HUMAN BIODIVERSITY
THE VALUE OF BIODIVERSITY #4
Preserving biodiversity is crucial, no question.
And although we are sadly used to associating this necessity with the current state of natural depletion and drastic decline of marine, terrestrial, and agrifood biodiversity, there is an aspect that is perhaps less obvious and immediate.
Humans too are part of this biodiverse richness.
Our species, at risk of extinction in the long run, is enriched by a plurality of colors and morphologies, races and ethnic groups, cultures, and languages, such as to make our Planet a varied representation of human diversity.
Preserving human heterogeneity is therefore as crucial as preserving natural biodiversity.
A world without human biodiversity would mean a world that speaks the same language, that reasons the same way, that has the same vision, and that eats the same foods. It would be a world with no wonder but also with no natural variety, as it reflects the diversity of cultures, practices, and approaches.
We cannot play a symphony with one single note. Equally, we could not yearn to restore the greatest representation of natural variety with human uniformity.
UNIQUE OR CONFORMED INDIVIDUALS?
Be you, be unique, be your true self. These are hymns that come after acknowledging that the best ideas and solutions are the result of different perspectives and unalike points of view. Divergent thinking, as it is called in hackathons.
Therefore, with more and more people starting to see “divers-ability” as a superpower rather than a hindrance and neurodiversity as simply cognitive differences, the narrative about human diversity is changing. Adjectives like “normal” and “usual” are slowly giving way to “disruptive” and “cross-contamination of perspectives,’, thanks to the rise of multicultural, intergenerational, and multi-stakeholder approaches.
But how free are we to safely and truly express our perspectives? How immune are we from bias or conformation?
Diversity may face some challenges in the highly performative society in which we live, where anxiety, pressure, and psychological unsafety are inevitably affecting the way we think, react, and perform, especially now after the global pandemic.
Experimental studies shared by Carlo Giardinetti, Dean of Executive Education and Global Outreach from the Franklin University (Switzerland), showed that group bias and social conformity are real, with 75% of people tested behaving differently to conform to the rest of the group.
The truth is that humans are “social animals’’ and, since the beginning of time, surviving in tribes required conformity. Still today, conformation increases group cohesion, but also our desire of being accepted on which we all ground the sense of belonging and group identity, as studies reveal. But it also inevitably compromises human diversity, homogenizing information and approaches, impoverishing individuals and society as a whole.
“Much of the time, it is in the interest of the individual to follow the crowd, but in the social interest for individuals to say and do what they think best.”―Cass Sunstein
CULTURAL DIVERSITY: THE GROUND FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY
“Cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature,” stresses article 1 of the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, recognizing the pivotal role of the plurality of identities and cultures composing humankind.
Cultural diversity includes varieties of practices, rituals, knowledge, techniques, language, beliefs, ethnicities, religions, values: the buffering around which individuals build their thoughts and perspectives, but also the roots for the natural richness. It comes as no surprise then that generally, the most biologically diverse areas are the most culturally diverse.
The Mediterranean basin represents a great example, as a very rich area in terms of both biological and cultural diversity: there, languages, dialects, and rituals perfectly merge with the territory, landscape, and nature. Or the Mankind Museum in Paris, designed to value humankind in all its diversities, from scientific to social aspects, from knowledge sharing to biological peculiarities. A deep interconnection that also explains why the World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development directly follows the World Day for Biological Diversity.
Culture is also how populations live, adapt, produce and transform foods. Let’s think about the tens of thousands of techniques that over time communities of family farmers and fishermen have developed to face natural disasters, preserve food, and increase resilience; all aspects that have inevitably enriched our society and Planet.
Preserving this kind of expertise means promoting diversified agroecological systems, giving voice and rights to marginalized groups, and protecting the income of family farmers and fishermen so that they remain on the territories, as real custodians of our natural and crop variety. Without diversity, we would probably not have today on our tables one iconic product of the Mediterranean Diet, the “mozzarella nella mortella,” “invented” by the mastery of shepherds in Pollica to ensure long term cheese conservation. That is one of many reasons why today Future Food Mediterraneo is inaugurating the Paideia Campus, a project to enhance the natural, cultural, historical heritage of one of the seven emblematic communities of the Mediterranean Diet, Pollica, to create connections of diversity and expertise.
“Starting from our roots, we sit at the common table, a place of conversation and shared hopes. In this way, diversity, which can be a flag or a frontier, is transformed into a bridge. Identity and dialogue are not enemies. One’s cultural identity is deepened and enriched in dialogue with different realities, and the authentic way to preserve it is not isolation that impoverishes.” — HH Pope Francis
LANGUAGE DIVERSITY AND THE POWER OF STORIES
Language is certainly a key component of cultural diversity. Being the vehicle of knowledge, words and their etymology incorporate within them the unique legacy with history, traditions, local territories, local practices, rituals, and harmony with nature.
“When a language is lost, the associated ecological and cultural knowledge is lost with it,” is reported in the joint program between UNESCO and the Convention on Biological Diversity, breaking the natural link between ancestors and younger generations.
A snapshot of cultural and language erosion is emphasized by the fact that local languages, dialects, and even national words are gradually losing ground in favor of omni-understandable words. A context that mirrors the simultaneous loss of varieties, crops, species, and biodiversity resulting in widespread standardized diets and ways of living.
But there is good news: people are starting to realize the importance of taking care of words, just as preserving diversity. In this direction, stories can play a pivotal role in bringing both human and natural diversity back to the center. Stories convey values, lead emotions, allow individuals to experience distant realities, nurture curiosity. This is the case, for example, of the Italian start-up WineHoop — Story to taste, a project designed to lead the people to discover Italian areas and their wines through human and landscape diversity. Stories of wines that come from the expertise and tradition of winemakers, from the peculiarities of the land and vineyards characterizing each bottle of wine, always different from one to another.
When we eventually realize how interconnected everything is, we will no longer need to remind ourselves to preserve diversity, being biological, cultural, and linguistically diverse.
“In nature, we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Future Food Institute is an international social enterprise and the cornerstone of the Future Food Ecosystem, a collection of research labs, partnerships, initiatives, platforms, networks, entrepreneurial projects and academic programs, aiming to build a more equitable world through enlightening a world-class breed of innovators, boosting entrepreneurial potential, and improving agri-food expertise and tradition.
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