This film discusses the effects of globalisation on traditional culture and knowledge through the transitions seen in Ladakh over an eighteen-year period.

Synopsis and Review

Ladakh, in the Kashmiri region of India, is on the western Tibetan plateau of the Himalayas. With an altitude that averages 14,000 ft., with a high of 16,000 ft., conditions can be arduous yet the people of Ladakh have survived and flourished for centuries., With modernization, however, traditional knowledge and practices have begun to change and disappear. Based on a book of the same name by Helena Norborg-Hodge, this film examines the impact of globalisation on traditional knowledge and culture of Ladakh. Norburg spent 18 years in Ladakh and witnessed its transition as traditional agriculture was rapidly abandoned for commerce and as more people migrated from rural villages to the city.

While the sentimentality of its presentation may be distracting, the film presents a compelling case study of the impact of globalisation on indigenous cultures. Ladakh is not alone in the challenges it faces, and the film illustrates many issues central to the discussion of globalisation and biocultural diversity. The presentation is at times a bit idealized and the film would have benefited from a more balanced presentation of these issues. While the important point is clearly made that much can be learned from indigenous cultures like the Ladakh, the film makes little mention of problems, such as health and nutrition, that these communities face. Additionally, other than the voice of a Buddhist scholar, Ladakhi experiences are consistently told through heavy narration, leaving the viewer wanting more direct interaction and discussion with community members and less etic interpretation. Despite its weaknesses, this film is still, almost fifteen years later, an excellent study of cultural transition.

Prepared by Erin Smith

Through the lives of two extended families, this film tells the story of the Garo in Northeast India. Traditional rice farmers, the Garo hold many unique and diverse varieties of rice, which are now important genetic resources. This film touches on many contemporary issues facing ethnobiology, cultural diversity and conservation work.

Synopsis and Review

The Garo have over the years kept a rich collection of rice varieties. This biological diversity is now an important genetic store for rice worldwide. The film, told exclusively through the voices of the Garo, follows two extended families in the village of Sandolpara as they grapple with survival and change as tradition meets modernity and gives an extensive look at the life and culture of this indigenous community. Traditionally subsistence farmers, the Garo have seen their lives change with the introduction of a road, along with new farming techniques and missionaries. Elders say they are poorer today, “even though we reap the same grain as the grandmothers we are poorer”. There is less fertility, fewer forests, and fewer animals. The Garo are a largely matrilineal culture with land and family passing through the women. Women are the caretakers of the rice. They select which varieties to plant and handle all processing and storage of the rice. Men help plant and manage the fields.

This excellent film manages to touch on a varied array of contemporary issues in ethnobiology today, such as gender, biocultural diversity, conservation and indigenous rights, transmission of traditional knowledge, agricultural diversity, traditional ecological knowledge, and the transition from subsistence to monetary based livelihoods. Other than a brief prologue and epilogue, which emphasises the Garo’s importance to the preservation of agricultural diversity, all the issues are shown rather than described, an approach that is both refreshing and effective. In the end, it is a film that centres on the people themselves more than just the issues facing indigenous cultures today.

Prepared by Erin Smith

This film explores aboriginal groups in Maningrida, Northern Australia and their journey from colonial instituted settlements back to their traditional homes, reclaiming a traditional way of life and preserving their ecological knowledge.

Synopsis and Review

In the 1950’s colonial settlers reached the northern coast of Australia and immediately began to move the aboriginal population into settlement areas, including two in Maningrida. The settlements in Maningrida brought 2000 people from twelve different language groups into a single location. In 1977, the government granted aboriginals ownership once again of their traditional land. Some families immediately returned to these lands, creating small familial communities known as “outstations”. While this return to the bush was relatively easy for those of the older generation, it proved more difficult for the younger generation who were born in Maningrida. Three years after the land had been returned to them most of the aboriginal population still remained in Maningrida. In order to encourage more to return to their traditional land and life, the elders of the community decided to make it an “economic project”. If the return to the bush could be economically viable more would return, including the younger generation. In 1999 they created a ranger program for young people to care for the land and harvest its resources. With the help of outside experts and consultants they developed a small industry using traditional skills and products.

While economic benefit was an aspect of the project, the film stresses that the primary goal of the elders who created the program was the preservation of traditional knowledge and culture. The film, which is told by members of the community with refreshingly little narration, is the story of an indigenous venture that successfully combines the sustainable use of natural resources, income generation and the preservation of traditional knowledge. While outside experts and consultants were invited to assist the ranger program with the production process and with the marketing of its resources, the project was founded and is almost entirely run by the aboriginal community of the outstations. A portion of all profits is returned to these communities. The resources used include morinda (Morinda citrifolia) fruit for juice, native cycads for collectors, crocodile and long neck turtle eggs whose hatchlings are sold, a native plant nursery, and marine sponges (the film focuses primarily on morinda juice and long-neck turtles). Through cooperation with scientists and local universities the project also appears to be aware of and intent upon ensuring sustainability in its use of natural resources. This emphasis is illustrated by a research project conducted with the local university to investigate the environmental impact of their turtle egg harvesting for the pet industry.

The success of the ranger program is seen not only in the income generation of these projects but also in the number of people returning from Maningrida to their traditional land. Ironically, however, this success also begs the question: Can the project still be sustainable as the number of people taking part in it and as the number of those depending on these resources increases? Additionally, while the products receiving the most attention in the film, such as morinda fruit and long neck turtles, appear sustainable one leaves the film wondering if other projects can be equally sustainable when they involve the use of such vulnerable species as the marine sponge and crocodile. Overall this is a wonderful film highlighting an indigenous initiative to reclaim and maintain traditional knowledge and culture.

Prepared by Erin Smith

In this essay, Fikret Berkes, a long time proponent of community-based conservation, explores many concerns facing community based conservation today, lessons that have been learned, and offers ideas for where CBC can go from here to make it more successful. Since it has become a more popular approach to conservation, there have also been many debates surrounding it implementation and success. This debate can be summarized into two positions: one which holds the failure of community conservation is due to improper implementation, especially in regard to the devolution of authority, rather than weakness or impracticality of the concept itself; and second which holds that, while both equally important, conservation and development objectives should be “delinked” because together they do not serve either objective well. Berkes believes, however, that asking whether CBC works or not is the wrong question: sometimes it does, sometimes it does not. Of greater importance is the exploration of the conditions under which it does work and which it does not. To get at this understanding he begins by exploring conceptual shifts in the field of ecology that influenced the beginning of CBC and will influence the direction it is heading and its success. These shifts include the shift from reductionism to a systems view of the world, a shift to include humans in the ecosystem, and a shift from an expert-based approach to participatory conservation and management.

Along with these shifts, Berkes suggests that the future of conservation and ultimately the success of CBC lie in a new truly interdisciplinary and adaptive view and practice of conservation, taking lessons from many differing fields as well as the communities themselves. The rest of the essay is a discussion of many of these ideas for a successful and sustainable CBC.

To begin with, since communities are elusive and constantly changing Berkes argues that it is more productive to focus not on “communities” but on institutions, which are vital to the conservation process and for the greatest success would involve distributing authority across multiple institutions.

Nature is complex. And if so, Berkes argues that central management of such complex systems is a “poor fit”, working neither at the level of the government nor the community. Since conservation deals with complex systems problems then these problems need to be addressed at various levels simultaneously. And since the community level is essential in successful and sustainable conservation, the multi-level, or “cross-scale” approach has to be planned bottom-up rather than top down. In other words, the goal should be “as much local solution as possible and only so much government regulation as necessary” (pg. 626).

A typical conservation case may involve either of the following: 1) three levels of organization, community, regional or national, and international, 2) a number of local groups at the intra-community level, 3) a variety of NGO’ and governmental agencies, and 4) one or more international groups. Therefore, co-management of conservation in practice is a linkage of all of these parties. Berkes proposes that co-management alone is not enough and CBC needs to adopt adaptive co-management practices. By sharing power and responsibility, as opposed to a “token consultation and passive participation”, and creating a context that encourages learning and stewardship and builds mutual trust, adaptive co-management can play a significant role in making CBC successful.

To Berkes there is little debate regarding the importance of incentives in conservation but there has often been a mismatch between what conservationists thought of as community benefits and what communities saw as benefits. Rural communities in the developing world rarely equate benefits with simple monetary reward and various social and political benefits are also likely to be important, such as equity, empowerment, and access to resources.

Since objective and worldviews may differ greatly between conservationists and those of indigenous communities they are working with, Berkes states that it has been difficult at times to truly blend traditional ecological knowledge with scientific knowledge. Because these differences will often be there, community based conservation involving traditional knowledge works best when the community and traditional knowledge are involved from the outset of projects, allowing for the most seamless integration of knowledge. Along the same lines, the author continues to argue that there needs to be a development of a cross-cultural conservation ethic. Our current definition of conservation is too simplistic and Western-centric. A broader and more encompassing definition of conservation would allow for a more sustainable conservation model.

Prepared by Erin Smith