Environmental degradation aggravated by loss of traditional knowledge, WWF says

The report Indigenous and Traditional Peoples of the World and Ecoregion Conservation: An Integrated Approach to Conserving the World's Biological and Cultural Diversity and the map are the results of a research project that has found a total number of 4,635 ethnolinguistic groups living in 225 regions of the highest biological importance, which represents 67 percent of an approximate global total of 6,867 ethnolinguistic groups. The study highlights that languages spoken by indigenous and traditional peoples are rapidly disappearing. Since the ecological knowledge accumulated by indigenous people in their long history of managing the environment is embodied in languages, language extinction is leading to loss of ecological knowledge, especially since in most traditional cultures this knowledge is only passed on to other groups or new generations orally.

"As a conservation organization, WWF is concerned about the loss of biodiversity," said Gonzalo Oviedo, head of People and Conservation at WWF International. "But it is also increasingly worried about the disappearance of traditional ecological knowledge. Governments and the international community should decidedly support indigenous and traditional peoples to strengthen their cultures and societies while managing their resources sustainably".

In one century, the world has lost about 600 languages. Today, half of the approximately 6,000 remaining languages are either extinct or highly threatened, and at current rates, 90 percent will be lost in the 21st century. The majority of these are languages spoken by indigenous and traditional peoples. They - and their associated ecological knowledge - are being lost at growing speed because of the expansion of markets, global communications, and other aspects of globalization that promote dominant languages at the expense of native ones.

"WWF recognizes the right of traditional peoples to development options that are culturally determined and not imposed from outside, and that incorporate customary, sustainable resource use" adds Gonzalo Oviedo. "Achieving this objective is a difficult and complex challenge in times of globalization and expanding economic and market forces. It requires co-operation and alliances, both locally and globally. In terms of conservation and development, this implies the participation of indigenous and traditional peoples in projects affecting them."

The map shows that tropical forests are not only the biologically richest areas on Earth, but also the most culturally diverse ones, as 42 percent of all ethnolinguistic groups world-wide are living in or around these ecosystems. This makes conservation of tropical forests of utmost importance both for biodiversity and for the survival of the cultural diversity represented by forest-dependent peoples.

WWF produced the map and the report in collaboration with the international non-governemental organization Terralingua.