International Mother Earth Day: Biocultural Diversity Contains the Seeds of Climate Change Resilience

 

By now, you have probably heard a lot about climate change and climate change resilience. If you follow Terralingua, you may also know something about the ongoing loss of global biocultural diversity. Admittedly, our planet is in upheaval. And with International Mother Earth Day just around the corner, you may be asking, “What can I do about it, if anything?”

Well, keep reading to find some answers!

International Mother Earth Day: A Call to Protect Our Common Home

In 2009, the United Nations proclaimed April 22 as International Mother Earth Day. On this day, we recognize Earth and its ecosystems as humanity’s — and millions of other species’ — common home. With this recognition comes the need to protect our planet’s ecosystems. By doing so, we can enhance people’s livelihoods, counteract climate change, and prevent the collapse of biocultural diversity.

But how does climate change resilience fit in with biocultural diversity?

An abundance of biocultural diversity will build our collective resilience.

If we continue to promote a globally unsustainable way of life, we will keep eroding the vitality and resilience of the world’s diverse ecosystems, languages, and cultures. Biocultural diversity is our best adaptive defence against climate change. So, a lack of biocultural diversity will make our planet increasingly fragile and vulnerable to human-made crises like climate change. Conversely, an abundance of biocultural diversity will build our collective resilience.

In simple terms, climate change is the result of anthropogenic (human-made) impacts on ecosystems and biodiversity. Such impacts primarily involve the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas. Human pressures like deforestation, industrial food production, and urban sprawl have vastly increased global carbon emissions. And these emissions lead directly to higher temperatures, ocean acidification, the melting of glaciers, and other threatening outcomes of climate change.  

Who is ultimately responsible for changing the path we are on?

But other factors less obvious to the industrialized world have contributed to greenhouse gas emissions (and continue to do so). Here, we can point to colonialism, which seeks to suppress and displace (even annihilate) Indigenous Peoples to exploit their lands. Once weakened, place-based cultures are less able to resist land grabs, leading to, well, all of the above.

So, resilience anchored in abundant biological diversity is the key to countering climate change. But who started this destructive spiral of climate change? And who is ultimately responsible for changing the path we are on?

International Mother Earth Day: Our Role in Climate Resilience and Biocultural Diversity Loss

Let’s be clear. By “human-made,” we mean the part of humanity that created our industrial, urban, and profit-based global economic order. Over the past 200 years or so, industrialization has greatly altered Earth’s ecosystems and climate. More recently, globalization has accelerated the pace of ecological destruction. Combined, these two systems threaten the very foundations of life on Earth.

By contrast, Indigenous and local communities are still the best stewards of their territories of life, also known as Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas or ICCAs. (The global coverage of ICCAs is conservatively estimated to be comparable to that of governments’ protected areas — that is, about thirteen percent of the terrestrial surface of the planet.) However, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, who contribute the least to climate change, are among the most vulnerable to it. They face catastrophic changes, from unprecedented forest fires in the Amazon to dramatic sea level rise in low-lying Pacific islands.

We are waking up to the critical role of traditional languages and knowledge systems in climate resilience.

Is that not sadly ironic? The part of humanity with the greatest biocultural heritage is paying the steepest price for climate change. Meanwhile, many industrialized regions are waking up to the critical role of traditional languages and knowledge systems in the fight against climate change. Truly, these are topsy-turvy times.

So, what can we in urbanized societies do to help counteract climate change and environmental degradation? How can we build, rather than undermine, our climate resilience?

Read on!

International Mother Earth Day: Understanding the Equation of Life

Clearly, the industrialized world must urgently recognize the fundamental equation of life on Earth. That is, that the world’s cultures, languages, and traditional knowledge systems are inextricably linked to its biological diversity. In other words, the loss of one spells the loss of the others.

That is why, for the past fifteen years, Terralingua has published stories by people from every global region. Such stories “from the frontlines” convey the importance of protecting biodiversity and cultural and linguistic diversity at the same time.

Biocultural diversity, this indivisible whole, is nothing less than the equation of life on Earth. Clearly, greater biocultural diversity gives the entire planet greater resilience in the face of climate change. Conversely, less biocultural diversity leads to a world more fragile and vulnerable to climate change. And this, quite simply, means fewer chances of our species surviving and thriving.

But this is where you can step in!

International Mother Earth Day: Stories to Inspire Us Forward

International Mother Earth Day is an occasion to recognize and celebrate the resilience of Indigenous and other place-based cultures in the face of climate change and to support their cultural and linguistic resurgence. In that spirit, we invite you to plunge into four fascinating stories.

In each of these stories, you will discover how a bioculturally rich community is meeting one of the greatest and most urgent challenges to all life on Earth: climate change.

By reading about their pain and joy, their losses and successes, and their unique responses to the climate change crisis, you may gain two insights. First, you will see how truly resilient these communities are in the face of climate change. As they fight to preserve their ancestral cultures, they teach the rest of the world a hard-won lesson about courage. Then, once you see how high the stakes are, you too may begin to feel inspired to act for people and the planet. From there, you may well become an ambassador of biocultural diversity in your own networks!

Happy International Mother Earth Day! Please read on and forward widely.

Seeds of Sovereignty and Climate Resilience

In his beautiful photo essay, “Circles of Kinship: Faces of Turtle Island’s Seed Guardians,” photographer, documentary filmmaker, artist, and educator Mateo Hinojosa spotlights some of the Indigenous people leading a pan-regional food sovereignty movement. As Mateo reminds us, our era is marked by an increasingly chaotic climate and the rapid corporatization of food.

What is a seed? Our future. Our ancestors. Our descendants. Food. Knowledge. Power.

At the heart of this challenge is sovereignty: the complete autonomy and self-reliance that a person or people need to shape their own destiny. A crucial aspect of sovereignty is the ability to maintain control over one’s production of and access to food. To regain food sovereignty across generations, many are forming seed stewardship networks. Such networks spread knowledge and skills, share seeds across regions, and support adaptation and resilience in a rapidly changing climate.

 

Crucially, the food sovereignty movement hinges on the “rematriation” of Indigenous seed varieties back to their communities of origin. Too often, these precious seeds are held by private collectors and in academic institutions. By returning seeds to where they first evolved, crops that are both physically and spiritually nourishing can once again flourish “at home.”

We must be in connection to weave the roots we need to weather the storm.

Thanks to such networks, cultures that have co-evolved linguistically and culturally with these seeds are strengthening their biocultural roots. And those roots, ultimately, are what will help these cultures weather and adapt to climate change.

A Code of Conduct to Ensure Balance Among All Living Beings

In “Basandja,” filmmaker Petna Ndaliko Katondolo and writer Maurice Carney bring us an intimate photo and video essay from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

 

In the heart of the rainforest, the Isangi-Tolaw community is breaking away from colonial misconceptions of nature. Facing increased flooding due to climate change, the Isangi-Tolaw people are embarking on a transformative journey to revive an ancient code of conduct, Basandja. The language of Basandja teaches how to harmoniously coexist with the more-than-human world. Essentially, it codifies how to care for the environment and ensure balance among all living beings.

The climate crisis is felt in the heart of the rainforest: increased rainfall and a greater intensity of flooding.

Indeed, Basandja is a transformative code of conduct, as it supports a process of storytelling that hinges on multiple points of view. As the Isangi-Tolaw people gradually break through long-standing colonial misrepresentations of nature, Basandja provides a path that mirrors nature’s gradual processes.

Most crucially, Basandja teaches how to recognize people’s emotional interdependence with the more-than-human. For we are not only biologically and ecologically interlinked with animals, plants, water, and mountains. Perhaps more basic than all this is our intrinsically emotional link to the natural world.

 

And it is this emotional dimension that is most lacking in Western knowledge systems. Without the emotional underpinning of biocultural diversity, how can we hope to understand ourselves and our actions as individuals and communities?

Basandja becomes a portal, opening the door to forest wisdom that has evolved across millennia.

Uncovering the Treasures of Resilience Long Buried by Colonialism

Our next story explores how another people in a very different part of the world adapted to colonial and climate pressures. In “Traditional Treasure: Local Knowledge for Climate Change Adaptation in Bangkukuk Taik, Nicaragua,” Marie Besses and Martina Luger recount their travels to an isolated region of Nicaragua that is home to the Rama people.

Here, we learn how traditional farming, fishing, and hunting are threatened by climate change and encroachment, among other anthropogenic pressures. Much like the communities in our first featured story, the Rama seek to increase their resilience to these looming transformations.

Conservation of native seeds and varieties adapted to the local environment is crucial to prepare for the effects of climate change.

On the one hand, the Rama and their territory are highly vulnerable to the negative effects of climate change. Yet, as the authors point out, for generations the Rama have adapted to changes in their environment. Indeed, the Elders of one community “possess a wealth of traditional knowledge that has allowed for a self-sufficient life, using and maintaining local biodiversity in a sustainable way.”

How often do city-dwellers pause, while eating an imported banana, to consider what goes into producing this fruit? In contrast to destructive banana monocultures, the Rama keep their banana plantations interspersed with large trees. Not only do these protect banana seedlings from the hot sun, but they also provide food, medicine, and timber. Mindful of nonhuman forest dwellers, the Rama also consciously retain large trees to maintain ecosystem balance.

Traditional Knowledge Is Indispensable for Local, National and Global Climate Adaptation

What we call “sustainability,” the Rama perfectly understand.

Inspired by their hosts’ determination to emerge from past and ongoing colonialism and thrive anew in a changing climate, the authors push ahead with their research. In the end, they produce, in consultation with the Rama, an educational booklet about the treasure that is Rama traditional knowledge. Critically, they point out: “The Rama people’s knowledge is indispensable as a basis for the design of local adaptation plans.” That is, it is indispensable to Nicaragua and the wider world — and to the next generations.

As we will see in the fourth story, younger generations are already inheriting this climatic trauma. Along with this early inheritance, they are also shouldering the responsibility of strengthening their biocultural roots and resilience.

Inheriting Climate Change and the Ancestral Responses to It

 

In her gripping story, “Happening to Us: Amplifying Youth Voices from the Arctic,” Maéva Gauthier introduces us to a participatory video project, of which she is one of the trainers. A group of Inuvialuit youth from the Northwest Territories, Canada, take up filming to tell their stories about the effects of climate change in their community.

It is shocking to hear young people recount their observations of the drastic changes they have seen in their short lifetimes.

Through the magic of participatory video, Maéva and the youths film a powerful narrative, Happening to Us, about how youth experience climate change in Canada’s North. Along with her, we discover how seriously climate change threatens Indigenous Peoples’ survival worldwide. Among other impacts, melting sea ice, coastline erosion, and major droughts all affect the Inuvialuit’s access to food and water.

In Maéva’s own moving words, what could be more powerful than a seventeen-year-old student who has already seen drastic changes over the past five to ten years? As she mentors them in filmmaking, she confesses:

 

As Maéva recounts in wonder, the film workshop even gains the attention of the then Minister of the Environment and Climate Change for Canada, and of the president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the organization that protects and advances the rights and interests of some 65,000 Inuit in Canada.

Catapulted Onto the Global Stage

First screened in June 2019 to a proud and emotional community audience, Happening to Us was something of a turning point. Following the workshop, a new student-led organization, TukTV, was created to help youth offer film services in their town. At the same time, they plan to expand their film into a feature documentary including solutions to climate change. And then, suddenly, the students are catapulted onto a much wider stage. Indeed, in December 2019, several of them spoke to hundreds of attendees on World Youth Day, at the 25th UN Climate Change Conference in Madrid, Spain.

Climate change may still often feel like a foreign concept. As soon as you arrive in the North, however, it is an undeniable reality.

Perhaps the most positive impact of this project is the weaving of cross-generational and cross-cultural links. With their newfound technical and political experience, the older students can now mentor younger ones in both film-making and self-expression. And with their sense of urgency and growing confidence in themselves and their culture, these young people are perhaps more inspiring than even they know, and to many more people than they have ever met.

Mother Earth is Calling You — How Will You Answer her Call?

These four inspirational stories show there is no shortage of drive and responses to the crisis of climate change and to the need to build climate resilience. Besides, we have featured only four stories here! Happily, there are many more from many other parts of our planet, all of them accessible on Terralingua’s website.

We invite you to mark International Mother Earth Day by exploring this trove of stories. Discover how widely the Earth’s incredible diversity of cultures have nurtured seeds of climate change resilience — seeds that are flourishing again and inspiring us all to act.

At times, we all feel overwhelmed by the state of the world. So, let’s open our minds to the wisdom of other cultures that have survived colonialism and are thriving again. Story by story, together, we can rewrite the history of the world.

---

For a Deeper Read:

• Terralingua’s brief information page, The Converging Extinction Crisis, explains how and why the simultaneous extinction of biodiversity and biocultural diversity is so crucial for the survival and thriving of all forms of life on Earth.
• Our Biocultural Diversity Toolkit brings together many of the results of Terralingua’s multifaceted program of work. It offers information, insights, and instruments useful to anyone interested in undertaking studies or taking action from a biocultural perspective.