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