On Biolinguistic Diversity - linking language, culture and (traditional) ecological

knowledgeTove Skutnabb-Kangas1

Invited plenary lecture at the interdisciplinary seminar "At the limits of language", organised by Department of Biology and Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and Cosmocaixa (March 2004).In press, in conference book edited by Angel Delgado Buscalioni, Luisa Martin Rojo, and Isabel Fuentes.

“Cultural diversity is closely linked to biodiversity. Humanity’s collective knowledge of biodiversity and its use and management rests in cultural diversity; conversely conserving biodiversity often helps strengthen cultural integrity and values” (World Resources Institute, World Conservation Union, and United Nations Environment Programme, 1992: 21).

“Biodiversity is not an object to be conserved. It is an integral part of human existence, in which utilization is part of the celebration of life” (Posey, 1999: 7). Or, mutatis mutandi, maybe: “Linguistic diversity is not an object to be maintained. It is an integral part of human existence, in which using the languages is part of the celebration of life”

Each Contracting Party shall “subject to its national legislation, respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional life-styles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity and promote the wiser application with the approval and involvement of the holders of such knowledge, innovations and practices and encourage the equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the utilization of such knowledge, innovations and practices”.(from Article 8(j) of the Convention on Biological Diversity)

1. IntroductionThe following description of biolinguistic/biocultural diversity is on Terralingua's2. home page (www.terralingua.org):

Terralingua supports the integrated protection, maintenance and restoration of the world's biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity –– known as biocultural diversity –– by creating innovative tools to analyze the links between these diversities and demonstrate their global significance.

Language, knowledge, and the environment have been intimately related throughout human history. This relationship is still apparent especially in indigenous, minority, and local societies that maintain close material and spiritual ties with their environments. Over generations, these peoples have accumulated a wealth of wisdom about their environment and its functions, management, and sustainable use. Traditional ecological knowledge and practices often make indigenous peoples, minorities, and local communities highly skilled and respectful stewards of the ecosystems in greatest need of protection. Local, minority, and indigenous languages are repositories and means of transmission of this knowledge and the related social behaviors, practices, and innovations.

As with biological species, languages and cultures naturally evolve and change over time. But just as with species, the world is now undergoing a massive human-made extinction crisis of languages and cultures. External forces are dispossessing traditional peoples of their lands, resources, and lifestyles; forcing them to [migrate or] subsist in highly degraded environments; crushing their cultural traditions or ability to maintain

1 University of Roskilde, Dept of Languages and Culture, Denmark. Contact address: Troenninge Mose 3, 4420 Regstrup, Denmark, phone (45) 59-264412, email: skutnabbkangas@gmail.com2 I am a founding member of Terralingua. I was its Vice-President from its start until the end of 2003.

1

them; or coercing them into linguistic assimilation and abandonment of ancestral languages. People who lose their linguistic and cultural identity may lose an essential element in a social process that commonly teaches respect for nature and understanding of the natural environment and its processes. Forcing this cultural and linguistic conversion on indigenous and other traditional peoples not only violates their human rights, but also undermines the health of the world's ecosystems and the goals of nature conservation.

This description is a background for my paper. I will be asking questions suggested by the organizers: "What connections may exist between the loss of our biological heritage and that of our linguistic heritage?" and "With the gradual loss of some languages, will we be losing at the same time priceless knowledge of other ways of inhabiting nature and of resources for sustainable development?"

Most people realize the importance of maintaining biodiversity whereas relatively few know about or lament the much faster loss of linguistic diversity. A very short version of one of the important reasons for why linguistic diversities should be maintained is as follows: Linguistic diversity and biodiversity are correlationally and probably also causally related. Much of the knowledge about (necessary) elements of integrated ecosystems and the relations between these elements and about how to maintain biodiversity is encoded in small local languages. Their speakers live in the world's biologically and often also linguistically most diverse areas. Through killing these languages (or letting them die), we thus kill many of the prerequisites for maintaining biodiversity. In a short article, it is possible only to give a crude overview of some aspects of our present knowledge about the relationships between biodiversity and linguistic diversity, in the form of some of the classificatory tools used to approach the area, and point to questions and gaps in that knowledge. This includes some reflections on methodological challenges in relation to how to "prove" the causal relationship.

I would also like to mention some of the accusations, misconceptions, misunderstandings and critique of some aspects of ecolinguistics. Some of these refer to both the biodiversity - linguistic diversity connection and to work with linguistic human rights as one of the tools for supporting the maintenance of linguistic diversity. Just to use one researcher's misunderstanding as an example, Kibbee (2003) accuses ecolinguists of making use of the strong form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (e.g. Kibbee, 2003: 47), of Social Darwinism (ibid.: 47), of neo-colonialism (ibid.: 55), paternalism (ibid.: 55), idealism (ibid.: 56), of wanting to artificially preserve languages against the will of their speakers (ibid.: 53), of advising people not to learn international languages like English (ibid.: 55), and so on. Unfortunately there is no time to discuss these but some clarification and caveats in relation to definitions of concepts can also be used to deconstruct the misconceptions (and see Skutnabb-Kangas, in press, a, b). Finally, some lessons from the present knowledge will be mentioned.

2. Definitions

2.1. General definitions of biodiversity, linguistic diversity and biocultural diversityI start with general definitions of some of the basic concepts. Biodiversity can be defined as "the total variability among genes, plant and animal species, and ecosystems found in nature" (Skutnabb-Kangas, Maffi & Harmon 2003, Glossary, 55).

The number of species has often been used as a proxy for biodiversity. In the same way, the number of languages can be used as a crude proxy for linguistic diversity (see David Harmon's discussion about the caveats in both proxies, 2002; see also Maffi 2001, Note 3). The parallel definition of linguistic diversity is thus "the variety and richness of languages in human societies3" 3 This means that for my purposes here, the means of communication of other animals are excluded; so are computer languages and all other languages which are "artificial" or "planned" and which, per definition, cannot be mother

2

(Skutnabb-Kangas, Maffi & Harmon 2003, Glossary, 56). The parallel does not mean that languages and biological species are similar in all or even most ways - they are manifestly not4. Just to mention an obvious one: languages are not living organisms.

A very general definition of biocultural diversity is "the diversity of life on Earth in both nature and culture" (ibid., 55).

If we want to see what the correlation is between biodiversity on the one hand and linguistic and cultural diversity on the other hand, some measures of linguistic and cultural diversity have to be found and various kinds of indicators of biodiversity have to be chosen. This is what I shall do next.

2.2. Definitions and problems in definitions pertaining to linguistic diversity: language, mother tongue speaker/user, native speaker/user, culture, ethnolinguistic groupsThe whole concept of language is extremely vague, as we know and there is no other scientific way of defining it except analysing the power relations involved in whose definitions about the relative languageness or otherwise of various idioms prevail and why (see my discussion of what a language is, in Skutnabb-Kangas 2000, Chapter 1). This is a typical example of the borders of a concept being in the perceptions of the observer rather than in the characteristics of the observed (see later). One example is the latest edition of the Ethnologue (http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/), the best global source for languages. It lists 6.800 languages, but some 41,000 names or labels for various languages.

Even if we knew what a language is, we certainly have extremely unreliable figures about the number of speakers for most of them, including the largest ones where the differences of estimates of the speakers of the same language may be tens of millions (see Skutnabb-Kangas, 2002).

Languages are in most cases both known best and transmitted to the next generation by native speakers/users5 or mother tongue6 speakers/users of those languages. But we are likewise using contested concepts here: distinguishing mother tongue speakers or native speakers from those who have learned some language only later and for whom it is not their primary means of communication in childhood (or one of them, in case of childhood bilinguals or multilinguals) is extremely tricky.

If we could define language and native speaker, we might then measure the relative linguistic diversity of geographical units, for instance countries, through the number of languages spoken natively in the country. The most linguistically diverse countries would then be the ones which have most languages. Papua New Guinea, with its over 850 languages would be the un-detested world champion (Table 1).

But this way of measuring linguistic megadiversity has also been contested. Clinton Robinson argues, for instance, that the most diverse country is not the one which has the largest number of languages, but the one where the largest linguistic group represents the lowest percentage of all linguistic groups (Robinson; 1993). We get a very big difference in the list of the

tongues of humans. However, one planned language, Esperanto, is nowadays (one of) the mother tongue(s) of some thousands of children even if it is not connected with any ethnic group, as most "unplanned" languages are or have been. 4 There are many discussions about the differences - see, e.g. Harmon 2002, Mühlhäusler 2003.5 I use the double form to indicate that Signers, representing a large number of the world's languages, do not "speak" Sign languages. In all instances when I use "speaker", I mean "speaker/signer", and when I use "language", I include Sign languages.6 See Skutnabb-Kangas 1984, 2000, for probably the most thorough existing systematisations of these definitions.

3

world's linguistically most diverse countries, depending on which measure we use (Tables 1 and 2; source: Tables 1.1 and 1.3 in Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000, pp. 36-37).

Table 1. Linguistic megadiversity: The countries with most languages in the world

OVER 500 LANGUAGES OVER 200 LANGUAGES OVER 100 LANGUAGES

1.Papua New Guinea 8502.Indonesia 670

Total 1.520

1.Nigeria 4102.India 3803.Cameroon 2704.Australia 2505.Mexico 2406.Zaire 2107.Brazil 210

Total 1.970TOTAL for 9 3.490

1.Philippines2.Russia3.USA4.Malaysia5.China6.Sudan7.Tanzania8.Ethiopia9.Chad10.Vanuatu11.Central African Republic12.Myanmar (Burma)13.Nepal

Based on figures given in Krauss 1992: 6.

Table 2. The ten most linguistically diverse countries, according to Robinson 1993

Country Countrypopul.(millions)

No. oflivinglanguages

LLG No. inLLG

LLGas % of popul.

Officiallanguages

1.Papua New Guinea

3.6 867 Enga 164 750 5 EnglishTok PisinHiri Motu

2.Vanuatu 0.143 111 Hano 7 000 5 BislamaEnglishFrench

3.Solomon Islands

0.3 66 Kwara'ae 21 000 7 English

4.Côte D'Ivoire 12.07 75 Baoule 1 620 100 13 French

5.Gabon 1.069 40 Fang 169 650 16 French

6.Uganda 17.593 43 Ganda 2 900 000 16 English

7.Cameroon 11.9 275 Beti 2 000 000 17 FrenchEnglish

8.Kenya 25.393 58 Gikuyu 4 356 000 17 KiswahiliEnglish

9.Namibia 1.372 21 Ndonga 240 000 17 English

10.Zaire 35.33 219 Ciluba 6 300 000 18 CilubaKikongoKiswahiliLingala

4

French

LLG = Largest Language Group (adapted from Robinson, 1993: 55; based on figures in Ethnologue, 12th edition)

Measuring cultural diversity is even more difficult, regardless of how "culture" or "cultural traits" are defined (see, e.g., articles in Posey, ed., 1999, and Maffi, ed, 2001, for a good sampling). Since I concentrate on biolinguistic rather than biocultural diversity in this article, I will not discuss this further here. Suffice it to say that biolinguistic diversity is a more narrow concept than biocultural diversity; language is included in culture.

And putting languages and cultures together is even more risky, since there are many examples of non-convergence both ways. There are several cultural groups using the same language, or one cultural group using two or three different languages.

When ethnicity, another contested concept, is added, so that we get ethnocultural groups defined on the basis of languages, the measures become even more vague. Before I define ethnocultural groups, I present some of the caveats and challenges. All the concepts used, language and mother tongue, culture, and ethnicity, are social constructs, not inherited givens; they are hybrid and nomadic, dynamic and changing, not static; people may claim several of them at the same time and be multilingual and multicultural, and "multi-ethnial", or "bicountrial"7. All of them play ever-changing roles for people's multiple identities, and are variously focussed and emphasized in various situations and at various times; their salience is always variable. ALL identities are of course constructed to the extent that we are not born with identity genes. Even in cases where we are talking about phenotypically visible genotypical features like skin colour, very obviously the way these features are interpreted, are social constructions, not innate.

But with all these caveats, it is still the case that many of those groups who demand linguistic human rights do claim these concepts: they claim to know what their mother tongues are and which ethnic or ethnolinguistic or ethnocultural group(s) they belong to. They see their language as a "cultural core value" (Smolicz, 1979). Most indigenous peoples who have pronounced on their languages, share the attitudes from Canada, described by Mary Joy Elijah, herself Oneida. In her literature review (2002) she quotes from Resolution No. 9/90 Protection of First Nations' Languages, Special Chiefs Assembly, Ottawa, Ontario - December11, 1990, Georges Erasmus National Chief:

SUBJECT: Protection of First Nations' LanguagesWHEREAS language is a direct gift from the Creator; andWHEREAS First Nations languages are the cornerstone of who we are as a people; andWHEREAS our culture cannot survive without our languages; andWHEREAS the right to use and educate our children in our aboriginal languages is an inherent aboriginal and treaty right,THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT, as aboriginal people of this country, First Nations languages must be protected and promoted as a fundamental element of aboriginal heritage and must be fully entrenched in the Constitution of Canada; andFURTHER BE IT RESOLVED THAT the federal government has a moral and legal obligation, through (pre-Confederation) treaties and through legislation, to provide adequate resources that will enable First Nations languages to exercise this right.

7 One of the Sweden-Finnish youngsters in one of my studies said when asked about Finland and Sweden: "Surely you can be bicountrial too" (Skutnabb-Kangas 1987); Markku Peura and I subsequently used it as part of the title of a book, 1994.

5

There is in reality a very high degree of convergence between ethnicity, culture and mother tongue, regardless of how much liberal political scientists or post-post-modern sociolinguists want to denounce this, and "disinvent" the concepts. I have not seen more than a few dozens of examples of non-convergence, and they seem always to be the same ones. Even if there were several hundreds of them, they would still be exceptions rather than a rule, and even if exceptions are important as checks on theories, generalisations cannot build on exceptions but on what is more common. Several colleagues seem to try to raise exceptions to rules in recent debates in an eagerness not to be accused of essentialising (e.g. May, 2001, in press; Pennycook 2002). Likewise, the same few examples of loss of language, with the culture and identity still living on (the Irish, the Jews, and a few more) are always repeated and then used as proofs when claiming that there is little or no relationship between language and culture. It seems that several of the critics somehow automatically assume that if something is "constructed" (rather than "innate" or "inherited" or "primordial" or whatever one sees as the opposite of constructed) it is somehow a less valid concept. Knowing and accepting that a concept (like "mother tongue", "language", "ethnicity", "culture"), is socially constructed, does not in any way need to invalidate the concept. All science, for instance, is socially constructed - still our conclusion is not that we should stop talking about science or stop using it, or that we should somehow "disinvent" it. Critical analysis also means being open and not accepting vogue taboos.

All this knowledge, then, can be used to relativise the definition of ethnolinguistic group, used by WWF and Terralingua (Oviedo & Maffi, 2000: 1)

A human social unit that shares the same language and culture and uses the same criteria to differentiate itself from other social groups.

With this definition, WWF and Terralingua use the figure of an approximate total of 6,867 ethnolinguistic groups in the world. Terralingua has also used it for the map showing the distribution of biocultural diversity (Appendix to Skutnabb-Kangas, Maffi & Harmon, 2003).

If we want to relate the distribution of these groups to the distribution of biodiversity, we have to choose indicators for biodiversity and its worldwide distribution.

2.3. Definitions pertaining to biodiversity: Global 2000 Ecoregions, biodiversity hotspots, megadiversity countries

As already mentioned, the number of species has been used as a proxy for biodiversity. The first difficulty here is that we really have very little solid knowledge of these numbers; much less than about the number of languages. Figures between 5-15 million separate species are "considered reasonable" (Harmon, 2001: 63), with a "working figure" of about 12,5 million. But figures as low as 2 million and as high as 50 million(Maffi, 2001, Note 1) or even 100 million (Solé et al., 2003: 26) have been mentioned The highest figures are based on the estimate that most of the world's species (maybe up to 90%, Mishler, 2001: 71) have not yet been "discovered", i.e. named and described by (mostly Western) scientists; only some 1,5 million different species (from plants and animals to fungi, algae, bacteria and viruses) have so far been identified by natural scientists. Many may become extinct before having been studied at all.

A relatively simple global measure of ecological diversity which corresponds to the linguistic megadiversity list in Table 1 is megadiversity countries. These are "countries likely to contain the highest percentage of the global species richness" (the definition here is from Skutnabb-Kangas, Maffi & Harmon, 2003: 56; but see http://www.af-info.or.jp/eng/honor/essays/1997_2.html for an

6

essay about them by Russell Mittermeier (et al.), the originator of the concept; see also Conservation International at http://www.conservation.org/xp/CIWEB/publications/videos/index.xml).

Trying to make the relative distribution of the world's known biodiversity more meaningful than just listing plain numbers of species in various countries, researchers have developed concepts covering larger units where there is a high concentration of species. The two I want to mention here are ecoregions and biodiversity hotspots.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) defines an ecoregion as follows:

A relatively large unit of land or water containing a geographically distinct assemblage of species, natural communities, and environmental conditions (here from Oviedo & Maffi, 2000: 1).

The definition might seem fairly vague, but this is a necessary result of trying to capture the fact that for conservation work (and in general too) species and their living conditions have to be seen not as isolated but as mutual relations, in a similar way as a mother tongue, or ethnicity, are not characteristics of individuals or groups, but relations, including power relations, between them and other people. WWF has identified nearly 900 ecoregions, and of these 238 have been found "to be of the utmost importance for biological diversity" (ibid.). These are termed the "Global 200 Ecoregions". Most of them are in the tropical regions, just as languages are. Eric Smith's (2000: 107) account based on the 12th edition of the Ethnologue shows that 55.6% (3,630) of the world's endemic languages are in the tropical forest regions.

Another global measure is biodiversity hotspots: "relatively small regions with especially high concentrations of endemic species" (the definition is from Skutnabb-Kangas, Maffi & Harmon, 2003: 55). This concept was created by Norman Myers; see Center for Applied Biodiversity Science, http://www.biodiversityhotspots.org/xp/Hotspots).

Another type of question one could ask is which species to use as indicators of biodiversity when comparing with linguistic diversity. Would any of the species be more useful as indicators than others. Is there, for instance, anything that would correspond to implicational (rather than absolute) universals for languages. In lexicon, for instance, if a language has a word for "bush", it must also have a word for "tree" (but not vice versa)8; in grammar, if it has dual, it also has plural. Could one find examples of chains of species where the presence of X presupposes the presence of Y which presupposes the presence of Z? If so, would it simplify the task to use only examples of the Z category as indicators of biodiversity, rather than the more common X.

With some tools in place, we can now move to the relationship between the two types of diversity.

3. The relationships between linguistic diversity and biodiversity

3.1. The correlational relationshipsWhen assessing the correlational relationship between biodiversity and linguistic diversity, we can use detailed types of correlation, with certain species or species groups as indicators. In addition, we can use the more global measures of biodiversity presented above. Some of both types will be presented and discussed.

We start with the ecoregions. Of the 6,867 ethnolinguistic groups in the world, according to the definition presented above, some 67% (4,635), were found in the Global 200 Ecoregions

8 The example is from Mühlhäusler (2003: 21).

7

(Oviedo & Maffi 2000: 1-2). With many more detailed measures counted, the conclusion in the Executive Summary of Oviedo & Maffi, 2000 (p. 2) is as follows:

Correlations between Global 200 ecoregions as reservoirs of high biodiversity and areas of concentration of human diversity are clearly very significant, and unequivocally stress the need to involve indigenous and traditional peoples in ecoregional conservation work. Furthermore, there is evidence from many parts of the world that healthy, non-degraded ecosystems - such as dense, little disturbed tropical rainforests in places like the Amazon, Borneo or Papua New Guinea - are often inhabited only by indigenous and traditional peoples (emphasis added).

This also means that where we others have settled, meaning often in temperate climates, we have been a disaster to the world's biodiversity. We would obviously also have colonised and inhabited those areas which are still today relatively less degraded, had we been able to. Jarred Diamond shows convincingly that what has kept us out is the fact that we westerners have not been able to manage the climate (Diamond 1991, 1998). Even if this is true of some relatively biodiversity-poor areas too, such as the arctic areas, mostly we are talking about the biodiversity-rich tropics.

Conservationist David Harmon, probably the first one ever to put figures on the relationship, investigated more than a decade ago correlations between biological and linguistic diversity. The left hand side of Table 3 ranks countries not in terms of all languages but according to the number of endemic languages. Endemic languages (languages unique to a particular country) represent the vast majority (some 83-84 percent) of the world’s languages. The right hand side ranks countries in terms of the number of endemic higher vertebrates (mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians). Table 3 lists the top 25 countries for each type (1995: 14)9. I have BOLDED AND CAPITALISED those 16 countries (of the 25) which are on both lists, a coincidence of 64%. According to Harmon (1995: 6) "it is very unlikely that this would only be accidental.".

Table 3. Endemism in languages and higher vertebrates: a comparison of the top 25 countries

Endemic languages Number Endemic higher vertebrates Number

1. PAPUA NEW GUINEA 847 1. AUSTRALIA 1.346

2. INDONESIA 655 2. MEXICO 761

3. Nigeria 376 3. BRAZIL 725

4. INDIA 309 4. INDONESIA 673

5. AUSTRALIA 261 5. Madagascar 537

6. MEXICO 230 6. PHILIPPINES 437

7. CAMEROON 201 7. INDIA 373

8. BRAZIL 185 8. PERU 332

9. ZAIRE 158 9. COLOMBIA 330

10. PHILIPPINES 153 10. Ecuador 294

11. USA 143 11. USA 284

12. Vanuatu 105 12. CHINA 256

13. TANZANIA 101 13. PAPUA NEW GUINEA 203

14. Sudan 97 14. Venezuela 186

9 The figures for languages were derived by Harmon from the Ethnologue, 12th edition, and for vertebrates from Groombridge 1992.

8

15. Malaysia 92 15. Argentina 168

16. ETHIOPIA 90 16. Cuba 152

17. CHINA 77 17. South Africa 146

18. PERU 75 18. ZAIRE 134

19. Chad 74 19. Sri Lanka 126

20. Russia 71 20. New Zealand 120

21. SOLOMON ISLANDS 69 21. TANZANIA 113

22. Nepal 68 22. Japan 112

23. COLOMBIA 55 23. CAMEROON 105

24. Côte d'Ivoire 51 24. SOLOMON ISLANDS 101

25. Canada 47 25. ETHIOPIA26. Somalia

88 88

As can be seen, Papua New Guinea, which ranks first in terms of endemic languages, is country number 13 in terms of endemic vertebrates. The USA is number 11 on both the languages and the vertebrates list. On the other hand, Nigeria is number 3 on the languages list but is not among the 25 top countries for the biological species diversity indicator used here. Still, the correlations are very high indeed.

Harmon got similar results with flowering plants and languages: a region often has many of both, or few of both. The same is true at least for butterflies and languages and birds and languages etc. The conclusion is that at least when using the species mentioned as indicators, there is a high correlation between countries with biological and linguistic megadiversity10 (see also Harmon 2002, Skutnabb-Kangas, Maffi & Harmon, 2003)11.

In Table 4 (from Skutnabb-Kangas, Maffi & Harmon, 2003: 41), we have the same Endemic languages and Endemic vertebrates but some of the other biodiversity indicators have been added, the rankings on the flowering plants and endemic bird areas lists. In addition, there is a Yes if the country belongs to the megadiversity countries as defined above.

Table 4. Endemism in Languages Compared with Rankings of Biodiversity

Rank, Total Number of…On mega-diversity

list?

CountryEndemic

LanguagesRank Number

Endemic Vertebrates

Rank Number

Flowering Plants

Endemic Bird Areas (EBAs)

PAPUA NEW GUINEA

1 847 13 203 18t 6 yes

10 It is interesting that some researchers seem to have great difficulty in accepting that there is a correlation. An example is Idil Boran (2003: 193), a philosopher who seems in need of more information both on basic statistics and of the factual correlations - neither Harmon (who has done more than anybody else, and earlier than anybody else - to prove these correlations) nor Maffi even figure in her bibliography (nor are they in Nettle & Romaine's 2000 book bibliography, even if their correlation data have been "borrowed" from Harmon. This is not the only unacknowledged borrowing in this book either - see also Mühlhäusler's 2003b observations on this - and I could add some literal "borrowings" from my publications).11 I have been fascinated especially by the butterfly-language connection, partly because of the symbolism: endangered languages are as beautiful and vulnerable as butterflies. I have looked at detailed correlations between various kinds of butterflies, based on Mittermeyer & Mittermeier Goettsch, 1997 (see Skutnabb-Kangas, forthcoming).

9

INDONESIA 2 655 4 673 7t 1 yesNigeria 3 376INDIA 4 309 7 373 12 11 yesAUSTRALIA 5 261 1 1,346 11 9 yesMEXICO 6 230 2 761 4 2 yesCAMEROON 7 201 23 105 24BRAZIL 8 185 3 725 1 4 yesDEM REP OF CONGO

9 158 18 134 17 yes

PHILIPPINES 10 153 6 437 25 11 yesUSA 11 143 11 284 9 15 yesVanuatu 12 105TANZANIA 13 101 21 113 19 14Sudan 14 97Malaysia 15 92 14 yesETHIOPIA 16 90 25 88CHINA 17 77 12 256 3 6 yesPERU 18 75 8 332 13 3 yesChad 19 74Russia 20 71 6SOLOMON ISLANDS

21 69 24 101

Nepal 22 68 22COLOMBIA 23 55 9 330 2 5 yesCoÏte d’Ivoire 24 51Canada 25 47(source: Skutnabb-Kangas, Maffi & Harmon, 2003: 41; see this for details).

A Draft Framework for an Index of Biocultural Diversity(October 2002) which is being prepared by David Harmon and Jonathan Loh, shows many detailed correlations still more clearly.

But even if we can ascertain that there is a correlational relationship between biodiversity and linguistic and cultural diversity12, this still does not prove anything about a causal relationship, and this is also what some of the critics claim. I agree. But how does one prove this kind of a causal relationship?

3.2. Causality in biocultural relationshipsThe strong correlation need in my view not indicate a direct causal relationship in the sense that neither type of diversity should probably be seen as an independent variable in relation to the other. But languages and cultures may be decisive mediating variables in sustaining biodiversity, and vice versa. For "proving" this causal relationship, several types of knowledge would be needed. Some exists, some we have only partially at the moment; many issues have not been investigated yet. But the criteria and the whole nature of the evidence obviously also depend on the kind of scientific paradigms used. Likewise, whether already existing evidence is seen as sufficient to lead to rapid action depends on whether short-term corporate profit or the Precautionary Principle prevails, just to take two possibilities.

First I shall sum up the general causal argument about co-evolution of biodiversity and cultural (including linguistic) diversity. As soon as humans came into existence, we started to influence the rest of nature (see Diamond, 1998 for a fascinating account on how; see also Cavalli-Sforza, 2001). Today it is safe to say that there is no 'pristine nature' left - all landscapes have been and are

12 For a denunciation of the correlation on the basis of some different data, see Smith 2001.

10

influenced by human action, even those where untrained observers might not notice it immediately. All landscapes are cultural landscapes - the concept of Terra nullius ( = empty land) has finally been invalidated. But the various ways that different peoples influence their environments were and are filtered through their cultural patterns - we can, for example, think of simple examples, comparing the attitudes to meat of cows, pigs, dogs or rats as human food, and the implications of this to the occurrence, spread and life conditions of the animals. Or while more than 40,000 edible plants were known to the Aboriginal inhabitants of South Australia; very few of them have found their way to the plates of the European invaders; the Europeans have neither lexicalised these items of food nor used them (Mühlhäusler, 2003a: 59). If one does not “see” them or sees them as “weeds” (see Crosby, 1994), they are more likely to disappear. We have a similar but smaller scale difference in the use of mushrooms between the Finns and the Germans on the one hand - they name and use mushrooms - and the British on the other hand who don't. On the other hand, local nature and people's detailed knowledge about it and use of it have influenced the perceptions, cultures, languages and cosmo-visions of the people who have been dependent on it for their sustenance. To remain with food examples, if the areas where people have lived for a long time have plenty of animal protein but little of plant protein as, for instance, in the Arctic areas, it is unlikely that religions which support vegetarianism could have developed - and they haven't.

Recent research shows mounting evidence for the hypothesis that the two types of diversity seem to mutually enforce and support each other (see Maffi, 2000a). UNEP's (United Nations Environmental Program),13 mega-volume, Cultural and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity. A Complementary Contribution to the Global Biodiversity Assessment (Posey, ed. 1999) summarises some of this evidence of causality. Likewise, articles in On Biocultural Diversity. Linking Language, Knowledge and the Environment (Maffi, ed., 2001) illustrate it.

This relationship and mutual influence between all kinds of diversities is of course what most indigenous peoples have always known. Some describe their knowledge in the UNEP volume. The conservation traditions that promote the sustainable use of land and natural resources, expressed in the native languages, are, according to James Nations (2001: 470), “what Hazel Henderson called ‘the cultural DNA’ that can help us create sustainable economies in healthy ecosystems on this, the only planet we have (Gell-Mann, 1994: 292)”.

3.3. Traditional ecological knowledge and its disappearanceTo discuss this indigenous knowledge and its present uses further and to highlights its disappearance, we need first to remind ourselves of the fact that the least biodiversity-wise degraded areas tend to be areas inhabited by indigenous peoples only. Since the degradation is mainly created by humans, a conclusion is that those indigenous peoples who have not been colonised by others, have been and are important agents in the maintenance of biodiversity. The knowledge they have when interacting with (the rest of) nature in non-degrading ways is part of what has been called "traditional ecological knowledge" (TEK),

indigenous and other local peoples' knowledge and beliefs about and use of the natural world, their ecological concepts, and their natural resource management institutions and practices" (Oviedo & Maffi, 2000: 6), or

a cumulative body of knowledge, practice and belief, evolving by adaptive processes and handed down through generations by cultural transmission, about the relationships of living

13 UNEP was one of the organisers of the World Summit on Biodiversity in Rio de Janeiro in 1992; see its summary of the knowledge on biodiversity, Heywood, ed., 1995.

11

beings (including humans) with one another and with their environment (Berkes, 1999: 8, quoted in Oviedo & Maffi, 2000: 6), or

in-depth knowledge of plant and animal species, their mutual relationships, and local ecosystems held by indigenous or traditional communities, developed and handed down through generations (Skutnabb-Kangas, Maffi & Harmon 2003, Glossary, p 56).

The classifications of animals and plants obviously reflect the environment where people live. But they develop over a long time, and this largely explains why indigenous peoples have not always been good guardians of their environments. Even in terms of vocabulary for describing the environment, Mühlhäusler (2003a) estimates on the basis of his pilot studies on "desert islands" and Creole situations (Norfolk Island, Mauritius, New Zealand, St Helena, St Kitts and several others, p. 59) that "about 300 years are needed for a match between a language and the biological environment of its speakers to come about" (ibid.: 37). Before that there is "a major discrepancy between what people can name and what they need to name to sustain their island environment" (ibid.: 59). In situations where people move to a new place with their old language, this is initially "ill-suited to the task of talking about" the new environment (ibid.: 46) because of the "considerable initial mismatch between linguistic categories and natural boundaries" (ibid.: 59). The likelihood is that they may ruin much of that environment before they start to understand, classify and name it, regardless of whether there are already other people living there who had a "perfect" understanding of the biodiversity around them (like in Australia) or not (as in Aotearoa/New Zealand when the first Māoris arrived a millennium ago - see the final section). In the absence of names, people "under-utilize or over-exploit their environment" (ibid.: 59).

Even if the vocabulary is there, people may still be "environmentally illiterate", i.e. unable to name animals, plants and features of the landscape (Mühlhäusler 2003a: 41), for instance in urban contexts or if their technologically oriented worldview sees nature as a passive "ecomachine", for humans to use and exploit as they please - this is partly what enables the "growthism ideology" (ibid.: 132) to continue.

But it is not only the vocabulary of languages that is culture-specific - Mühlhäusler also claims, with many others (e.g. Michael Halliday) that grammars are "fossilized experience". Each grammar "can be seen as a repository of past experience, as the outcome of a very long process of adaptation to specific environmental conditions" (ibid.: 120); this is a result of the fact that "each language is functionally integrated with a vast array of grammar-external parameters" (ibid.). Discussing various aspects of grammar (pronouns, transitivity, passives, ergativity, tense/time, abstract nouns and nominalizations, binominals, counterfactuals), Mühlhäusler shows how various perspectives on the world are privileged depending on the grammatical structures of various languages. This also implies that "there could be a discrepancy between past functionality and present day requirements" (ibid.: 100)14. His arguments about the grammatical structures of the "European" languages (whatever these are?) making it easier, for instance through nominalizations, to construct issues like polluting as commodities to be bought an sold - the Kyoto negotiations come to mind - and to hide agency - things just happen - are amply illustrated in several detailed articles in the Ecolinguistic Reader (2001), edited by Fill and Mühlhäusler.

Another type of proof of causality could be to be able to show that it is likely that the knowledge about how to maintain aspects of biodiversity (and thus the practice of doing it) disappears if a language disappears. Luisa Maffi showed in her doctoral dissertation (Maffi, 1994) that nuances in the knowledge about medicinal plants and their use disappear when indigenous youth in Mexico become bilingual without teaching in and through the medium of their own

14 For a partial scepticism in relation to this view, see, e.g. Jung 2001.

12

languages - the knowledge is not transferred to Spanish which does not have the vocabulary for these nuances or the discourses needed (see also Nabhan, 2001, Carlson, 2001).

I was told a recent example by Pekka Aikio, the President of the Saami Parliament in Finland (personal communication, 29 November 2001). Finnish fish biologists had just "discovered" that salmon can use even extremely small rivulets leading to the river Teno, as spawning ground - earlier this was thought impossible. Pekka said that the Saami have always known this - the traditional Saami names of several of those rivulets often include the Saami word for "salmon spawning-bed". This is ecological knowledge inscribed in indigenous languages. This example shows that it is possible for Western researchers to discover for themselves the knowledge that has already been encoded in the indigenous language - but, as in this case, probably at least a millennium later than the indigenous people had it. But in many cases, the knowledge may disappear in ways where a western scientific retrieval is impossible, for many reasons, including all those material reasons which are causal factors in the disappearance of both biodiversity and linguistic diversity. And in many cases a rediscovery of the knowledge may come too late in any case.

Some critics accuse those worried about endangered languages15 for wanting to preserve/conserve indigenous and minority languages and knowledges in some kind of museal conditions. According to them, we are preventing indigenous peoples from becoming modern, this implying that they want to assimilate into larger, mostly western, languages and cultures, at the cost of their own. "Traditional" to these researchers still seems to mean backward, static, non-scientific, foreclosing all economic and social mobility and opportunities16.

In fact, in many cases, as Oviedo and Maffi state (2000: 6), TEK "is found to be more complete and accurate than Western scientific knowledge of local environments" (ibid., 6-7). Several articles in Maffi (ed., 2001) and Posey (ed., 1999) also testify to this. Few people seem to know, for instance, that the Linnéan categories were based on ancient Saami categorisation of nature (Gutierrez-Vazquez, 1989: 77). This knowledge is by no way static either, as Four Directions Council in Canada (1996, quoted from Posey, 1999: 4) describes:

What is "traditional" about traditional knowledge is not its antiquity, but the way it is acquired and used. In other words, the social process of learning and sharing knowledge, which is unique to each indigenous culture, lies at the very heart of its "traditionality". Much of this knowledge is actually quite new, but it has a social meaning, and legal character, entirely unlike the knowledge indigenous people acquire from settlers and industrialized societies.

And it is exactly this transmission process that is at grave risk as soon as indigenous children attend schools where their languages are not the main teaching languages and where their cultural practices do not permeate the learning processes. This is linguistic and cultural genocide, according to articles IIb and IIe of the UN 1948 Genocide Convention (see Skutnabb-Kangas 2000). The International Council for Science (ICSU - see www.icsu.org) organised a full-day symposium 29 August 2002 at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) on "Linking Traditional and Scientific Knowledge for Sustainable Development", together with UNESCO's Local and Indigenous Knowledge Systems Project (LINKS) and Tebtebba Foundation, in co-operation with International Chamber of Commerce (odd bedfellows but typical for how governments, through partnerships with businesses, want to escape responsibility…). Both the

15 See UNESCO 2003 a, b, c, for some cautious attempts to support endangered languages, also in education.16 Stephen May's 2003 article presents a summary and reflective theoretical and empirical critique of these misconceptions. I have critiqued them in Skutnabb-Kangas, in press a, b.

13

ICSU representatives at the conference and ICSU's 2002 report Science, Traditional Knowledge and Sustainable Development showed very clearly that TEK is seen as containing a great deal of knowledge unknown to and of utmost importance to (western) science, and that scientists are worried about the diminishing transmission of it. ICSU's stance agrees fully with the importance of linguistic and cultural human rights in education even if they do not formulate their worries in human rights terms:

Universal education programs provide important tools for human development, but they may also compromise the transmission of indigenous language and knowledge. Inadvertently, they may contribute to the erosion of cultural diversity, a loss of social cohesion and the alienation and disorientation of youth. […] In short, when indigenous children are taught in science class that the natural world is ordered as scientists believe it functions, then the validity and authority of their parents’ and grandparents’ knowledge is denied. While their parents may posses an extensive and sophisticated understanding of the local environment, classroom instruction implicitly informs that science is the ultimate authority for interpreting “reality” and by extension local indigenous knowledge is second rate and obsolete. […] Actions are urgently needed to enhance the intergenerational transmission of local and indigenous knowledge. […] Traditional knowledge conservation therefore must pass through the pathways of conserving language (as language is an essential tool for culturally-appropriate encoding of knowledge). (from various pages in ICSU 24).

And here we come to the main point. Since TEK is necessarily encoded into the local languages of the peoples whose knowledge it is, this means that if these local languages disappear, without the knowledge being transferred to other, bigger languages, the knowledge is lost. We then have to ask the two questions which I have started asking here: Is the knowledge transferred to other languages? The answer is No. Are the languages disappearing? The answer is Yes. Michael Warren, one of the people first using the concept of indigenous knowledge, echoes ICSU when he concludes (2001: 448):

Of major concern is the rapid loss of the knowledge of many communities as universal formal education is enforced with a curriculum that usually ignores the contributions of local communities to global knowledge. The loss of knowledge in linked indelibly to language extinction since language is the major mechanism for preserving and transmitting a community’s knowledge from one generation to another.

3.4. Some complexities in discussing the causal relationshipsBefore finishing, I want to mention a couple of the basic paradigmatic differences that make claims about and investigations of the causality more complex - there are many more. One of the important debates here is the conflict between the views "prominent in Western culture and particularly prominent among scientists - that the role of language is that of labelling pre-existing natural entities" (Mühlhäusler, 2003a: 12) and the views of ecolinguistics which "emphasise the pervasive role of language and discourse in constructing and perpetuating perceptions of realities" (ibid.). Since the old positivist "belief that it is possible for human observers to capture objective facts is one of the principal components of modern Western world view" (ibid., 52), most of the training of researchers (Mühlhäusler uses the training of foresters in the USA as an example) has encouraged them to make a distinction between these "verifiable and observable facts" (ibid.) on the one hand, and subjective opinions and values on the other hand ("other than measurable objective economic

14

values", Mühlhäusler states, - 2003a: 52 - without developing this further17). This is more than just another critique of old-style positivism. Mühlhäusler shows in which ways the belief has influenced the development of linguistics as a discipline and the fairly substantial negative consequences it has had - and still has. It is one of the main factors explaining the inability of most linguists to do serious work to appreciate and promote linguistic diversity. Mühlhäusler's 2003a book is a serious critique of modern linguistics which Mühlhäusler sees as "based on the non-ecological view, that its object of inquiry can be studied in isolation from all other phenomena, that the ecology in which language is embedded does not provide explanations as to its nature and that in turn language does not impact on the environment" (ibid.: 3).

Another important distinction that Mühlhäusler discusses is the one between "intellectualists" and "constructivists". The former "hold that the classification of life forms is essentially a cognitive matter" (ibid., 36). Berlin (1991: 57) describes this view as follows: "human beings everywhere recognise the inherent order and structure in the biological world quite independently of whatever practical value plants and animals may be thought to possess". The "utilitarianists/ constructivists/ functionalists", on the other hand, argue that names are given to animals and plants that people use, "that have practical consequences for human adaptation" (Mühlhäusler, 2003a: 57, quoting Cecil Brown). After a lengthy discussion, Mühlhäusler's conclusion is that existing evidence supports the latter position more. Partially overlapping with the earlier distinction, then, labels are regarded as "largely culture-specific accidental conventionalizations, not linguistic analogues of natural classes" (ibid., 46); there is no "literal meaning" (p. 131).

4. To concludeToday, linguistic diversity is disappearing much faster than biodiversity. I will present a very simple comparison, based on numbers and extinction rates. According to conservative (i.e. optimistic) assessments, more than 5,000 species disappear every year; pessimistic evaluations claim that the figure may be up to 150,000. Using the most 'optimistic' estimate of both the number of species (the high figure of 30 million) and the killing of species (the "low" figure of 5,000/year), the extinction rate is 0.017% per year. With the opposite, the most 'pessimistic' estimates (5 million species; 150,000/year disappear), the yearly extinction rate is 3%.

On the other hand, researchers who use the high extinction rates, often also use higher estimates for numbers of species. If the number of species is estimated at 30 million and 150,000 disappear yearly, the rate would be 0.5% per year. Many researchers seem to use yearly extinction rates which vary between 0.2% ('pessimistic realistic') and 0.02% ('optimistic realistic' - these are my labels).

If we disregard the cumulative effect and do a simplified calculation, according to the 'pessimistic realistic' prognosis, then, 20% of the biological species we have today might be dead in the year 2100, in hundred years' time. According to the 'optimistic realistic' prognosis the figure would be 2%. ). Optimistic estimates, then, state that 2% of biological species but 50% of languages may be dead (or moribund) in a 100 years' time. Pessimistic estimates are that 20% of biological species but 90% of languages may be dead (or moribund) in a 100 years' time (Table 5).

Table 5. Prognoses for 'dead' or 'moribund' species and languagesPercentage estimated to be dead or moribund around the year 2100

PROGNOSES Biological species Languages'Optimistic realistic' 2% 50%'Pessimistic realistic' 20% 90%

17 Here Grin's (2003) discussion about private and social market and non-market values could take us much further; see also my application of this to linguistic diversity, using some additional legal arguments (Skutnabb-Kangas, in press c).

15

Obviously the figures for extinction for biological species are much higher if we only take mammals, or birds, or only animals and plants - and these are the species best described by natural scientists - cuddly koalas are more interesting, even for most supporting foundations, than slimy algae or invisible bacteria (agro-biotech corporations are an exception). But since we know very little about the relationships enabling healthy ecosystems (see Rapport, 1989) to be maintained, we need to use the total figures.

Why is biodiversity disappearing. We couldsummarise the three main reasons as follows:- The poor and powerless economic and political situation of people living in the world’s most diverse ecoregions;- Habitat destruction through logging, spread of agriculture, use of pesticides & fertilisers, deforestation, desertification, overfishing, etc.- Knowledge about how to maintain biodiversity and use nature sustainably disappears with disappearing languages.

Colin Baker sums up the importance of ecological diversity in his review of Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000 (Baker, 2001: 281).

Ecological diversity is essential for long-term planetary survival. Diversity contains the potential for adaptation. Uniformity can endanger a species by providing inflexibility and unadaptability. As languages and cultures die, the testimony of human intellectual achievement is lessened. In the language of ecology, the strongest ecosystems are those that are the most diverse. Diversity is directly related to stability; variety is important for long-term survival. Our success on this planet has been due to an ability to adapt to different kinds of environment over thousands of years. Such ability is born out of diversity. Thus language and cultural diversity maximises chances of human success and adaptability.

Biocultural diversity is thus essential for long-term planetary survival because it enhances creativity and adaptability and thus stability. Today we are killing biocultural diversity faster than ever before in human history.

Jared Diamond examines in the chapter 'The Golden Age That Never Was' in his 1991 book the evidence for people and cultures before us having completely ruined the prerequisites for their own life, beyond repair. They have destroyed their habitats and/or exterminated large numbers of species. This has happened in many places and it makes the 'supposed past Golden Age of environmentalism look increasingly mythical' (Diamond, 1991: 335). If we want to learn from it, and not make it happen on a global basis (this is our obvious risk today), we better heed his advice. In parallel with Mühlhäusler (see also his 1996), Diamond claims the following:

‘… small long-established, egalitarian societies tend to evolve conservationist practices, because they've had plenty of time to get to know their local environment and to perceive their own self-interest. Instead, damage is likely to occur when people suddenly colonize an unfamiliar environment (like the first Maoris and Eastern Islanders); or when people advance along a new frontier (like the first Indians to reach America), so that they can just move beyond the frontier when they've damaged the region behind; or when people acquire a new technology whose destructive power they haven't had time to appreciate (like modern New Guineans, now devastating pigeon populations with shotguns). Damage is also likely in centralized states that concentrate wealth in the hands of rulers who are out of touch with their environment’ (Diamond, 1991, 335-336).

16

Summarizing Diamond’s factors, damage tends to occur when people1. colonize an unfamiliar environment;2. advance along a new frontier;3. acquire a new technology whose destructive power people haven't had time to appreciate;4. have centralized states that concentrate wealth in the hands of rulers who are out of touch with

their environment’

As we can see, we have the perfect global prerequisites for ruining our planet beyond repair.Ad factor 1: Long-established small societies are breaking up, and, with urbanization and migration, people encounter new environments;Ad factor 3: New technologies are more destructive than ever and results of biochemical and other experiments (like genetically modified crops) are taken into use before we know anything about the long-term effects on nature or people;Ad factor 4: We have growing gaps and alienated elites;And ad factor 2: We do not have the new planets to move to when we have damaged this one…

Researchers have a responsibility not only to produce solid knowledge about the incredible complexities in this transdisciplinary area, but also to act on the basis of the still (probably always?) incomplete knowledge. It has to be today.

References:Baker, Colin (2001). Review of Tove Skutnabb-Kangas Linguistic genocide in education – or

worldwide diversity and human rights? Journal of Sociolinguistics, 5:2, May 2001, 279-283.Berkes, F. (1999). Sacred Ecology: Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Resource

Management Systems. Philadelphia: Taylor and Francis.Berlin, Brent (1991). The chicken and the egg revisited. Further evidence for the intellectualist base

of ethnobiological classification. In Pawley, Andrew (ed.). Man and a half: essays in Pacific anthropology and ethnobiology in honour of Ralph Bulmer. Auckland: The Polynesian Society, 57-66.

Boran, Idil (2003). Global Linguistic Diversity, Public Goods, and the Principle of Fairness. In Kymlicka, Will & Patten, Alan (eds). Language Rights and Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 189-209.

Carlson, Thomas J. (2001). Language, ethnobotanical knowledge, and tropical public health. In Maffi, Luisa (ed.). On Biocultural Diversity. Linking Language, Knowledge and the Environment.. Washington, D.C.: The Smithsonian Institute Press, 489-502.

Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi-Luca (2001). Genes, Peoples and Languages. London: Penguin.Crosby, Alfred W. (1994). Ecological imperialism. The biological expansion of Europe, 900-

1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Diamond, Jared (1992). The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee. London: Vintage.Diamond, Jared (1998). Guns, Germs and Steel. A Short History of Everybody for the Last

13,000 Years. London: Random House.Elijah, Mary Joy (2002). First Nations Jurisdiction Over Education. Literature Review -

Language & Culture. Prepared for The Minister's National Working Group on Education, Canada. Draft, October 30.2002.

Fill, Alwin & Mühlhäusler, Peter (eds). The Ecolinguistic Reader. Language, ecology and environment. London & New York: Continuum.

Gell-Mann, M. (1994). The Quark and the Jaguar. New York: W. H. Freeman.

17

Grin, François with contributions by Regina Jensdóttir and Dónall Ó Riagáin, (2003). Language Policy Evaluation and the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages. London & New York: Palgrave, Macmillan.

Groombridge, B. (ed.) (1992). Global Biodiversity: Status of the Earth's Living Resources. World Conservation Monitoring Centre. London: Chapman & Hall.

Gutierrez-Vazquez, J.M. (1989). Science Education in Context: A Point of View from the Third World. In Dias, Patrick (ed.), with the collaboration of Ruediger Blumoer. Basic Science Knowledge and Universalization of Elementary Education. Volume II. Basic Science at Elementary Education Level. Frankfurt: Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University. Pädagogik Dritte Welt, 70-85.

Harmon, David (1995). The status of the world's languages as reported in the Ethnologue. Southwest Journal of Linguistics 14:1&2, 1-28.

Harmon, David (2001). On the meaning and moral imperative of diversity. In Maffi, Luisa (ed.). On Biocultural Diversity. Linking Language, Knowledge and the Environment.. Washington, D.C.: The Smithsonian Institute Press, 53-70.

Harmon, David (2002). In Light of Our Differences: How Diversity in Nature and Culture Makes Us Human. Washington, D.C.: The Smithsonian Institute Press.

Harmon, David & Loh, Jonathan (2002). Draft Framework for an Index of Biocultural Diversity. Draft Discussion Paper, October 2002.

Heywood, V.H. (ed.) (1995). Global Biodiversity Assessment. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press & UNEP (United Nations Environmental Program).

ICSU (International Council for Science) (2002). Science, Traditional Knowledge and Sustainable Development. Series on Science for Sustainable Development No. 4. Compiled and edited primarily by D. Nakashima and D. Elias, UNESCO. ISSN 1683-3686. No place, no publisher. See www.icsu.org.

Jung, Matthias (2001). Ecological criticism of language. In Fill, Alwin & Mühlhäusler, Peter (eds). The Ecolinguistic Reader. Language, ecology and environment. London & New York: Continuum, 270-285.

Kibbee, Douglas A. (2003). Language policy and linguistic theory. In Maurais, Jacques & Morris, Michael. A. (eds.). Languages in a Globalising World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 47-57.

Krauss, Michael (1992). The world's languages in crisis. Language 68:1, 4-10.Maffi, Luisa (1994). A Linguistic Analysis of Tzeltal Maya Ethnosymptomatology. Ph.D.

dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. [UMI order # 9504901].Maffi, Luisa (2000a). Linguistic and biological diversity: the inextricable link. In Phillipson, Robert

(ed.). Rights to Language. Equity, Power, and Education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 17-22.

Maffi, Luisa (2000b). Language preservation vs. language maintenance and revitalization: assessing concepts, approaches, and implications for language sciences. International Journal of the Sociology of Languages 142. Dorian, Nancy C. (ed.). Small languages and small language communities, .175-190.

Maffi, Luisa (2001). Introduction. In Maffi, Luisa (ed.). On Biocultural Diversity. Linking Language, Knowledge and the Environment.. Washington, D.C.: The Smithsonian Institute Press, 1-50.

Maffi, Luisa (ed.) (2001). On Biocultural Diversity. Linking Language, Knowledge and the Environment.. Washington, D.C.: The Smithsonian Institute Press.

Maffi, Luisa, Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove & Andrianarivo, Jonah (1999). Language diversity. In Posey, Darrell (ed.) (1999). Cultural and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity. A Complementary

18

Contribution to the Global Biodiversity Assessment. London: Intermediate Technology Publications, for and on behalf of the United Nations Environmental Programme, 19-57.

May, Stephen. (2001). Language and minority rights: ethnicity, nationalism, and the politics of language. Harlow, Essex, England & NewYork: Longman.

May, Stephen (2003). Misconceiving Minority Language Rights: Implications for Liberal Political Theory. In Kymlicka, Will & Patten, Alan (eds). Language Rights and Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 123-152.

May, Stephen (in press). Rethinking Linguistic Human Rights: Answering questions of identity, essentialism and mobility. In Patrick, Donna & Freeland, Jane (eds). Language rights and language survival: a sociolinguistic exploration. Manchester: St. Jerome.

Mishler, Brent D. (2001). Biodiversity and the loss of lineages. In Maffi, Luisa (ed.). On Biocultural Diversity. Linking Language, Knowledge and the Environment.. Washington, D.C.: The Smithsonian Institute Press, 71-81.

Mittermeier, Russell & Mittermeier Goettsch, Cristina (1997). Megadiversity: Earth's Biologically Wealthieast Nations. Mexico City; CEMEX.

Mühlhäusler, Peter (1996). Linguistic ecology. Language change and linguistic imperialism in the Pacific region. London: Routledge.

Mühlhäusler, Peter (2003a). Language of Environment - Environment of Language. A Course in Ecolinguistics. London: Battlebridge.

Mühlhäusler, Peter (2003b). Review essay of Nettle & Romaine, Crystal and Hinton & Hale. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(2), 232-245.

Nabhan, Gary P. (2001). Cultural perceptions of ecological interactions: an "endangered people's" contribution to the conservation of biological and linguistic diversity. In Maffi, Luisa (ed.) On Biocultural Diversity. Linking Language, Knowledge and the Environment.. Washington, D.C.: The Smithsonian Institute Press, 145-156.

Nations, James D. (2001). Indigenous peoples and conservation. In Maffi, Luisa (ed.). On Biocultural Diversity. Linking Language, Knowledge and the Environment.. Washington, D.C.: The Smithsonian Institute Press, 462-471.

Nettle, Daniel & Romaine, Suzanne (2000). Vanishing Voices. The extinction of the world's languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Oviedo, Gonzalo & Maffi, Luisa (2000). Indigenous and Traditional Peoples of the World and Ecoregion Conservation. An Integrated Approach to Conserving the World's Biological and Cultural Diversity. Gland, Switzerland: WWF International & Terralingua.

Pennycook, Alastair (2002). Mother tongues, governmentality and protectionism. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 154, 11-28.

Peura, Markku & Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove (eds) (1994). "Man kan vara tvåländare också." Om sverigefinnarnas väg från tystnad till kamp [You can be bicountrial too. The road of the Sweden-Finnish minority from silence to struggle]. Stockholm: Sverigefinländarnas Arkiv,

Posey, Darrell (ed.) (1999). Cultural and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity. A Complementary Contribution to the Global Biodiversity Assessment. New York: UNEP (United Nations Environmental Programme) & Leiden: Intermediate Technologies, Leiden University).

Rapport, David J. (1989). What constitutes ecosystem health? Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 33(1): 120-132.

Robinson, Clinton D.W. (1993). Where minorities are in the majority: language dynamics amidst high linguistic diversity. In de Bot, Kees (ed.). Case Studies in Minority Languages. AILA Review 10, 52 -70.

Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove (1984). Bilingualism or not - the education of minorities. Clevedon, Avon: Multilingual Matters.

19

Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove (1987). Are the Finns in Sweden an Ethnic Minority? Finnish Parents Talk about Finland and Sweden. Research Project "The education of the Finnish minority in Sweden", Working Paper nr 1. Roskilde: Roskilde University Centre, Institute VI.

Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove (2000). Linguistic genocide in education – or worldwide diversity and human rights? Mahwah, New Jersey & London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove (2002). Language Policies and Education: the role of education in destroying or supporting the world's linguistic diversity. Keynote Address at the World Congress on Language Policies, 16-20 April 2002, organized by the Linguapax Institute in co-operation with the Government of Catalonia, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. The English version can be found at http://www.linguapax.org/congres/plenaries/skutnabb.html.

Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove (in press a). (Why) should diversities be maintained? Language diversity, biological diversity and linguistic human rights. Glendon Distinguished Lectures 2003, York University, Glendon College, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove (in press b). Can a "linguistic human rights approach" "deliver"? Reflections on complementarities, tensions and misconceptions in attempts at multidisciplinarities. Keynote paper at the International conference on Language, Education and Diversity, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand, 26-29 November 2003. Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove (in press c). The right to mother tongue medium education - the hot potato in human rights instruments. Opening plenary at the 2nd Mercator International Symposium, Tarragona, Spain, 27-28 February 2004.

Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove (forthcoming). Butterflies and languages - what is the relationship?Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove, Maffi, Luisa and Harmon, Dave (2003). Sharing A World of Difference.

The Earth’s Linguistic, Cultural, and Biological Diversity. Paris: UNESCO Publishing. UNESCO, Terralingua, and World Wide Fund for Nature. 56 pp. (ISBN UNESCO 92-3-103917-2).

Smith, Eric A. (2001). On the coevolution of cultural, linguistic, and biological diversity. In Maffi, Luisa (ed.). On Biocultural Diversity. Linking Language, Knowledge and the Environment.. Washington, D.C.: The Smithsonian Institute Press, 95-117.

Smolicz, J.J. (1979). Culture and Education in a Plural Society. Canberra: Curriculum Development Centre.

Solé, Ricard D., Ferrer-Cancho, Ramon, Montoya, Jose M. & Valverde, Sergi (2003). Selection, Tinkering, and Emergence in Complex Networks. Crossing the Land of Tinkering. Complexity 8(1): 20-33.

UNESCO 2003a. UNESCO 2003a. Language Vitality and EndangermentLanguage Vitality and Endangerment. . UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Unit’s Ad Hoc Expert Group on Endangered Languages. Approved 31 March 2003 by the Unit’s Ad Hoc Expert Group on Endangered Languages. Approved 31 March 2003 by the Participants of the at International Expert Meeting on UNESCO Programme Safeguarding of Participants of the at International Expert Meeting on UNESCO Programme Safeguarding of Endangered Languages, UNESCO, Paris-Fontenoy,10-12 March 2003.Endangered Languages, UNESCO, Paris-Fontenoy,10-12 March 2003.

UNESCO 2003b.UNESCO 2003b. Recommendations for Action Plan Recommendations for Action Plan. International Expert Meeting on UNESCO . International Expert Meeting on UNESCO Programme Safeguarding of Endangered Languages, UNESCO, Paris-Fontenoy,10-12 March Programme Safeguarding of Endangered Languages, UNESCO, Paris-Fontenoy,10-12 March 2003.2003.

UNESCO 2003c. Education in a multilingual world. UNESCO Education Position Paper. Paris: UNESCO. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001297/129728e.pdf

Warren, D. Michael (2001). The role of the global network of indigenous knowledge resource centers in the conservation of cultural and biological diversity. In Maffi, Luisa (ed.). On Biocultural Diversity. Linking Language, Knowledge and the Environment.. Washington, D.C.: The Smithsonian Institute Press, 446-461.

World Resources Institute, World Conservation Union, and United Nations Environment

20

Programme (1992). Global Biodiversity Strategy: Policy-makers’ Guide. Baltimore: WRI Publications.

21