Embracing Nature and Culture: Biocultural Approaches to Sustainability
Biocultural approaches aim to consider the diversity of life in all its manifestations, thereby acknowledging a plurality of worldviews and human-nature interactions. When applied in research, they can offer powerful tools in the pursuit of sustainability. A recent review provides further insights.
A lesson that is key to sustainability studies: Sustainability is largely a matter of culture, and human societies are closely interlinked with the natural and biophysical environment in which they exist.
Biocultural approaches address these nature-culture interlinkages, offering ways to simultaneously represent, interpret and shape cultural dimensions in sustainability research. The applied research includes a range of topics “from biodiversity conservation and ecosystem restoration, up to discussions of ethical issues and their implementation in transformational research”. They might, for example, address interrelations between biodiversity and local ecological knowledge, cultural values or traditional practices.
Biocultural approaches are particularly inclusive to different ways of knowing — including lay and non-scientific knowledge — and able to bridge different knowledge systems and policy. They offer the potential to satisfy the “needs of users from different social worlds” while facilitating communication, allowing for cooperation and interdisciplinarity without the need for consensus.
This makes them particularly well-suited for inter- and transdisciplinary research on sustainability challenges, where knowledge and policy are co-produced together with stakeholders from diverse fields and realms, be it academics or practitioners.
Contrasting conceptions
Given all these benefits, however, the term ‘biocultural’ refers to a broad spectrum of approaches. Thus it can be argued that the concept stays vague, and a clear understanding of the diversity of perspectives is lacking. This conceptual vagueness can even lead to a “lack of focus, cause misunderstandings and even jeopardize” their application in policy and management.
As part of a wider team of researchers, members of our research group conducted a review of the literature, aiming to systematically delineate contrasting conceptions and applications. They aimed to allow for a “greater appreciation for the richness and complementarity of the different biocultural approaches”, and to help unfold their “full potential in future applications in sustainability research”.
Applying a combination of analytical methods, the researchers examined 178 English-language papers from sustainability sciences, environmental and resource management studies, published between 1990 and 2018.
By doing so, they were able to derive some revealing conclusions on the papers’ relations to sustainability sciences. Moreover, they identified seven ‘biocultural lenses’ that shape the underlying approaches.
Lessons from the literature
The 178 papers examined were situated in the fields of biology, agriculture, forestry, veterinary medicine and the humanities. The large majority was empirical, and most of them tended to put “greater emphasis on the cultural dimension”.
However, in how far does ‘biocultural’ literature engage with the main principles of sustainability science:
- the inclusion of different knowledge types,
- social justice issues, such as governance and gender, and
- the normative horizon of the UN Sustainable Development Goals?
And how can biocultural approaches unfold their potential for much needed sustainable solutions?
Interdisciplinarity
Biocultural approaches offer a strong potential to bridge between topics. As such, they are often applied by research communities “inherently bridging between disciplines”, such as ethnobiology or landscape research.
The majority were “place-based, empirical case studies”, with clearly defined boundaries to the social-ecological systems examined — such as landscape-level approaches.
The temporal dimension of a historical co-evolution of biological and cultural aspects was central to many of them — such as in studies concerning knowledge and memory, history and heritage.
Transdisciplinarity
Biocultural approaches offer the potential to engage with non-academic actors and the implementation of research results into policies. They are generally open to be applied in “practice and action-oriented initiatives”.
The papers examined, however, most prominently focused on the conservation of biocultural aspects, and only rarely on questions of future transformational change. Although “recommendations for action were often mentioned, action was less frequently the main focus”.
Moreover, the review indicates little implementation of the principles of transdisciplinarity in most of the literature:
“Approximately half of the papers (…) were not based on a transdiciplinary engagement, one third of them (…) shared information with or consulted non-academic actors and only 31 papers were deeply engaged through collaboration or empowerment”.
Solutions to sustainability challenges
Sustainability science aims to provide “actionable knowledge” that contributes to the solution of sustainability challenges. Biocultural approaches can serve to define indicators of sustainability, and to facilitate transformational processes.
SDG #15: Life on Land was most prominently linked to biocultural approaches. It aims to ‘Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss‘. However, 28 papers did not relate, even indirectly, to any particular SDG.
Moreover, questions of social justice and governance remain underrepresented in the biocultural studies examined:
The majority of papers did not consider power or gender issues. In 80 papers, governance was not considered as a relevant aspect.
Seven biocultural lenses
The following ‘lenses’ can be understood as seven “ways of understanding and applying biocultural approaches to sustainability”. In sum, they provide an overview on the current state of the art in biocultural sustainability science literature.
#1 Biocultural Diversity
This lens focuses on the “effects of human values and practices on biodiversity”. Until now it is especially applied in the context of indigenous people’s worldviews and livelihood strategies. However, some argue to extend this scope to communities in “transformed rural and urban landscapes”. The 37 papers included here e.g. further elaborate on the concept of biocultural diversity, develop indicators, assess the underlying connection between nature and culture, or reflect on its importance for sustainable development.
#2 Biocultural Conservation
…puts particular emphasis on the issue of conservation, and on its implementation and improvement through biocultural methods. These 24 papers tend to be strongly action-oriented. They highlight the “need to simultaneously achieve biological and cultural conservation” or to “genuinely conserve biocultural diversity”. A classic example would be a study on the indigenous co-management of conservation areas, which aims to simultaneously empower local communities and to conserve cultural aspects and biodiversity.
#3 Biocultural Landscapes and Natural Resources Management
…takes the dimension of space as an “analytical entry point” or “arena of interaction”. These 35 papers focus on specific landscapes inherently rich in diversity, or on the need to continue traditional land uses such as farming. Land- or seascapes are understood as the “spatial and tangible expression of a long history of human-environment interaction and co-evolution of cultural and biological characteristics”.
#4 Biocultural History and Heritage
…focuses on temporal dimensions, such as “long time horizons, time depth, continuity, legacies and tradition”. These 18 papers address, for example, historical biocultural diversity, the co-evolution of biological and cultural diversity or historical land uses, or they question the idea of pristine nature. Here, long history is generally seen as valuable and in need of maintenance.
#5 Biocultural Knowledge and Memory
Through this lens, knowledge, practices, beliefs and values are viewed “as expressions of biocultural diversity”. Focusing either on individual species, specific purposes, single land-use types or spatial units, these 38 papers address the need for maintenance of (indigenous or traditional) knowledge and memories, sometimes including questions of gender. Here, knowledge is sometimes related to empowerment and participation with a view to improve conservation measures and management.
#6 Biocultural Ethics, Rights and Sovereignty
…addresses “issues around justice, rights and sovereignty of local or indigenous people”. These six studies tend to be “action oriented from a justice perspective”, broadly relating to ethics or to more specific ethical issues — such as te legal recognition of traditional knowledge and their holders in international treaties, or the patenting of specific geographical indications.
#7 Biocultural Restoration, Transformation and Design
…is particularly occupied with the question of how to guide and implement “change towards desirable futures”. Key issues in these 20 papers are biocultural restoration or the joint restoration of ecosystems and cultural revitalization, often guided by local knowledge or together with indigenous people, sometimes linked to critical debates on development paradigms and societal transformation.
Conclusion
Biocultural approaches feature a range of properties that render them suitable for application in sustainability science, most prominently because they offer “conceptual and practical space for the inclusion of different academic disciplines and non-academic views”.
However, while sustainability science stands for a “broad perspective requiring systemic change for solving problems”, most papers examined here are focusing on biocultural approaches as a descriptive and analytical entry point: They provide a narrow problem framing and a more descriptive analysis, in a way that seems almost ‘nostalgically’ centred around conservation.
A forward-looking, dynamic perspective that focuses on action and transformation is rarely taken up.
The review suggests that biocultural approaches in sustainability science need to move “from describing how nature and culture are co-produced to co-producing knowledge for sustainability solutions”. Moreover, issues related to social sustainability and justice — such as questions of power and especially gender — have not been extensively considered thus far.
In order to bring biocultural approaches to their full potential for sustainability science, they are thus in need of a “mainstreaming of issues related to gender, power and social justice, action and transformations”.
Full Study: Hanspach, J., Jamila Haider, L., Oteros-Rozas, E., Torralba, M., Plieninger, T., et al. (2020). Biocultural approaches to sustainability: A systematic review of the scientific literature. People & Nature 2: 643–659. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10120
