Date:September 28, 2010 (Tue.) 16:00 ー 18:00
(The time schedule has been changed.)
Venue: Meeting Room, the 3rd floor, Inamori Foundation Memorial Hall
Presentation：Nathan Badenoch （CSEAS）
Title:
One less butterfly, one less language - who cares? Considering biocultural diversity and the future of governance
【Abstract】
At the global level, there is significant overlap between the “hot spots” of diversity in natural and human systems. Biocultural diversity studies has emerged as an area of synthesis between natural and social scientists, who have begun to look at the distribution, composition,and threats to the world’s diversity. In addition to providing a new conceptual framework that could build bridges to policy makers, an index of biocultural diversity has also been developed. This talk will provide a general introduction to this interesting field of study, discuss the development of the indicator, and offer some points for consideration within the framework of governance paradigm research.
【Activity Report】
Dr. Nathan Badenoch (Visiting Associate Professor, Hakubi/CSEAS) attempted to examine the linkage between biocultural diversity and the future of governance. First, he defined the term “biocultural diversity” and introduced two correlations of biodiversity with cultural diversity. The first correlation was “Losing species, losing languages” (Harmon 1996); the second correlation was related to the “Index of Biocultural Diversity” (Loh and Harmon 2005).
In addition, Dr. Badenoch showed the number of languages that are disappearing from the world. According to Dr. Badenoch, one of the reasons why we should care about this is that languages are the repositories of history. In order to tackle this problem, he discussed some levels (global, regional, national, or local) and focuses (market mechanism, decentralization, etc.), and contended that we need a more dynamic framework to carry out the next step of analysis.
Dr. Badenoch provided useful input for our global index project, the “Sustainable Humanosphere Index.” Through this research meeting, we realized that we need to consider the aspect of biocultural diversity in the development of the “Sustainable Humanosphere Index.”
(Shiro Sato)