Sacred Groves in Kurdistan: Biodiversity, locally preserved
Throughout the world, local people and communities actively work for the preservation of sacred natural sites out of religious reasons. These form a “shadow network” of conservation areas disproportionally rich in biodiversity and ecosystem services. In cooperation with the University of Kurdistan, a research group has now examined how and why such woodlands are locally valued and protected in Baneh County, Iran — and how these traditional practices can be harnessed in order to foster biodiversity conservation in an area of conflict.
In the contested borderlands of Iran and Iraq, state-run areas of environmental protection are often failing, while high pressures on natural resources prevail. In such an area of conflict, patches of highly biodiverse woodlands, however, still do exist mainly due to informal conservation traditions — in the form of decades-old sacred natural sites, mainly groves.
Many cultures of the world have set aside parts of their farming and forest landscapes for spiritual or religious reasons —be it in Ethiopia, Morocco, Italy, China, or India. In the Middle East, sacred groves are quite common, but have rarely been studied. They usually belong to a Mosque, serve as village cemeteries, and, as such, are subject to strict rules and taboos prohibiting their exploitation, such as the felling of trees, hunting or animal grazing.
A “shadow network” of conservation areas in decline
Generally, sacred groves cover only small plots of land, but are disproportionally rich in biodiversity and ecosystem services. Ophrys reinholdii ssp. straussii, for example, is a rare orchid, the roots of which are harvested for traditional medicinal uses. It remains relatively common in sacred groves, where it is protected by social taboos.
The researchers involved developed a fascination for the botanical treasures in these global biodiversity hotspots that include a number of so far undescribed taxa. As a complement to ongoing vegetation studies in the Kurdistan province of Iran, they studied local people’s views on sacred groves and the reasons why they have remained well-preserved. Located at the intersection of ecological concerns and the social realm, sacred groves thus represent an iconic object of social-ecological research — even more so, since around the world as much as in Baneh County, these locally preserved sacred sites are in decline. Among the factors contributing to this development are changes in customary rights, population growth or the loss of traditional faiths.
Baneh County, a mostly agriculturally shaped region embedded in the Zagros mountains in the Iranian-Iraqi border area, is considered homeland of the Kurdish people and shaped by Sunni Islam. Designing and performing a social survey is not trivial in this area, where many political, social, economic, and environmental problems co-occur. Careful preparation by the University of Kurdistan research team finally provided access to 205 local residents from 25 villages. Triangles in the map above show the sacred groves ultimately included in this study.
What motivates local people to protect sacred groves?
In a survey among these, the researchers found that spiritual and cultural heritage values, as well as biodiversity work as key motivations for them to preserve the sacred groves of their community.
Moreover, taboos appeared as a powerful pillar of conserving sacred groves: People shared taboos that restrict natural resource use — for instance, clearing of trees or hunting — , but also other potentially harming activities, such as road construction.
Generally, the social values and taboos around sacred groves in Kurdistan are relatively stable compared to those in other world regions. Anyhow, villagers expressed a strong perception that sacred groves are threatened, both by deliberate and accidental actions, and due to extractive and non-extractive uses.
Biocultural approaches to conservation
In research on sacred groves as much as in biodiversity conservation in general, an ecological focus is usually prevailing. Sacred groves, however, are “in many ways an illustrative, time-tested and successful model of ‘people and nature’-centred conservation.” Social dynamics and, more particularly, cultural values thus certainly deserve greater awareness, and ways of supporting these values must be found in order to effectively enable forest conservation.
In the case of Baneh County, key holders of values and taboos are elderly people, women, rural people, and people with traditional lifestyles. Conservation programs could empower these groups to defend and revitalize their customs, values, and taboos, while young, male and more urban local residents adopting a modern lifestyle could be an important audience in awareness-raising activities.
“Such biocultural approaches to conservation that consider different worldviews and knowledge systems have the potential to translate social taboos and the related land-use practices into socially acceptable and environmentally effective conservation outcomes.“
Full study: Plieninger, T., Quintas-Soriano, C., Torralba, M., Muhammadi Sammani, K., & Shakeri, Z. (2020): Social dynamics of values, taboos and perceived threats around sacred groves in Kurdistan, Iran. People and Nature. https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10158 .
