On Biolinguistic Diversity linking language, culture and (traditional) ecological
knowledge
Tove Skutnabb-Kangas1
Invited plenary lecture at the interdisciplinary seminar "At the limits of language",
organised by Department of Biology and Department of Linguistics and Philosophy,
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and Cosmocaixa (March 2004).
In press, in conference book edited by Angel Delgado Buscalioni, Luisa Martin Rojo,
and Isabel Fuentes.
“Cultural diversity is closely linked to biodiversity. Humanity’s collective knowledge of biodiversity and its use and
management rests in cultural diversity; conversely conserving biodiversity often helps strengthen cultural integrity and
values” (World Resources Institute, World Conservation Union, and United Nations Environment Programme, 1992:
21).
“Biodiversity is not an object to be conserved. It is an integral part of human existence, in which utilization is part of the
celebration of life” (Posey, 1999: 7). Or, mutatis mutandi, maybe: “Linguistic diversity is not an object to be maintained.
It is an integral part of human existence, in which using the languages is part of the celebration of life”
Each Contracting Party shall “subject to its national legislation, respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations
and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional life-styles relevant for the conservation and
sustainable use of biological diversity and promote the wiser application with the approval and involvement of the
holders of such knowledge, innovations and practices and encourage the equitable sharing of the benefits arising from
the utilization of such knowledge, innovations and practices”.
(from Article 8(j) of the Convention on Biological Diversity)
1. Introduction
The following description of biolinguistic/biocultural diversity is on Terralingua's2. home page
(www.terralingua.org):
Terralingua supports the integrated protection, maintenance and restoration of the world's biological, cultural,
and linguistic diversity –– known as biocultural diversity –– by creating innovative tools to analyze the links
between these diversities and demonstrate their global significance.
Language, knowledge, and the environment have been intimately related throughout human history.
This relationship is still apparent especially in indigenous, minority, and local societies that maintain close
material and spiritual ties with their environments. Over generations, these peoples have accumulated a wealth
of wisdom about their environment and its functions, management, and sustainable use. Traditional ecological
knowledge and practices often make indigenous peoples, minorities, and local communities highly skilled and
respectful stewards of the ecosystems in greatest need of protection. Local, minority, and indigenous languages
are repositories and means of transmission of this knowledge and the related social behaviors, practices, and
innovations.
As with biological species, languages and cultures naturally evolve and change over time. But just as
with species, the world is now undergoing a massive human-made extinction crisis of languages and cultures.
External forces are dispossessing traditional peoples of their lands, resources, and lifestyles; forcing them to
[migrate or] subsist in highly degraded environments; crushing their cultural traditions or ability to maintain
them; or coercing them into linguistic assimilation and abandonment of ancestral languages. People who lose
1
University of Roskilde, Dept of Languages and Culture, Denmark. Contact address: Troenninge Mose 3, 4420
Regstrup, Denmark, phone (45) 59-264412, email: skutnabbkangas@gmail.com
2
I am a founding member of Terralingua. I was its Vice-President from its start until the end of 2003.
1
their linguistic and cultural identity may lose an essential element in a social process that commonly teaches
respect for nature and understanding of the natural environment and its processes. Forcing this cultural and
linguistic conversion on indigenous and other traditional peoples not only violates their human rights, but also
undermines the health of the world's ecosystems and the goals of nature conservation.
This description is a background for my paper. I will be asking questions suggested by the
organizers: "What connections may exist between the loss of our biological heritage and that of our
linguistic heritage?" and "With the gradual loss of some languages, will we be losing at the same time
priceless knowledge of other ways of inhabiting nature and of resources for sustainable development?"
Most people realize the importance of maintaining biodiversity whereas relatively few know
about or lament the much faster loss of linguistic diversity. A very short version of one of the
important reasons for why linguistic diversities should be maintained is as follows: Linguistic
diversity and biodiversity are correlationally and probably also causally related. Much of the
knowledge about (necessary) elements of integrated ecosystems and the relations between these
elements and about how to maintain biodiversity is encoded in small local languages. Their
speakers live in the world's biologically and often also linguistically most diverse areas. Through
killing these languages (or letting them die), we thus kill many of the prerequisites for maintaining
biodiversity. In a short article, it is possible only to give a crude overview of some aspects of our
present knowledge about the relationships between biodiversity and linguistic diversity, in the form of
some of the classificatory tools used to approach the area, and point to questions and gaps in that
knowledge. This includes some reflections on methodological challenges in relation to how to "prove"
the causal relationship.
I would also like to mention some of the accusations, misconceptions, misunderstandings and
critique of some aspects of ecolinguistics. Some of these refer to both the biodiversity - linguistic
diversity connection and to work with linguistic human rights as one of the tools for supporting the
maintenance of linguistic diversity. Just to use one researcher's misunderstanding as an example,
Kibbee (2003) accuses ecolinguists of making use of the strong form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
(e.g. Kibbee, 2003: 47), of Social Darwinism (ibid.: 47), of neo-colonialism (ibid.: 55), paternalism
(ibid.: 55), idealism (ibid.: 56), of wanting to artificially preserve languages against the will of their
speakers (ibid.: 53), of advising people not to learn international languages like English (ibid.: 55),
and so on. Unfortunately there is no time to discuss these but some clarification and caveats in
relation to definitions of concepts can also be used to deconstruct the misconceptions (and see
Skutnabb-Kangas, in press, a, b). Finally, some lessons from the present knowledge will be
mentioned.
2. Definitions
2.1. General definitions of biodiversity, linguistic diversity and biocultural diversity
I start with general definitions of some of the basic concepts. Biodiversity can be defined as "the total
variability among genes, plant and animal species, and ecosystems found in nature" (SkutnabbKangas, Maffi & Harmon 2003, Glossary, 55).
The number of species has often been used as a proxy for biodiversity. In the same way, the
number of languages can be used as a crude proxy for linguistic diversity (see David Harmon's
discussion about the caveats in both proxies, 2002; see also Maffi 2001, Note 3). The parallel
definition of linguistic diversity is thus "the variety and richness of languages in human societies3"
3
This means that for my purposes here, the means of communication of other animals are excluded; so are computer
languages and all other languages which are "artificial" or "planned" and which, per definition, cannot be mother
2
(Skutnabb-Kangas, Maffi & Harmon 2003, Glossary, 56). The parallel does not mean that languages
and biological species are similar in all or even most ways - they are manifestly not4. Just to
mention an obvious one: languages are not living organisms.
A very general definition of biocultural diversity is "the diversity of life on Earth in both
nature and culture" (ibid., 55).
If we want to see what the correlation is between biodiversity on the one hand and linguistic
and cultural diversity on the other hand, some measures of linguistic and cultural diversity have to
be found and various kinds of indicators of biodiversity have to be chosen. This is what I shall do
next.
2.2. Definitions and problems in definitions pertaining to linguistic diversity:
language, mother tongue speaker/user, native speaker/user, culture, ethnolinguistic
groups
The whole concept of language is extremely vague, as we know and there is no other scientific way
of defining it except analysing the power relations involved in whose definitions about the relative
languageness or otherwise of various idioms prevail and why (see my discussion of what a language
is, in Skutnabb-Kangas 2000, Chapter 1). This is a typical example of the borders of a concept
being in the perceptions of the observer rather than in the characteristics of the observed (see later).
One example is the latest edition of the Ethnologue (http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/), the best
global source for languages. It lists 6.800 languages, but some 41,000 names or labels for various
languages.
Even if we knew what a language is, we certainly have extremely unreliable figures about the
number of speakers for most of them, including the largest ones where the differences of estimates
of the speakers of the same language may be tens of millions (see Skutnabb-Kangas, 2002).
Languages are in most cases both known best and transmitted to the next generation by native
speakers/users5 or mother tongue6 speakers/users of those languages. But we are likewise using
contested concepts here: distinguishing mother tongue speakers or native speakers from those who
have learned some language only later and for whom it is not their primary means of
communication in childhood (or one of them, in case of childhood bilinguals or multilinguals) is
extremely tricky.
If we could define language and native speaker, we might then measure the relative linguistic
diversity of geographical units, for instance countries, through the number of languages spoken
natively in the country. The most linguistically diverse countries would then be the ones which have
most languages. Papua New Guinea, with its over 850 languages would be the un-detested world
champion (Table 1).
But this way of measuring linguistic megadiversity has also been contested. Clinton
Robinson argues, for instance, that the most diverse country is not the one which has the largest
number of languages, but the one where the largest linguistic group represents the lowest
percentage of all linguistic groups (Robinson; 1993). We get a very big difference in the list of the
tongues of humans. However, one planned language, Esperanto, is nowadays (one of) the mother tongue(s) of some
thousands of children even if it is not connected with any ethnic group, as most "unplanned" languages are or have been.
4
There are many discussions about the differences - see, e.g. Harmon 2002, Mühlhäusler 2003.
5
I use the double form to indicate that Signers, representing a large number of the world's languages, do not "speak"
Sign languages. In all instances when I use "speaker", I mean "speaker/signer", and when I use "language", I include
Sign languages.
6
See Skutnabb-Kangas 1984, 2000, for probably the most thorough existing systematisations of these definitions.
3
world's linguistically most diverse countries, depending on which measure we use (Tables 1 and 2;
source: Tables 1.1 and 1.3 in Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000, pp. 36-37).
Table 1. Linguistic megadiversity: The countries with most languages in the world
OVER 500 LANGUAGES
1.Papua New Guinea
2.Indonesia
OVER 200 LANGUAGES
850
670
Total
1.520
1.Nigeria
2.India
3.Cameroon
4.Australia
5.Mexico
6.Zaire
7.Brazil
Total
TOTAL for 9
OVER 100 LANGUAGES
410
380
270
250
240
210
210
1.970
3.490
1.Philippines
2.Russia
3.USA
4.Malaysia
5.China
6.Sudan
7.Tanzania
8.Ethiopia
9.Chad
10.Vanuatu
11.Central African Republic
12.Myanmar (Burma)
13.Nepal
Based on figures given in Krauss 1992: 6.
Table 2. The ten most linguistically diverse countries, according to Robinson 1993
Country
No. of
living
languages
LLG
3.6
867
Enga
164 750
5
English
Tok Pisin
Hiri Motu
2.Vanuatu
0.143
111
Hano
7 000
5
Bislama
English
French
3.Solomon
Islands
0.3
66
Kwara'ae
21 000
7
English
4.Côte D'Ivoire
12.07
75
Baoule
1 620 100
13
French
5.Gabon
1.069
40
Fang
169 650
16
French
6.Uganda
17.593
43
Ganda
2 900 000
16
English
11.9
275
Beti
2 000 000
17
French
English
25.393
58
Gikuyu
4 356 000
17
Kiswahili
English
9.Namibia
1.372
21
Ndonga
240 000
17
English
10.Zaire
35.33
219
Ciluba
6 300 000
18
Ciluba
Kikongo
Kiswahili
Lingala
French
1.Papua New
Guinea
7.Cameroon
8.Kenya
Country
popul.
(millions)
No. in
LLG
LLG
as % of
popul.
Official
languages
4
LLG = Largest Language Group (adapted from Robinson, 1993: 55; based on figures in Ethnologue, 12th edition)
Measuring cultural diversity is even more difficult, regardless of how "culture" or "cultural traits"
are defined (see, e.g., articles in Posey, ed., 1999, and Maffi, ed, 2001, for a good sampling). Since I
concentrate on biolinguistic rather than biocultural diversity in this article, I will not discuss this
further here. Suffice it to say that biolinguistic diversity is a more narrow concept than biocultural
diversity; language is included in culture.
And putting languages and cultures together is even more risky, since there are many
examples of non-convergence both ways. There are several cultural groups using the same language,
or one cultural group using two or three different languages.
When ethnicity, another contested concept, is added, so that we get ethnocultural groups
defined on the basis of languages, the measures become even more vague. Before I define
ethnocultural groups, I present some of the caveats and challenges. All the concepts used, language
and mother tongue, culture, and ethnicity, are social constructs, not inherited givens; they are hybrid
and nomadic, dynamic and changing, not static; people may claim several of them at the same time
and be multilingual and multicultural, and "multi-ethnial", or "bicountrial"7. All of them play everchanging roles for people's multiple identities, and are variously focussed and emphasized in
various situations and at various times; their salience is always variable. ALL identities are of
course constructed to the extent that we are not born with identity genes. Even in cases where we
are talking about phenotypically visible genotypical features like skin colour, very obviously the
way these features are interpreted, are social constructions, not innate.
But with all these caveats, it is still the case that many of those groups who demand linguistic
human rights do claim these concepts: they claim to know what their mother tongues are and which
ethnic or ethnolinguistic or ethnocultural group(s) they belong to. They see their language as a
"cultural core value" (Smolicz, 1979). Most indigenous peoples who have pronounced on their
languages, share the attitudes from Canada, described by Mary Joy Elijah, herself Oneida. In her
literature review (2002) she quotes from Resolution No. 9/90 Protection of First Nations'
Languages, Special Chiefs Assembly, Ottawa, Ontario - December11, 1990, Georges Erasmus
National Chief:
SUBJECT: Protection of First Nations' Languages
WHEREAS language is a direct gift from the Creator; and
WHEREAS First Nations languages are the cornerstone of who we are as a people; and
WHEREAS our culture cannot survive without our languages; and
WHEREAS the right to use and educate our children in our aboriginal languages is an
inherent aboriginal and treaty right,
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT, as aboriginal people of this country, First
Nations languages must be protected and promoted as a fundamental element of aboriginal
heritage and must be fully entrenched in the Constitution of Canada; and
FURTHER BE IT RESOLVED THAT the federal government has a moral and legal
obligation, through (pre-Confederation) treaties and through legislation, to provide adequate
resources that will enable First Nations languages to exercise this right.
There is in reality a very high degree of convergence between ethnicity, culture and mother
tongue, regardless of how much liberal political scientists or post-post-modern sociolinguists want
7
One of the Sweden-Finnish youngsters in one of my studies said when asked about Finland and Sweden: "Surely you
can be bicountrial too" (Skutnabb-Kangas 1987); Markku Peura and I subsequently used it as part of the title of a book,
1994.
5
to denounce this, and "disinvent" the concepts. I have not seen more than a few dozens of examples
of non-convergence, and they seem always to be the same ones. Even if there were several hundreds
of them, they would still be exceptions rather than a rule, and even if exceptions are important as
checks on theories, generalisations cannot build on exceptions but on what is more common.
Several colleagues seem to try to raise exceptions to rules in recent debates in an eagerness not to be
accused of essentialising (e.g. May, 2001, in press; Pennycook 2002). Likewise, the same few
examples of loss of language, with the culture and identity still living on (the Irish, the Jews, and a
few more) are always repeated and then used as proofs when claiming that there is little or no
relationship between language and culture. It seems that several of the critics somehow
automatically assume that if something is "constructed" (rather than "innate" or "inherited" or
"primordial" or whatever one sees as the opposite of constructed) it is somehow a less valid concept.
Knowing and accepting that a concept (like "mother tongue", "language", "ethnicity", "culture"), is
socially constructed, does not in any way need to invalidate the concept. All science, for instance, is
socially constructed - still our conclusion is not that we should stop talking about science or stop
using it, or that we should somehow "disinvent" it. Critical analysis also means being open and not
accepting vogue taboos.
All this knowledge, then, can be used to relativise the definition of ethnolinguistic group,
used by WWF and Terralingua (Oviedo & Maffi, 2000: 1)
A human social unit that shares the same language and culture and uses the same criteria to
differentiate itself from other social groups.
With this definition, WWF and Terralingua use the figure of an approximate total of 6,867
ethnolinguistic groups in the world. Terralingua has also used it for the map showing the
distribution of biocultural diversity (Appendix to Skutnabb-Kangas, Maffi & Harmon, 2003).
If we want to relate the distribution of these groups to the distribution of biodiversity, we have
to choose indicators for biodiversity and its worldwide distribution.
2.3. Definitions pertaining to biodiversity: Global 2000 Ecoregions, biodiversity
hotspots, megadiversity countries
As already mentioned, the number of species has been used as a proxy for biodiversity. The first
difficulty here is that we really have very little solid knowledge of these numbers; much less than
about the number of languages. Figures between 5-15 million separate species are "considered
reasonable" (Harmon, 2001: 63), with a "working figure" of about 12,5 million. But figures as low as
2 million and as high as 50 million(Maffi, 2001, Note 1) or even 100 million (Solé et al., 2003: 26)
have been mentioned The highest figures are based on the estimate that most of the world's species
(maybe up to 90%, Mishler, 2001: 71) have not yet been "discovered", i.e. named and described by
(mostly Western) scientists; only some 1,5 million different species (from plants and animals to fungi,
algae, bacteria and viruses) have so far been identified by natural scientists. Many may become
extinct before having been studied at all.
A relatively simple global measure of ecological diversity which corresponds to the linguistic
megadiversity list in Table 1 is megadiversity countries. These are "countries likely to contain the
highest percentage of the global species richness" (the definition here is from Skutnabb-Kangas,
Maffi & Harmon, 2003: 56; but see http://www.af-info.or.jp/eng/honor/essays/1997_2.html for an
essay about them by Russell Mittermeier (et al.), the originator of the concept; see also
6
Conservation International at
http://www.conservation.org/xp/CIWEB/publications/videos/index.xml).
Trying to make the relative distribution of the world's known biodiversity more meaningful
than just listing plain numbers of species in various countries, researchers have developed concepts
covering larger units where there is a high concentration of species. The two I want to mention here
are ecoregions and biodiversity hotspots.
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) defines an ecoregion as follows:
A relatively large unit of land or water containing a geographically distinct assemblage of
species, natural communities, and environmental conditions (here from Oviedo & Maffi,
2000: 1).
The definition might seem fairly vague, but this is a necessary result of trying to capture the fact
that for conservation work (and in general too) species and their living conditions have to be seen
not as isolated but as mutual relations, in a similar way as a mother tongue, or ethnicity, are not
characteristics of individuals or groups, but relations, including power relations, between them and
other people. WWF has identified nearly 900 ecoregions, and of these 238 have been found "to be
of the utmost importance for biological diversity" (ibid.). These are termed the "Global 200
Ecoregions". Most of them are in the tropical regions, just as languages are. Eric Smith's (2000:
107) account based on the 12th edition of the Ethnologue shows that 55.6% (3,630) of the world's
endemic languages are in the tropical forest regions.
Another global measure is biodiversity hotspots: "relatively small regions with especially
high concentrations of endemic species" (the definition is from Skutnabb-Kangas, Maffi & Harmon,
2003: 55). This concept was created by Norman Myers; see Center for Applied Biodiversity
Science, http://www.biodiversityhotspots.org/xp/Hotspots).
Another type of question one could ask is which species to use as indicators of biodiversity
when comparing with linguistic diversity. Would any of the species be more useful as indicators
than others. Is there, for instance, anything that would correspond to implicational (rather than
absolute) universals for languages. In lexicon, for instance, if a language has a word for "bush", it
must also have a word for "tree" (but not vice versa)8; in grammar, if it has dual, it also has plural.
Could one find examples of chains of species where the presence of X presupposes the presence of
Y which presupposes the presence of Z? If so, would it simplify the task to use only examples of
the Z category as indicators of biodiversity, rather than the more common X.
With some tools in place, we can now move to the relationship between the two types of
diversity.
3. The relationships between linguistic diversity and biodiversity
3.1. The correlational relationships
When assessing the correlational relationship between biodiversity and linguistic diversity, we can
use detailed types of correlation, with certain species or species groups as indicators. In addition,
we can use the more global measures of biodiversity presented above. Some of both types will be
presented and discussed.
We start with the ecoregions. Of the 6,867 ethnolinguistic groups in the world, according to
the definition presented above, some 67% (4,635), were found in the Global 200 Ecoregions
8
The example is from Mühlhäusler (2003: 21).
7
(Oviedo & Maffi 2000: 1-2). With many more detailed measures counted, the conclusion in the
Executive Summary of Oviedo & Maffi, 2000 (p. 2) is as follows:
Correlations between Global 200 ecoregions as reservoirs of high biodiversity and areas of concentration of
human diversity are clearly very significant, and unequivocally stress the need to involve indigenous and
traditional peoples in ecoregional conservation work. Furthermore, there is evidence from many parts of the
world that healthy, non-degraded ecosystems - such as dense, little disturbed tropical rainforests in places like
the Amazon, Borneo or Papua New Guinea - are often inhabited only by indigenous and traditional peoples
(emphasis added).
This also means that where we others have settled, meaning often in temperate climates, we have
been a disaster to the world's biodiversity. We would obviously also have colonised and inhabited
those areas which are still today relatively less degraded, had we been able to. Jarred Diamond
shows convincingly that what has kept us out is the fact that we westerners have not been able to
manage the climate (Diamond 1991, 1998). Even if this is true of some relatively biodiversity-poor
areas too, such as the arctic areas, mostly we are talking about the biodiversity-rich tropics.
Conservationist David Harmon, probably the first one ever to put figures on the relationship,
investigated more than a decade ago correlations between biological and linguistic diversity. The left
hand side of Table 3 ranks countries not in terms of all languages but according to the number of
endemic languages. Endemic languages (languages unique to a particular country) represent the
vast majority (some 83-84 percent) of the world’s languages. The right hand side ranks countries in
terms of the number of endemic higher vertebrates (mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians). Table
3 lists the top 25 countries for each type (1995: 14)9. I have BOLDED AND CAPITALISED those
16 countries (of the 25) which are on both lists, a coincidence of 64%. According to Harmon (1995:
6) "it is very unlikely that this would only be accidental.".
Table 3. Endemism in languages and higher vertebrates: a comparison of the top 25 countries
Endemic languages
Number
Endemic higher vertebrates
Number
1. PAPUA NEW GUINEA
847
1. AUSTRALIA
1.346
2. INDONESIA
655
2. MEXICO
761
3. Nigeria
376
3. BRAZIL
725
4. INDIA
309
4. INDONESIA
673
5. AUSTRALIA
261
5. Madagascar
537
6. MEXICO
230
6. PHILIPPINES
437
7. CAMEROON
201
7. INDIA
373
8. BRAZIL
185
8. PERU
332
9. ZAIRE
158
9. COLOMBIA
330
10. PHILIPPINES
153
10. Ecuador
294
11. USA
143
11. USA
284
12. Vanuatu
105
12. CHINA
256
13. TANZANIA
101
13. PAPUA NEW GUINEA
203
14. Sudan
97
14. Venezuela
186
9
The figures for languages were derived by Harmon from the Ethnologue, 12th edition, and for vertebrates from
Groombridge 1992.
8
15. Malaysia
92
15. Argentina
168
16. ETHIOPIA
90
16. Cuba
152
17. CHINA
77
17. South Africa
146
18. PERU
75
18. ZAIRE
134
19. Chad
74
19. Sri Lanka
126
20. Russia
71
20. New Zealand
120
21. SOLOMON ISLANDS
69
21. TANZANIA
113
22. Nepal
68
22. Japan
112
23. COLOMBIA
55
23. CAMEROON
105
24. Côte d'Ivoire
51
24. SOLOMON ISLANDS
101
25. Canada
47
25. ETHIOPIA
26. Somalia
88
88
As can be seen, Papua New Guinea, which ranks first in terms of endemic languages, is country
number 13 in terms of endemic vertebrates. The USA is number 11 on both the languages and the
vertebrates list. On the other hand, Nigeria is number 3 on the languages list but is not among the 25
top countries for the biological species diversity indicator used here. Still, the correlations are very
high indeed.
Harmon got similar results with flowering plants and languages: a region often has many of
both, or few of both. The same is true at least for butterflies and languages and birds and languages
etc. The conclusion is that at least when using the species mentioned as indicators, there is a high
correlation between countries with biological and linguistic megadiversity10 (see also Harmon 2002,
Skutnabb-Kangas, Maffi & Harmon, 2003)11.
In Table 4 (from Skutnabb-Kangas, Maffi & Harmon, 2003: 41), we have the same Endemic
languages and Endemic vertebrates but some of the other biodiversity indicators have been added,
the rankings on the flowering plants and endemic bird areas lists. In addition, there is a Yes if the
country belongs to the megadiversity countries as defined above.
Table 4. Endemism in Languages Compared with Rankings of Biodiversity
On megadiversity
list?
Rank, Total Number of…
Country
PAPUA NEW
GUINEA
Endemic
Languages
Rank Number
1
847
Endemic
Vertebrates
Rank Number
13
203
Flowering
Plants
18t
Endemic Bird
Areas (EBAs)
6
yes
10
It is interesting that some researchers seem to have great difficulty in accepting that there is a correlation. An example
is Idil Boran (2003: 193), a philosopher who seems in need of more information both on basic statistics and of the
factual correlations - neither Harmon (who has done more than anybody else, and earlier than anybody else - to prove
these correlations) nor Maffi even figure in her bibliography (nor are they in Nettle & Romaine's 2000 book
bibliography, even if their correlation data have been "borrowed" from Harmon. This is not the only unacknowledged
borrowing in this book either - see also Mühlhäusler's 2003b observations on this - and I could add some literal
"borrowings" from my publications).
11
I have been fascinated especially by the butterfly-language connection, partly because of the symbolism: endangered
languages are as beautiful and vulnerable as butterflies. I have looked at detailed correlations between various kinds of
butterflies, based on Mittermeyer & Mittermeier Goettsch, 1997 (see Skutnabb-Kangas, forthcoming).
9
2
655
4
673
INDONESIA
Nigeria
3
376
4
309
7
373
INDIA
5
261
1
1,346
AUSTRALIA
6
230
2
761
MEXICO
7
201
23
105
CAMEROON
8
185
3
725
BRAZIL
9
158
18
134
DEM REP OF
CONGO
10
153
6
437
PHILIPPINES
11
143
11
284
USA
Vanuatu
12
105
13
101
21
113
TANZANIA
Sudan
14
97
Malaysia
15
92
16
90
25
88
ETHIOPIA
17
77
12
256
CHINA
18
75
8
332
PERU
Chad
19
74
Russia
20
71
21
69
24
101
SOLOMON
ISLANDS
Nepal
22
68
23
55
9
330
COLOMBIA
CoÏte d’Ivoire
24
51
Canada
25
47
(source: Skutnabb-Kangas, Maffi & Harmon, 2003: 41; see this for details).
7t
1
yes
12
11
4
24
1
17
11
9
2
yes
yes
yes
4
yes
yes
25
9
11
15
yes
yes
19
14
14
3
13
yes
6
3
yes
yes
5
yes
6
22
2
A Draft Framework for an Index of Biocultural Diversity(October 2002) which is being
prepared by David Harmon and Jonathan Loh, shows many detailed correlations still more clearly.
But even if we can ascertain that there is a correlational relationship between biodiversity and
linguistic and cultural diversity12, this still does not prove anything about a causal relationship, and
this is also what some of the critics claim. I agree. But how does one prove this kind of a causal
relationship?
3.2. Causality in biocultural relationships
The strong correlation need in my view not indicate a direct causal relationship in the sense that
neither type of diversity should probably be seen as an independent variable in relation to the other.
But languages and cultures may be decisive mediating variables in sustaining biodiversity, and vice
versa. For "proving" this causal relationship, several types of knowledge would be needed. Some
exists, some we have only partially at the moment; many issues have not been investigated yet. But
the criteria and the whole nature of the evidence obviously also depend on the kind of scientific
paradigms used. Likewise, whether already existing evidence is seen as sufficient to lead to rapid
action depends on whether short-term corporate profit or the Precautionary Principle prevails, just
to take two possibilities.
First I shall sum up the general causal argument about co-evolution of biodiversity and cultural
(including linguistic) diversity. As soon as humans came into existence, we started to influence the
rest of nature (see Diamond, 1998 for a fascinating account on how; see also Cavalli-Sforza, 2001).
Today it is safe to say that there is no 'pristine nature' left - all landscapes have been and are
12
For a denunciation of the correlation on the basis of some different data, see Smith 2001.
10
influenced by human action, even those where untrained observers might not notice it immediately.
All landscapes are cultural landscapes - the concept of Terra nullius ( = empty land) has finally
been invalidated. But the various ways that different peoples influence their environments were and
are filtered through their cultural patterns - we can, for example, think of simple examples,
comparing the attitudes to meat of cows, pigs, dogs or rats as human food, and the implications of
this to the occurrence, spread and life conditions of the animals. Or while more than 40,000 edible
plants were known to the Aboriginal inhabitants of South Australia; very few of them have found
their way to the plates of the European invaders; the Europeans have neither lexicalised these items
of food nor used them (Mühlhäusler, 2003a: 59). If one does not “see” them or sees them as
“weeds” (see Crosby, 1994), they are more likely to disappear. We have a similar but smaller scale
difference in the use of mushrooms between the Finns and the Germans on the one hand - they
name and use mushrooms - and the British on the other hand who don't. On the other hand, local
nature and people's detailed knowledge about it and use of it have influenced the perceptions,
cultures, languages and cosmo-visions of the people who have been dependent on it for their
sustenance. To remain with food examples, if the areas where people have lived for a long time
have plenty of animal protein but little of plant protein as, for instance, in the Arctic areas, it is
unlikely that religions which support vegetarianism could have developed - and they haven't.
Recent research shows mounting evidence for the hypothesis that the two types of diversity seem
to mutually enforce and support each other (see Maffi, 2000a). UNEP's (United Nations
Environmental Program),13 mega-volume, Cultural and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity. A
Complementary Contribution to the Global Biodiversity Assessment (Posey, ed. 1999)
summarises some of this evidence of causality. Likewise, articles in On Biocultural Diversity.
Linking Language, Knowledge and the Environment (Maffi, ed., 2001) illustrate it.
This relationship and mutual influence between all kinds of diversities is of course what most
indigenous peoples have always known. Some describe their knowledge in the UNEP volume. The
conservation traditions that promote the sustainable use of land and natural resources, expressed in
the native languages, are, according to James Nations (2001: 470), “what Hazel Henderson called
‘the cultural DNA’ that can help us create sustainable economies in healthy ecosystems on this, the
only planet we have (Gell-Mann, 1994: 292)”.
3.3. Traditional ecological knowledge and its disappearance
To discuss this indigenous knowledge and its present uses further and to highlights its
disappearance, we need first to remind ourselves of the fact that the least biodiversity-wise
degraded areas tend to be areas inhabited by indigenous peoples only. Since the degradation is
mainly created by humans, a conclusion is that those indigenous peoples who have not been
colonised by others, have been and are important agents in the maintenance of biodiversity. The
knowledge they have when interacting with (the rest of) nature in non-degrading ways is part of
what has been called "traditional ecological knowledge" (TEK),
indigenous and other local peoples' knowledge and beliefs about and use of the natural
world, their ecological concepts, and their natural resource management institutions and
practices" (Oviedo & Maffi, 2000: 6), or
a cumulative body of knowledge, practice and belief, evolving by adaptive processes and
handed down through generations by cultural transmission, about the relationships of living
13
UNEP was one of the organisers of the World Summit on Biodiversity in Rio de Janeiro in 1992; see its summary of the
knowledge on biodiversity, Heywood, ed., 1995.
11
beings (including humans) with one another and with their environment (Berkes, 1999: 8,
quoted in Oviedo & Maffi, 2000: 6), or
in-depth knowledge of plant and animal species, their mutual relationships, and local
ecosystems held by indigenous or traditional communities, developed and handed down
through generations (Skutnabb-Kangas, Maffi & Harmon 2003, Glossary, p 56).
The classifications of animals and plants obviously reflect the environment where people live. But
they develop over a long time, and this largely explains why indigenous peoples have not always
been good guardians of their environments. Even in terms of vocabulary for describing the
environment, Mühlhäusler (2003a) estimates on the basis of his pilot studies on "desert islands" and
Creole situations (Norfolk Island, Mauritius, New Zealand, St Helena, St Kitts and several others, p.
59) that "about 300 years are needed for a match between a language and the biological
environment of its speakers to come about" (ibid.: 37). Before that there is "a major discrepancy
between what people can name and what they need to name to sustain their island environment"
(ibid.: 59). In situations where people move to a new place with their old language, this is initially
"ill-suited to the task of talking about" the new environment (ibid.: 46) because of the "considerable
initial mismatch between linguistic categories and natural boundaries" (ibid.: 59). The likelihood is
that they may ruin much of that environment before they start to understand, classify and name it,
regardless of whether there are already other people living there who had a "perfect" understanding
of the biodiversity around them (like in Australia) or not (as in Aotearoa/New Zealand when the
first Māoris arrived a millennium ago - see the final section). In the absence of names, people
"under-utilize or over-exploit their environment" (ibid.: 59).
Even if the vocabulary is there, people may still be "environmentally illiterate", i.e. unable to
name animals, plants and features of the landscape (Mühlhäusler 2003a: 41), for instance in urban
contexts or if their technologically oriented worldview sees nature as a passive "ecomachine", for
humans to use and exploit as they please - this is partly what enables the "growthism ideology"
(ibid.: 132) to continue.
But it is not only the vocabulary of languages that is culture-specific - Mühlhäusler also
claims, with many others (e.g. Michael Halliday) that grammars are "fossilized experience". Each
grammar "can be seen as a repository of past experience, as the outcome of a very long process of
adaptation to specific environmental conditions" (ibid.: 120); this is a result of the fact that "each
language is functionally integrated with a vast array of grammar-external parameters" (ibid.).
Discussing various aspects of grammar (pronouns, transitivity, passives, ergativity, tense/time,
abstract nouns and nominalizations, binominals, counterfactuals), Mühlhäusler shows how various
perspectives on the world are privileged depending on the grammatical structures of various
languages. This also implies that "there could be a discrepancy between past functionality and
present day requirements" (ibid.: 100)14. His arguments about the grammatical structures of the
"European" languages (whatever these are?) making it easier, for instance through nominalizations,
to construct issues like polluting as commodities to be bought an sold - the Kyoto negotiations
come to mind - and to hide agency - things just happen - are amply illustrated in several detailed
articles in the Ecolinguistic Reader (2001), edited by Fill and Mühlhäusler.
Another type of proof of causality could be to be able to show that it is likely that the
knowledge about how to maintain aspects of biodiversity (and thus the practice of doing it)
disappears if a language disappears. Luisa Maffi showed in her doctoral dissertation (Maffi, 1994)
that nuances in the knowledge about medicinal plants and their use disappear when indigenous
youth in Mexico become bilingual without teaching in and through the medium of their own
14
For a partial scepticism in relation to this view, see, e.g. Jung 2001.
12
languages - the knowledge is not transferred to Spanish which does not have the vocabulary for
these nuances or the discourses needed (see also Nabhan, 2001, Carlson, 2001).
I was told a recent example by Pekka Aikio, the President of the Saami Parliament in Finland
(personal communication, 29 November 2001). Finnish fish biologists had just "discovered" that
salmon can use even extremely small rivulets leading to the river Teno, as spawning ground earlier this was thought impossible. Pekka said that the Saami have always known this - the
traditional Saami names of several of those rivulets often include the Saami word for "salmon
spawning-bed". This is ecological knowledge inscribed in indigenous languages. This example
shows that it is possible for Western researchers to discover for themselves the knowledge that has
already been encoded in the indigenous language - but, as in this case, probably at least a
millennium later than the indigenous people had it. But in many cases, the knowledge may
disappear in ways where a western scientific retrieval is impossible, for many reasons, including all
those material reasons which are causal factors in the disappearance of both biodiversity and
linguistic diversity. And in many cases a rediscovery of the knowledge may come too late in any
case.
Some critics accuse those worried about endangered languages15 for wanting to
preserve/conserve indigenous and minority languages and knowledges in some kind of museal
conditions. According to them, we are preventing indigenous peoples from becoming modern, this
implying that they want to assimilate into larger, mostly western, languages and cultures, at the cost
of their own. "Traditional" to these researchers still seems to mean backward, static, non-scientific,
foreclosing all economic and social mobility and opportunities16.
In fact, in many cases, as Oviedo and Maffi state (2000: 6), TEK "is found to be more
complete and accurate than Western scientific knowledge of local environments" (ibid., 6-7).
Several articles in Maffi (ed., 2001) and Posey (ed., 1999) also testify to this. Few people seem to
know, for instance, that the Linnéan categories were based on ancient Saami categorisation of
nature (Gutierrez-Vazquez, 1989: 77). This knowledge is by no way static either, as Four Directions
Council in Canada (1996, quoted from Posey, 1999: 4) describes:
What is "traditional" about traditional knowledge is not its antiquity, but the way it is
acquired and used. In other words, the social process of learning and sharing knowledge,
which is unique to each indigenous culture, lies at the very heart of its "traditionality". Much
of this knowledge is actually quite new, but it has a social meaning, and legal character,
entirely unlike the knowledge indigenous people acquire from settlers and industrialized
societies.
And it is exactly this transmission process that is at grave risk as soon as indigenous children attend
schools where their languages are not the main teaching languages and where their cultural
practices do not permeate the learning processes. This is linguistic and cultural genocide, according
to articles IIb and IIe of the UN 1948 Genocide Convention (see Skutnabb-Kangas 2000). The
International Council for Science (ICSU - see www.icsu.org) organised a full-day symposium 29
August 2002 at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) on
"Linking Traditional and Scientific Knowledge for Sustainable Development", together with
UNESCO's Local and Indigenous Knowledge Systems Project (LINKS) and Tebtebba Foundation,
in co-operation with International Chamber of Commerce (odd bedfellows but typical for how
governments, through partnerships with businesses, want to escape responsibility…). Both the
15
See UNESCO 2003 a, b, c, for some cautious attempts to support endangered languages, also in education.
Stephen May's 2003 article presents a summary and reflective theoretical and empirical critique of these
misconceptions. I have critiqued them in Skutnabb-Kangas, in press a, b.
16
13
ICSU representatives at the conference and ICSU's 2002 report Science, Traditional Knowledge
and Sustainable Development showed very clearly that TEK is seen as containing a great deal of
knowledge unknown to and of utmost importance to (western) science, and that scientists are
worried about the diminishing transmission of it. ICSU's stance agrees fully with the importance of
linguistic and cultural human rights in education even if they do not formulate their worries in
human rights terms:
Universal education programs provide important tools for human development, but they may
also compromise the transmission of indigenous language and knowledge. Inadvertently, they
may contribute to the erosion of cultural diversity, a loss of social cohesion and the alienation
and disorientation of youth. […] In short, when indigenous children are taught in science class
that the natural world is ordered as scientists believe it functions, then the validity and
authority of their parents’ and grandparents’ knowledge is denied. While their parents may
posses an extensive and sophisticated understanding of the local environment, classroom
instruction implicitly informs that science is the ultimate authority for interpreting “reality”
and by extension local indigenous knowledge is second rate and obsolete. […] Actions are
urgently needed to enhance the intergenerational transmission of local and indigenous
knowledge. […] Traditional knowledge conservation therefore must pass through the
pathways of conserving language (as language is an essential tool for culturally-appropriate
encoding of knowledge). (from various pages in ICSU 24).
And here we come to the main point. Since TEK is necessarily encoded into the local languages of
the peoples whose knowledge it is, this means that if these local languages disappear, without the
knowledge being transferred to other, bigger languages, the knowledge is lost. We then have to ask
the two questions which I have started asking here: Is the knowledge transferred to other languages?
The answer is No. Are the languages disappearing? The answer is Yes. Michael Warren, one of the
people first using the concept of indigenous knowledge, echoes ICSU when he concludes (2001:
448):
Of major concern is the rapid loss of the knowledge of many communities as universal
formal education is enforced with a curriculum that usually ignores the contributions of local
communities to global knowledge. The loss of knowledge in linked indelibly to language
extinction since language is the major mechanism for preserving and transmitting a
community’s knowledge from one generation to another.
3.4. Some complexities in discussing the causal relationships
Before finishing, I want to mention a couple of the basic paradigmatic differences that make claims
about and investigations of the causality more complex - there are many more. One of the important
debates here is the conflict between the views "prominent in Western culture and particularly
prominent among scientists - that the role of language is that of labelling pre-existing natural
entities" (Mühlhäusler, 2003a: 12) and the views of ecolinguistics which "emphasise the pervasive
role of language and discourse in constructing and perpetuating perceptions of realities" (ibid.).
Since the old positivist "belief that it is possible for human observers to capture objective facts is
one of the principal components of modern Western world view" (ibid., 52), most of the training of
researchers (Mühlhäusler uses the training of foresters in the USA as an example) has encouraged
them to make a distinction between these "verifiable and observable facts" (ibid.) on the one hand,
and subjective opinions and values on the other hand ("other than measurable objective economic
14
values", Mühlhäusler states, - 2003a: 52 - without developing this further17). This is more than just
another critique of old-style positivism. Mühlhäusler shows in which ways the belief has influenced
the development of linguistics as a discipline and the fairly substantial negative consequences it has
had - and still has. It is one of the main factors explaining the inability of most linguists to do
serious work to appreciate and promote linguistic diversity. Mühlhäusler's 2003a book is a serious
critique of modern linguistics which Mühlhäusler sees as "based on the non-ecological view, that its
object of inquiry can be studied in isolation from all other phenomena, that the ecology in which
language is embedded does not provide explanations as to its nature and that in turn language does
not impact on the environment" (ibid.: 3).
Another important distinction that Mühlhäusler discusses is the one between "intellectualists"
and "constructivists". The former "hold that the classification of life forms is essentially a cognitive
matter" (ibid., 36). Berlin (1991: 57) describes this view as follows: "human beings everywhere
recognise the inherent order and structure in the biological world quite independently of whatever
practical value plants and animals may be thought to possess". The "utilitarianists/ constructivists/
functionalists", on the other hand, argue that names are given to animals and plants that people use,
"that have practical consequences for human adaptation" (Mühlhäusler, 2003a: 57, quoting Cecil
Brown). After a lengthy discussion, Mühlhäusler's conclusion is that existing evidence supports the
latter position more. Partially overlapping with the earlier distinction, then, labels are regarded as
"largely culture-specific accidental conventionalizations, not linguistic analogues of natural classes"
(ibid., 46); there is no "literal meaning" (p. 131).
4. To conclude
Today, linguistic diversity is disappearing much faster than biodiversity. I will present a very simple
comparison, based on numbers and extinction rates. According to conservative (i.e. optimistic)
assessments, more than 5,000 species disappear every year; pessimistic evaluations claim that the
figure may be up to 150,000. Using the most 'optimistic' estimate of both the number of species (the
high figure of 30 million) and the killing of species (the "low" figure of 5,000/year), the extinction
rate is 0.017% per year. With the opposite, the most 'pessimistic' estimates (5 million species;
150,000/year disappear), the yearly extinction rate is 3%.
On the other hand, researchers who use the high extinction rates, often also use higher estimates
for numbers of species. If the number of species is estimated at 30 million and 150,000 disappear
yearly, the rate would be 0.5% per year. Many researchers seem to use yearly extinction rates which
vary between 0.2% ('pessimistic realistic') and 0.02% ('optimistic realistic' - these are my labels).
If we disregard the cumulative effect and do a simplified calculation, according to the
'pessimistic realistic' prognosis, then, 20% of the biological species we have today might be dead in
the year 2100, in hundred years' time. According to the 'optimistic realistic' prognosis the figure
would be 2%. ). Optimistic estimates, then, state that 2% of biological species but 50% of
languages may be dead (or moribund) in a 100 years' time. Pessimistic estimates are that 20% of
biological species but 90% of languages may be dead (or moribund) in a 100 years' time (Table 5).
Table 5. Prognoses for 'dead' or 'moribund' species and languages
Percentage estimated to be
dead or moribund around
the year 2100
PROGNOSES
'Optimistic realistic'
'Pessimistic realistic'
Biological species
2%
20%
Languages
50%
90%
17
Here Grin's (2003) discussion about private and social market and non-market values could take us much further; see
also my application of this to linguistic diversity, using some additional legal arguments (Skutnabb-Kangas, in press c).
15
Obviously the figures for extinction for biological species are much higher if we only take
mammals, or birds, or only animals and plants - and these are the species best described by natural
scientists - cuddly koalas are more interesting, even for most supporting foundations, than slimy
algae or invisible bacteria (agro-biotech corporations are an exception). But since we know very
little about the relationships enabling healthy ecosystems (see Rapport, 1989) to be maintained, we
need to use the total figures.
Why is biodiversity disappearing. We couldsummarise the three main reasons as follows:
- The poor and powerless economic and political situation of people living in the world’s most
diverse ecoregions;
- Habitat destruction through logging, spread of agriculture, use of pesticides & fertilisers,
deforestation, desertification, overfishing, etc.
- Knowledge about how to maintain biodiversity and use nature sustainably disappears with
disappearing languages.
Colin Baker sums up the importance of ecological diversity in his review of Skutnabb-Kangas,
2000 (Baker, 2001: 281).
Ecological diversity is essential for long-term planetary survival. Diversity contains the
potential for adaptation. Uniformity can endanger a species by providing inflexibility and
unadaptability. As languages and cultures die, the testimony of human intellectual
achievement is lessened. In the language of ecology, the strongest ecosystems are those that
are the most diverse. Diversity is directly related to stability; variety is important for longterm survival. Our success on this planet has been due to an ability to adapt to different kinds
of environment over thousands of years. Such ability is born out of diversity. Thus language
and cultural diversity maximises chances of human success and adaptability.
Biocultural diversity is thus essential for long-term planetary survival because it enhances creativity
and adaptability and thus stability. Today we are killing biocultural diversity faster than ever before
in human history.
Jared Diamond examines in the chapter 'The Golden Age That Never Was' in his 1991 book
the evidence for people and cultures before us having completely ruined the prerequisites for their
own life, beyond repair. They have destroyed their habitats and/or exterminated large numbers of
species. This has happened in many places and it makes the 'supposed past Golden Age of
environmentalism look increasingly mythical' (Diamond, 1991: 335). If we want to learn from it,
and not make it happen on a global basis (this is our obvious risk today), we better heed his advice.
In parallel with Mühlhäusler (see also his 1996), Diamond claims the following:
‘… small long-established, egalitarian societies tend to evolve conservationist practices, because
they've had plenty of time to get to know their local environment and to perceive their own selfinterest. Instead, damage is likely to occur when people suddenly colonize an unfamiliar
environment (like the first Maoris and Eastern Islanders); or when people advance along a new
frontier (like the first Indians to reach America), so that they can just move beyond the frontier
when they've damaged the region behind; or when people acquire a new technology whose
destructive power they haven't had time to appreciate (like modern New Guineans, now
devastating pigeon populations with shotguns). Damage is also likely in centralized states that
concentrate wealth in the hands of rulers who are out of touch with their environment’ (Diamond,
1991, 335-336).
16
Summarizing Diamond’s factors, damage tends to occur when people
1. colonize an unfamiliar environment;
2. advance along a new frontier;
3. acquire a new technology whose destructive power people haven't had time to appreciate;
4. have centralized states that concentrate wealth in the hands of rulers who are out of touch with
their environment’
As we can see, we have the perfect global prerequisites for ruining our planet beyond repair.
Ad factor 1: Long-established small societies are breaking up, and, with urbanization and migration,
people encounter new environments;
Ad factor 3: New technologies are more destructive than ever and results of biochemical and other
experiments (like genetically modified crops) are taken into use before we know anything about the
long-term effects on nature or people;
Ad factor 4: We have growing gaps and alienated elites;
And ad factor 2: We do not have the new planets to move to when we have damaged this one…
Researchers have a responsibility not only to produce solid knowledge about the incredible
complexities in this transdisciplinary area, but also to act on the basis of the still (probably always?)
incomplete knowledge. It has to be today.
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