Conservation constituencies increasingly need to confront the history of "nature" and a variety of local cultural practices and rights. In the so-called global North, historically marginalised groups won at least some of their struggles and can today speak their concerns loud and clear. The same cannot be said for the so-called global South. The shouts of traditional pastoralists in Burkina Faso confronted with a protected area that curtails their historical grazing rights... do not yet ring quite as loud as the shouts of a group of Colorado ranchers denied access to public land. For how long, however?
In this issue of Policy Matters there is a collection of papers that deal with the interplay among history, culture and conservation. There are several examples from the South and a few - quite revealing ones - from the North. In both cases, it is striking to read about the powerful ties between biodiversity and people, and the intelligence and craftiness that support those ties can be appreciated. Also striking, however, is how widespread insensitivity to social concerns in conservation still is, and insensitivity to cultural concerns in particular. There are some distinctions to be made between the South and the North.
As discussed in Section IV (Understanding and measuring bio-cultural diversity), the areas in the South with the largest concentration of biodiversity are also endowed with a rich cultural diversity. It should be noted that they are also the areas endowed with a colonial past, where people have been historically disenfranchised and marginalised. This oppression has shaped, modified and often impoverished what is call their “cultures” today. After all, culture is a product of history.
