Avatar and Bruno Latour

From Munich, Germany

Bruno Latour, the French sociologist of science, was in Munich to receive a cultural prize at Ludwig-Maximilians-University.  At the ceremony yesterday evening, he presented a talk on his efforts to create a ‘compositionist manifesto’, described as a search to construct a common world from “utterly heterogeneous parts that will never make a whole, but at best a fragile, revisable and diverse composition.”  But I shouldn’t give the idea that it was completely heady stuff.  Latour playfully wove in references to the popular film Avatar, noting the thinly veiled reference to Gaia in Eywa (the deity and life force of the planet Pandora) and suggesting that Jake Sully gives “a whole new dimension to what it means to ‘go native’”.  We continued this morning with a lively three-hour informal seminar, during which Latour humbly and warmly shared his ideas with a public composed mostly of doctoral students. References to environmental issues and the recent debacle of the climate change negotiations in Copenhagen kept the discussion relevant to the themes we are exploring at the Rachel Carson Center.  The compositionist approach, as he described it, reminded me of current narratives of resilience, a topic that merits attention by sociologists of science.

Questioning Collapse

From Munich, Germany

One of the pleasures of being in residence at the Rachel Carson Center is finding the incentive and time to read. On 11 February, we will launch a reading group composed of research fellows, professors and graduate students. Our first book is Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability and the Aftermath of Empire, which is hot off the Cambridge University Press. Although it sounds academic, the text is actually written in an accessible popular style. The various chapters challenge some of the popular ideas – including those promoted by Jared Diamond in his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed – that put the blame on indigenous peoples as environmental destroyers responsible for their own demise. Remember the ‘ecocide’ of the inhabitants of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), those Polynesians who are portrayed as carelessly deforesting their isolated island in a quest to erect massive statues?

Archaeologists Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo set the record straight. It wasn’t the negligent ecological practices of local people that destroyed the Jubaea palm trees that once covered Rapa Nui, but the invasion and massive population growth of Polynesian rats that systematically ate their way through palm nuts and tree seeds, disrupting the regeneration of the forest. Although fire linked to agriculture may have played a role, it was the rodents and later sheep that bear the brunt of the blame. The decline of the human population, by the way, happened after first contact with Europeans especially from 1750 to 1800. We do have a lesson to learn from Rapa Nui, and it is that we should not jump to rash judgments about the lack of resilience and sustainability of local ecological knowledge and practice.

From Paris, France

Although I promised myself to limit my travels during the first three months of 2010, I couldn’t resist the temptation to attend - with the generous support of the Rachel Carson Center - a meeting this weekend at UNESCO about a new Japanese conservation initiative. Having a ‘no-fly time’ is aimed at reducing my carbon footprint and increasing my writing productivity, but the Global Workshop on the Satoyama Initiative – organized by the Ministry of the Environment of Japan and the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies – promised to be stimulating experience for the special issue of the International 
Journal of Heritage Studies I am co-editing on “Preserving Biocultural Diversity on a Landscape Scale: the Roles of Local, National and International Designations”.  Satoyama is a Japanese term for ‘human-influenced natural environments, such as farmlands and secondary forest, that people have developed and maintained sustainably over a long time.’  As the Japanese are hosting the 10th Conference of Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity in October 2010, this will be their flagship initiative to demonstrate their international commitment to protecting the environment.

Arrival in Munich

From Munich, Germany

I have arrived in Munich to take up the first part of a research fellowship at the Rachel Carson Center, a joint initiative of Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich and the Deutsches Museum. The GDF Board granted me ‘mini-sabbaticals’, and I was fortunate to have my proposal accepted to spend the first three months of 2010, 2011 and 2012 here in residence - my first northern winters in a long, long time. The Center is a ‘think tank’ that brings together researchers from Austria, Canada, China, Finland, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Romania, Switzerland, the United States and the United Kingdom who are involved in the field of international environmental studies. I am looking forward to dedicating time to various writing projects that have been on the back burner as I spent time teaching and traveling to GDF field sites over the past years. The sojourns in Munich will allow me to broaden my intellectual horizons as there is a focus at the Center on the role of the humanities in the current political and scientific debates about the environment. After witnessing the decline in government support for universities in the UK, I am impressed that the German Ministry for Research and Education has provided generous support for the Rachel Carson Center and its academic projects.

A New Year of blogs

From Marrakech, Morocco

After an experimental year writing The GDF Director’s blog, I have made a resolution to become a regular blogger in 2010. This renewed enthusiasm comes not only from a desire to communicate the rapidly evolving developments of GDF’s field programs, but also through my reading of Friends with Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook. Authors Julie Szabo and Darren Barefoot, whom I met when they were traveling in Morocco, provide an accessible and entertaining introduction to the world of web 2.0, from blogs to interactive websites, and from Facebook to Twitter. They inspired me to follow good blogging practice, including posting at least two reflections a week.  With the help of GDF International Program coordinator Erin Smith and new intern Heather Leach, we have been revamping the GDF-UK and GDF-US websites, sending eNewsletters and becoming present on Facebook through a GDF page and cause. Our Biocultural Diversity Learning Network, launched in October 2007, has a content-rich website and now sports a FB group that is growing daily.  Twitter is up next…

Internet and microhydro power in Buayan

London, England

I have just received perhaps the first email sent from Buayan, one of the communities where GDF is active in Sabah, Malaysia. Sent by Adrian Lasimbang, who works with the indigenous NGO Partners of Community Organisations (PACOS), it was a test of a satellite connection installed as part of an ‘e-Buayan’ that is dissolving the digital divide that once separated the Dusun people of this village from the rest of the world.  Adrian reports that the community is working hard to finish by Christmas (this is a Catholic community) an e-Buayan building that will house a classroom with eight PCs and Netbooks all linked by LAN cables. This will allow training in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to go forward.  These developments follow on the launch of a microhydro power station that is providing the electricity that will power the computers.  What is planned next? There will hopefully be a Buayan website through which community researchers can share the results of their studies on the resource catchment areas and community use zones that are key to maintaining their livelihoods in and around a government protected area.  Then perhaps there will be a community radio that will transmit to households within a 5 km radius.  All of this progress towards enhancing a sustainable community will go to naught if plans to create the Kaiduan Dam on the Papar River proceed: a few steps forward erased by a major leap backward.

Rachel Carson Center

London, England

The Rachel Carson Center launched its new website today. A joint initiative of Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich and the Deutsches Museum, the Center is an international think tank whose goal is to ‘further research and discussion in the field of international environmental studies and to strengthen the role of the humanities in the current political and scientific debates about the environment.’ In mid-January, I will be joining 14 others fellows who are taking international, comparative and historical perspectives on topics such as agrarian and post-agrarian landscapes, natural disasters, cultures of risk, and knowledge societies.

I am particularly pleased to be a Fellow at an academic centre named in memory of Rachel Carson. Silent Spring, which I read almost forty years ago, influenced my choice of a career that blends academia, applied research and social awareness. In a few pages in the middle of the book, Dr. Carson evoked the consequences of pesticide use on the biodiversity of a small community in Michigan. East Lansing, my hometown, was the focus of a DDT spraying program initiated in 1954 against the elm bark beetle that was destroying our boulevard trees. By 1959, Prof. Emerson, ornithologist of nearby Michigan State University, discovered a dramatic drop in the robin population. This story, just one of the compelling case studies that Carson evoked, had a particular impact on me as it hit so close to home.

An oathstone ceremony protesting the Kaiduan Dam

Marrakech, Morocco

News from our fieldsite in Malaysia: There is an ongoing protest against the building of the Kaiduan Dam, which will make environmental refugees of the Kadazandusun people in the Ulu Papar region of Sabah, Malaysia.  On 17 October, the 11 Ulu Papar communities gathered on the banks of the Papar River in the village of Timpayasah to declare their common stand in fighting for their lands and sealed this oath in blood.  Representatives of each community placed a plant around the oath stone.  The plants chosen, among them gingers and palms, cannot survive with too much water, symbolizing what will be lost if Ulu Papar is flooded with the building of the dam.  As reported in the Daily Express, a local newspaper, one of the community leaders stated “In the old days, the oathstone was used as a territorial boundary of a village to demarcate land ownership among the Kadazandusun community. But this time we chose the traditional ceremony … as a strong sign that we … have vowed to stay on our land.”

What's wrong with charitable giving: part 2

Marrakech, Morocco

The second nugget of wisdom on charitable giving in Pablo Eisenberg’s Wall Street Journal article of 9 November addresses multi-year funding.  He says, “Few foundations are willing to give their grantees long-term support. Most grants are made on an annual basis, renewable for one or two more years. It is the rare institution that is willing to commit upfront support for five, 10 or 20 years. But that is exactly the kind of commitment that excellent organizations, especially public-policy and advocacy groups, require to meet their long-range goals. Public policies and institutions often change slowly. Nonprofit organizations must be given sufficient time and stability to bring about such changes. Not all nonprofits merit this kind of financing, but those that have the capacity, integrity and leadership to achieve long-term success should be given the resources to reach their objectives.”

I would include GDF in this group, as we are committed to long-term, community-based projects that evolve over time. Fortunately, some of our funders – such as the Darwin Initiative – understand this approach. The Darwin Initiative guidelines state, “Experience from previous projects has shown that, when working with local communities, speed of progress may be constrained by the need to build understanding and consensus before engaging in new approaches.  Therefore, projects working with communities should be realistic about timeframes and rates of progress.” The Darwin Initiative has shown its commitment to this principle by supporting our work in Sabah, Malaysia for an eight-year period.

What's wrong with charitable giving: part 1

Marrakech, Morocco

I am impressed by Pablo Eisenberg’s Wall Street Journal article of 9 November on charitable giving. Among other sensible points, he suggests that individuals and foundations increase their general operating support and multiyear funding to non-profits. His argument for increasing core funds:

“General operating support, or unrestricted money, is the lifeblood of effective organizations. It permits them to hire and maintain quality staff, conduct advocacy activities, build organizational capacity, participate in coalitions and retain the flexibility to pursue targets of opportunity. Unfortunately, only about 20% of all foundation grant money is allocated to such support. Many grantors believe that special-project funding is more easily evaluated and, therefore, more accountable, though there is little evidence to support this contention. What is true, of course, is that special-project funding gives foundations more control over the agendas of their grantees, responsibilities that should be vested in the boards and staff of nonprofits.

Whatever their reasons, foundations need to change their old habits. At least 50% of all foundation money should be granted for general operating support.”

This resonates with GDF’s experience. We have had relative success in attracting donations and obtaining grants for specific profits, but quite a bit less in finding sources of support for general operations.  To remedy this, we are considering launching a funding campaign to engage people interested in providing core support for our international and regional programs.

Protected Natural Areas in Mexico

Marrakech, Morocco

I am reading a report on Mexico’s potential to conserve and sustainably use its biodiversity. Issued by the country’s National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO), with support from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), it is an impressive compilation of perspectives on protected areas, community conservation, forestry certification, payment for environmental services and other aspects of conservation.  The establishment of protected areas – such as national parks and biosphere reserves – is an important approach to in situ conservation, which means preserving ecosystems, landscapes and species where they are found rather than in new places such as botanical gardens and germplasm banks.  Mexico has set aside nearly 24 million hectares of land and forest in protected areas, which corresponds to 12.2% of its national territory.  While impressive, a more important question is the overall success of these conservation areas. The National Commission for Natural Protected Areas (CONANP) recognizes many protected areas are deteriorating despite efforts to conserve them.  The CONABIO report argues that working effectively with local communities is an important way of rectifying the situation.

Remembering Claude Lévi-Strauss

Marrakech, Morocco

The news of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s passing brought back memories of his visit to the University of California at Berkeley in autumn 1984, when I was finishing the coursework for my doctorate in the Anthropology Department.  A sign-up sheet for 15-minute meetings with him was circulated among graduate students, and I was quick to put my name down for a slot. I remember being ushered into his office in the Kroeber Building and sitting down to a brief discussion about the importance of the classification of nature as a subject of anthropological enquiry.  Lévi-Strauss had included a few notes on Amazonian ethnobotany in Tristes Tropiques, his philosophical autobiography published in 1955.  In The Savage Mind, which appeared in 1962, he explored – among many other topics – the classification of plants and animals by diverse indigenous peoples.  As this was the subject of my pending fieldwork in Mexico, I was curious to hear what Lévi-Strauss thought about continuing the debate on ethnobiological classification. In sum, he appeared to think it was a relatively passé subject that he had left in his past.  Of course, it was 22 years after his book on the subject …

Ethnobiology conference underway in Pachuca, Hidalgo

Marrakech, Morocco

The GDF-Mesoamerica team has travelled through the Hidalgo Huasteca region of Mexico – where they joined in the Xantolo (Day of the Dead) celebrations – and on to Pachuca today for the combined Ist Latin American and VIIth Mexican Congress of Ethnobiology. Armando Medinaceli, GDF’s new intern from Bolivia, is accompanying Carlos del Campo and Claudia Camacho, the regional coordinators. Armando will present of this master’s research (he was a student in the University of Kent Environmental Anthropology Program) on Chinantec ethnozoology – knowledge, practice and beliefs about animals in this group indigenous peoples of southern Mexico. Carlos and Claudia will discuss our project on strengthening Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas (ICCAs) through ethnobiological research and training. Attending scientific congresses is one way that we disseminate the results of our field projects, and network with colleagues from other regions.

Same sky, reconciliation and rebuilding communities in Rwanda

Marrakech, Morocco

Bridget Bailey, who is active in the charitable organization Same Sky, has been staying with us over the last few days. Same Sky is a trade-not-aid initiative that helps Rwandan women who are living with HIV/AIDS, a tragic result of the widespread sexual abuse during the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. The majority of these women are destitute, and the goal of Same Sky is to help them rebuild their lives and communities. One way to achieve this is to give the women an opportunity to earn an income that allows them to provide food, education and healthcare for their families. In the case of Same Sky, the products sold are glass bead bracelets hand crocheted by women artisans in Kigali, Rwanda. Effective production and marketing are guaranteed by Gahaya Links, a small business created by two sisters, Joy Ndungutse and Janet Nkubana. Gahaya Links, which is supported by Global Relief and Development Partners, now employ over 4,000 rural women who weave intricate baskets that are sold in department stores such as Macy’s in New York. Through this initiative, Tutsi and Hutu women can work side by side, contributing to ethnic reconciliation and community building in Rwanda.

Regreening China clay pits at the Eden Project

Pentawan, Cornwall, UK

Our Cornwallian trilogy was made complete by a visit to the Eden Project, a highly popular tourist attraction dedicated explaining the relationship between people and plants to the general public. It was my third visit, and I was impressed by the sustained vigor of the tropical forest and Mediterranean biomes. Cultivated under geodesic domes on a former clay pit, the lush vegetation is criss-crossed by sloping paths that guide a constant flow of visitors, including over 7,000 on the day of our visit. We were fortunate to have Sir Ghillean Prance, scientific director of the Eden Project, accompany us on a leisurely tour of the grounds outside the domes and into the tropical forest biome. He reckons the greatest achievement of the Eden is revegetation of the barren slopes of the abandoned clay pit, which is now green with hundreds of plants that have stories to tell about food, medicine, fuel and other botanical products that sustain our life and livelihoods.

China clay mining and the Cornwallian landscape

Pentawan, Cornwall, UK

Today we travelled to see the poverty and environmental destruction associated with china clay mining, a sharp contrast to the richness of the Heligan estate. Our first stop was the China Clay Country Park that features an abandoned clay pit surrounded by spoil heaps that together created an eerie landscape that would not be out of place in a Margaret Atwood dystopian novel. One interesting historical detail I gleaned from the museum’s exhibits concerns the workers who dried and loaded the extracted china clay. Able to earn enough money by early afternoon, they would spend the rest of their day cultivating gardens and tending animals, a pattern of work that allowed them to take advantage of Cornwall’s advantageous climate to produce much of their own food. This mixture of subsistence and commercial activity has been a common element that sustained communities over time. Today there is little evidence of backyard gardens, although Ian Martin of the Eden Project is considering working with the clay country communities to bring back household green spaces.

A day at the Heligan Gardens

Pentawan, Cornwall, UK

Ian Martin of the Eden Project led us on a Saturday visit to the Lost Gardens of Heligan, which gave us a glimpse into horticulture in Cornwall. At the entrance, there was an autumn harvest of diverse varieties of food plants that reminded me of the ‘biodiversity fairs’ that we sponsor in southern Mexico, in which members of indigenous communities bring the food, medicinal and other useful plants for public display during holy day festivals in their villages. At Heligan, the vegetables come from carefully tended plots in the center of the gardens, each variety labelled with handsome, hand-printed wooden stakes. What most interested me is the successful creation of microclimates that allow Cornwall gardeners to grow many exotic species introduced by plant explorers from around the world. One example is the ‘pineapple pit’ – a slanting greenhouse with an underground heating system that produced the humidity and warmth needed to encourage this Amazonian species to produce fruit. This appreciation of microclimate extends to the valley of vegetation – unfortunately called the ‘Jungle’ – oriented obliquely from the gardens towards the sea. It contains a tangle of tropical and temperate plants transplanted from afar, a testimony to the creative horticultural knowledge and practice developed over centuries in this region.

A Global Strategy for Plant Conservation

Taking advantage of a delayed deadline to send ideas for sessions at the 2010 Congress of the International Society of Ethnobiology, I submitted a proposal on the role of local people in the policy and practice of plant conservation. Through a multi-media presentation, roundtable and open discussion, we plan to explore revised targets of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) that address indigenous and local knowledge, innovations and practices. As reworded during a Liaison Group Meeting of the Global Partnership for Plant Conservation (GPPC) I attended in May 2009, the strategy argues that we must conserve the genetic diversity of crops and other socio-economically valuable plant species, and maintain associated indigenous and local knowledge. In addition, it calls for a halt in the decline of plant resources and associated indigenous and local knowledge, innovations and practices that support sustainable livelihoods, local food security and health care. Both of these targets are directly related to Convention on Biological Diversity articles 8j and 10c, which draw attention to the key role that indigenous people and local communities play in maintaining the world’s biodiversity.

Rolex Awards for Enterprise 2010 Young Laureates Programme

Marrakech, Morocco

The Rolex Awards for Enterprise announced the Jury today for the 2010 Young Laureates Programme, which “enables visionary young men and women to tackle the most pressing issues facing our world”. The Laureates receive financial support for two years and publicity through international media coverage to launch a new idea or scale up an existing project in one of five areas: science and health, applied technology, exploration, the environment and cultural preservation. The nearly 200 candidates, who are between 18 and 30 years old and come from around the world, were invited to submit proposals that outline the social or scientific benefits of their work.


I will join the other nine members of the jury in Geneva next March to select the five winners, who will be announced in April 2010. My fellow jury members come from Brazil, India, Mexico, Singapore, Spain, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and United States.

A morning at Unesco

Paris, France

Beautiful spring days in Paris, which make me feel more like exploring gardens in bloom than spending time inside. I made an exception to visit colleagues at UNESCO, one of the institutions involved in creating the People and Plants Initiative (PPI) in 1992. I spent the better part of the years I lived in Paris, from 1988 – 1996, working as a field coordinator for PPI, a position that had me travelling to many parts of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific. My travels and interactions with colleagues and communities provided some of the inspiration for the creation of GDF in 2000.

At Unesco, I caught up with Meriem Bouamrane, a French-Algerian friend who draws on her training as an environmental economist in her role of programme specialist in the Division of Ecological and Earth Sciences and Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme. She focuses on promoting broad community participation in biosphere reserves, from their inception through their implementation and management. She is using a methodology that analyses how Actors, Resources, Dynamics and Interactions (ARDI) can be brought together in successful negotiations on protected areas. We may explore how this approach can be integrated into our efforts to ensure the participation of Dusun and other indigenous peoples in the nomination of Crocker Range Park is Sabah, Malaysia as a Biosphere Reserve.