Michelle Cocks explores definitions, implications and limitations associated with the relatively new term 'biocultural diversity'. Whereas indigenous and local people have typically been the focus of biocultural diversity discourse thus far, she argues that the scope of the term must be extended to cultures that have been modified, adapted, or hybridized by changing social, material and geographical contexts. Using examples from around the world, she shows that people no longer living in native landscapes continue, to varying degrees, traditional uses of biological resources in fulfillment of important cultural practices. Accordingly, Cocks regards these natural products as an important topic in biocultural diversity discourse despite the wild resources' ex situ status as products. Towards nurturing environmentally sustainable schemes for widespread contemporary cultural uses of natural resources, the author suggests “an alternative view taking the dynamics of biocultural values as a starting point for additional approaches towards community-based conservation” (p. 196). A novel approach to conservation would draw from globalization's effects and give considerable attention to today's modern adaptations of cultural relationships with nature and its components. The creation of new landscapes that maintain biodiversity and cultural diversity would expand a narrow prescription for wilderness area conservation and people could choose to conserve the biodiversity that they value.

Prepared by Megan Glore

Maffi reviews the background for the research of biocultural diversity that has arisen over the past decade, reviewing the history and philosophical and ethical support that lays the ground for this relatively new term and subject. Through a survey of key literature on biocultural diversity, the author describes how the increasing recognition of the value of ecological knowledge and practices of indigenous people and the simultaneous connection between linguistic, cultural and biological diversity has led to an increased interest of biocultural diversity. In particular, she highlights several literary works that have helped promote the interest in conserving biocultural diversity and have attracted the attention of conservation organizations and other international agencies. She concludes with a discussion of the future prospects of the field of biocultural diversity, calling for greater contributions to the measurement and assessment of biocultural diversity to come from linguistics, and that the field needs an opportunity to better define its theoretical and philosophical assumptions, its research questions, its methodologies, and its overall goals.

Prepared by EvaLotta Nordqvist, student of Ethnobotany, Uppsala University, 2007

Healthy diets depend upon availability and accessibility of a variety of plant and animal foods. While this variety is characteristic of traditional food systems, current trends simultaneously erode the biodiversity that provides it and the sociocultural context in which it is conserved. In this article, Johns and Sthapit consider the importance of biodiversity for dietary diversity and health and review issues raised at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in context of foods systems. They offer a model for improving contemporary food systems by integrating nutrition, income generation, culture, biodiversity, and the reduction of disease risk as well as its policy implications. According to the authors, most nutrition interventions address the symptoms rather than the problems. By integrating cultural and biological diversity with the preservation of food traditions and nutrition, lasting solutions can arise to improve health and livelihoods.

Prepared by Erin Smith