Reflections on Biodiversity

An Introduction

From the 19^th - 30^th April 2010, I’m attending the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues being held at UN Headquarters in New York. The Forum is an advisory body to the Economic and Social Council with a mandate to discuss “indigenous issues related to economic and social development, culture, the environment, education, health and human rights". It is the primary mechanism through which the voices of the world’s indigenous peoples are heard at the UN. I’d like to share with you some thoughts about my learning process, my experience and the concepts I’m encountering during this set of meetings…

Ban Ki-moon on opening panel

Background

In September 2007, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted by the General Assembly supported by an overwhelming majority of Member States. Despite being non-binding, the declaration is important because it "sets out the individual and collective rights of indigenous peoples, as well as their rights to culture, identity, language, employment, health, education and other issues" More...

The adoption of the Declaration represented a significant step forward because it established standards that could be used to eliminate human rights violations, assist in combating the marginalization and discrimination of the approximately 370 million indigenous people around the world. Initially, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA voted against the Declaration, considering it incompatible with national laws. In 2009, Australia reversed its decision and endorsed the Declaration. Last week, at the opening ceremony of the Forum, New Zealand announced that it had decided to endorse the Declaration, in so far as it didn’t contravene national laws. This decision was welcomed by the approximately 2000 participants at the Forum. This year’s meetings were opened by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (pictured above on the opening panel) who reminded us that "Indigenous cultures, languages and ways of life are under constant threat from climate change, armed conflict, lack of educational opportunities and discrimination.”

Diversity is strength -- in cultures and in languages, just as it is in ecosystems.-- Ban Ki-moon

This year’s theme--“Development with Culture and Identity”--acknowledges that biodiversity is being lost due to numerous factors, including unsustainable development and cultural assimilation.

During the Forum, aspects of mankind’s biodiversity such as language, identity, cultures, ecosystems, peoples and human rights were mentioned. Prior to these events, I thought biodiversity referred to different species of plant and animal life; it was the first time I had ever encountered the term in relation to humanity.

Biodiversity is vital to human society (More) yet it appears to be an issue that is often viewed in isolation. What is becoming increasingly apparent is that it is vital to protect biodiversity. You cannot separate human beings from the natural environment.  The growing economic cost of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation alone makes it impossible to ignore the issue. In my opinion, biodiversity must be integrated into national social and economic infrastructures to make development more sustainable.

Reflections: Identity and Language

The Forum is not my first experience interacting with indigenous peoples. I grew up in a small village in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania (East Africa). This experience involved my total immersion and integration into a completely different culture. As I was five, I started attending the local primary school (Kitweru) and quickly learned to speak Kiswahili (English Swahili dictionary) if you want to experiment.

As I spent my formative school years learning how to think, read, write and count in Swahili... my younger brother spent his days happily following a Hehe cow herder around). My red-haired (very Irish looking), pale brother soon spoke fluent Hehe, learned the customs and the stories around the elderly cow herders’ fire. The elderly gentlemen raised my brother with the identity of a member of the Hehe tribe, and to this day—he is most comfortable barefoot in Ruaha National Park. I learned to appreciate the rich knowledge that exists about indigenous peoples. I learned what plants are good to brush your teeth with, what trees bleed glue and which will kill or blind you. It will always be a part of what makes who I am. The point I am making is that while learning the language and absorbing the culture was important…I discovered the more important lessons were learning from nature, developing a symbiotic relationship and indigenous people’s knowledge is part of that.

Continuing to deplete natural resources at the rate we currently are— is not an option because we rely on trees for the air we breathe, we rely on agriculture to provide us with the food we eat and it is naïve to believe that we can continue this rate of destruction without consequences. Passivity is not an option. It is time to act, to think, to investigate, study, and to support one another, to advance together.

It is “estimated that one of the world's languages disappears every 14 days, an extinction rate exceeding that of birds, mammals or plants” (K. David Harrison, Swarthmore College). According to UNESCO, “languages need at least 100,000 speakers to survive, war and genocide, fatal natural disasters, the adoption of more dominant languages all contribute to the loss of language”. Currently, eight countries account for more than half of all languages (These are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Nigeria, India, Mexico, Cameroon, Australia and Brazil). There is little we can do to escape the inevitable. Languages change, languages are born, language die.

Saba attending Art Exhibit "Indigenous Peoples and Self-Determination"

UNESCO estimate that there are currently “6,000 languages spoken in the world today, most of them in several dialects (UNESCO Atlas of Endangered and Extinct Languages). Only a few of those, such as Latin, Ancient Greek and Sanskrit, have been kept alive artificially.” In the past 300 years, there has been a dramatic increase in the death and disappearance of languages. Today, 3,000 or more languages that are still spoken are endangered, seriously endangered or dying. A language becomes endangered when less than 30 % of the children speaks or learn to speak it but there are other factors at play (more). Hebrew is a language success story…as it is now revived and spoken by about 5-7million people in Israel alone.

The Forum raised the question of dialogue, of respecting opinions and creating mechanisms for effective communication where all opinions are considered and discussed.  It is important to note that “On its own, a diversity of perspectives does not provide communities with a means to bridge differences or to resolve social tensions”. Participants must eventually be willing to be flexible and to work together to achieve a practical (workable) solution in a unified manner. The aim is not to create idealized unity. Rather, to bring about“ one that acknowledges differences and strives to transcend them through a process of principled deliberation. It is unity in diversity.

In social environments characterized by corruption, fanaticism, bad governance, violence, conflicting groups and entrenched discrimination communities are weakened resulting in great vulnerability makes exploitation or oppression a possibility. The basis for our cultural unity (in diversity) must therefore be justice.
Act now!

Saba in the GA room

2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity. Therefore, we have the unique opportunity to discover how to take action…whether that means planting trees in your area or finding out how you can contribute to what is being done in your country (see country profiles)! You may want to see Newsweek’s interactive site of “100 places to remember before they disappear” or Wade Davis’s 2003 TED talk on culture.

The loss of biodiversity, like most global problems, is something that cannot be solved immediately. Yet we are running out of time and what we are losing cannot be easily replaced.