struggles be supported and leveraged to support transformation at higher scales?
References
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Cairns, M. (ed). 2017. Shifting Cultivation Policies. Balancing Environmental and Social Sustainability. Wallingford, UK: CABI.
Colfer, C.J. 2017. Foreword. In M. Cairns (ed.), Shifting Cultivation Policies. Balancing Environmental and Social Sustainability. Wallingford, UK: CABI, xxvi-xxxi.
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