Nature and Culture

A key insight in this important book is the way in which indigenous cultures are embedded in the ecosystems that they inhabit. As a whole, it highlights the link between cultural and biological diversity and the effect that our cultural assumptions about our relationship to nature have on our environment. If we consider ourselves as separate, then nature can be a resource to exploit for human gain. There is in fact a co-evolutionary process of ecosystems and cultures so that we can understand the need for cultural renewal if we are to transform our dominant attitude towards nature. This in turn implies a science of harmony rather than manipulation. Contexts include interdisciplinary science, landscape, hunting, agriculture and ways of reconnecting humanity with nature where this connection has been lost. The aim is to formulate a new conservation paradigm where policymakers and scientists consider biological and cultural diversity as an interdependent whole. Landscape is arguably the clearest picture of the relationship between human communities and nature, and this in turn embodies certain knowledge bases and cultural belief systems as well as distinctive worldviews, in our case the mechanistic view. We need to understand the drivers of loss of diversity and system degradation and encourage the development of eco-cultures as a path towards resilience.