Biocultural Diversity Programme2024-09-26T07:40:14+00:00

The Biocultural Diversity Programme

Image © LifeMosaic

Supporting Indigenous Peoples and local communities to protect and revive biocultural diversity

Yellow tree graphic

80 per cent of Earth’s remaining terrestrial biodiversity lies within land managed or governed by Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Research has shown a clear relationship between a diversity of languages (a proxy for cultural diversity) and biodiversity. This is because where Indigenous Peoples and local communities have strong ties to their territories and are able to remain on them and defend them and their cultures from external threats, biodiversity often flourishes. Yet this biocultural diversity and the knowledge and lifeways that protect and enhance it, are rapidly being lost.

Our Programme

The absence of secure land ownership or tenure for Indigenous Peoples and local communities fuels poverty, social and gender inequalities, food insecurity, conflict and environmental degradation globally. However, when people have secure rights over their land, it helps to address many of these issues.

In addition, the preservation of local cultures is vital to retain the ancestral environmental knowledge that has kept their lands ecologically intact. But despite its importance, funding for protecting and reviving biocultural diversity is severely limited. So, the Biocultural Diversity Programme (formerly the Flourishing Diversity Programme) was founded to support Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ organisations to protect and revive their biocultural diversity.

canoe on a river in a foggy rainforest at sundown

Territories of Life

Defend Indigenous and community Territories of Life.

an indigenous person holding a branch of red berries up to the camera

Biocultural diversity

Protect and revive
biocultural diversity.

lbirdseye view of a large group of wooden canoes on water containing a variety of vegetation

Amplify Flourishing Diversity

Embed and amplify the concept of Flourishing Diversity.

* Images (L to R): Jacob Farris; Indigenous Partnership for Agrobiodiversity and Food Sovereignty; Shutterstock

Cultural diversity and biological diversity are not simply co-incidental; they are mutually sustaining and enhancing.

Image © Jerome Lewis

Partner Profile: Flourishing Diversity

The Biocultural Diversity Programme works strategically with our sister initiative: Flourishing Diversity. Biodiversity, culture and language are deeply intertwined. If we value biodiversity, and strive to protect and restore it, we must also consider our cultural and linguistic relationship with nature.

Flourishing Diversity explores how we can create space to reimagine our culture and convene conversation around our relationship to nature and the diversity which brings it to life.

It is a blossoming cultural ecosystem of people, communities, organisations and ideas; a forum for the voices, experience and skills of Indigenous Peoples and local communities (including elders, leaders, men, women and youth), for conservation biologists, farmers, human rights activists, artists, spiritual leaders, local and international NGOs, youth movements and social enterprises to resist monoculture and promote diversity in all spaces.

VISIT FLOURISHING DIVERSITY
three people wearing feathered headresses talking to an audience

090919 Flourishing Diversity-21293.jpg EARLY

Image © Flourishing Diversity/Tim Ireland

Flourishing Diversity held a series of events in 2019, inviting indigenous leaders to speak about their experiences protecting their environments.

Read TIME’s feature by Benki Pyãnko, a community leader from Apiwtxa, an Ashaninka community situated in the Amazonian state of Acre, Brazil.

In 2018, Indigenous Peoples managed or had tenure rights over at least 38 million km2 in 87 countries on all inhabited continents.

Image © Shutterstock

Partner Profile: Fundación Pachamama

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Fundación Pachamama has worked for more than 20 years in the heart of the Ecuadorian Amazon helping indigenous organisations to build Sumak Kawsay (a Quechwa word meaning good living/good life).

It is a partner in the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative (ASHI). ASHI is a collaboration of Amazonian indigenous organisations CONFENIAE (Ecuador) and AIDESEP (Peru) together with Amazon Watch, Pachamama Alliance, Fundación Pachamama, and STAND Earth that aims to permanently protect more than 33 million hectares of tropical rainforests in the headwaters of the mighty Amazon River – the Napo, Pastaza, and Marañon Basins of Ecuador and Peru. The area is known as the Sacred Headwaters of the Amazon.

With a rights-based approach and working in close partnership with the region’s Indigenous Peoples and federations, ASHI seeks to establish a biocultural sanctuary in the heart of the Napo-Marañon watersheds, where indigenous co-governance, alternative well-being indicators, and all activities are judged by the extent to which they foster a mutually enhancing human-Earth relationship.

BIOCULTURAL DIVERSITY PARTNERS

Many Indigenous Peoples and local communities around the world have the skills, experience and the will to protect and enhance biocultural diversity. With the right funding and collaborative action, we can get direct support to these people and groups to defend their territories and to protect and revive the life within them, and help to build the movements and networks that drive a longer-term narrative and consciousness shift.

Biocultural Diversity News

Connecting to the culture of the Cook Islands

Connecting to the culture of the Cook Islands

5 minutes read

The Cook Islands are a group of 15 volcanic islands in the southern Pacific Ocean, making up a self-governing island cou (...)

Five success stories of 2023

Five success stories of 2023

7 minutes read

When it comes to preserving nature, it can feel like there is an overwhelming amount of work to do, but the new year bri (...)

Podcast: Miriam Supuma talks about Papua New Guinea

Podcast: Miriam Supuma talks about Papua New Guinea

4 minutes read

Our Biocultural Diversity Programme Manager Miriam Supuma spoke to Mongabay’s Mike DiGirolamo about why Papua New Gui (...)

Meet our Latin America affiliate, Grace Iara Souza

Meet our Latin America affiliate, Grace Iara Souza

13 minutes read

Over the past 18 years, Dr Grace Iara Souza has developed a deep understanding of the impacts of global environmental go (...)

Indigenous youth at COP27: From the village to the world

Indigenous youth at COP27: From the village to the world

10 minutes read

Clique aqui para ler este artigo no original em português. Most of the media coverage of COP27, held in November 2022 (...)

Five success stories from 2022

Five success stories from 2022

7 minutes read

With the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s new agreement dominating conservation headlines, it can be easy to (...)

What is agroforestry?

What is agroforestry?

6 minutes read

The agroecological systems of farmers, growers, and Indigenous Peoples everywhere have shaped and cared for landscapes f (...)

An interview with Nemonte Nenquimo

An interview with Nemonte Nenquimo

12 minutes read

Nemonte Nenquimo is an Indigenous leader of the Waorani people in the Ecuadorean Amazon province of Pastaza, one of the (...)

An Interview with Miriam Supuma

An Interview with Miriam Supuma

15 minutes read

Miriam Supuma has been working for over ten years with conservation organisations in Papua New Guinea, a country that co (...)

Indigenous lifeways for a flourishing Earth

Indigenous lifeways for a flourishing Earth

11 minutes read

The latest in our series of Deeper Thinking webinars focused on the concept of Flourishing Diversity, which lies at the (...)

Agroecology for people and planet

Agroecology for people and planet

13 minutes read

An Interview with Daniel Moss, Executive Director of the Agroecology Fund (AEF). The Agroecology Fund began life as (...)

If you are interested in supporting our Biocultural Diversity Programme, please get in touch.

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