Alexandria Poole

Global culture, forms of governance, economic and development models have become drastically dissociated from biological and cultural diversity and their interrelationships. Global society is exposed to globally homogeneously governed life habits that tend to build globally homogeneous technological and urban habitats in the heterogeneous regions of the planet. Concurrently, these globally homogeneous habitats reinforce globally homogeneous life habits. These feedbacks between globalized habits and habitats generate processes of biocultural homogenization, which represents an overlooked dimension of global changes in the Anthropocene. Biocultural homogenization is both driver and product of complex and pervasive losses of biological and cultural diversity. We maintain that it is technically necessary and ethically imperative to reverse these losses. Toward this aim, we present the “3Hs” conceptual framework of the biocultural ethic, which values the vital links among the diversity of life habits of distinct co-in-habitants that share a common habitat. We offer this philosophical framework as a heuristic model for: better understanding multidimensional and multi-scale processes involved in global changes; designing policies that integrate biocultural diversity into ethical, political, and environmental dimensions of the contemporary technological world; and orienting decision-making processes that can better assess the consequences that development policies might have for the conservation or degradation of habitats, life habits, and welfare of co-inhabitants. In this way, the 3Hs “philosophical lens” of the biocultural ethic can contribute to re-orienting global society toward sustainable forms of co-inhabitation amidst the rapidly changing socio-environmental scenarios of the Anthropocene.

On 25 September 2015, the seventieth session of the General Assembly in the United Nations approved new Sustainable Development Goals building upon the vision of the original Millennium Development Goals. I argue that this post-2015 agenda still neglects fundamental qualities of cultural sovereignty that are key to maintaining sustainable practices, values and lifestyle habits. No single goal emphasises the need to protect local ecological knowledge, cultural heritage and alternative economic practices - nor their interrelation with biodiversity - as a pathway to sustainability. The factors that threaten sustainable lifestyles remain a conspicuous absence in the goals. The article presents a thought experiment to provoke the addition of the 'inextricable link' of biological, cultural and linguistic diversity to the Sustainable Development Goals: the recognition and affirmation of biocultural heritage.

Long-term ecological research (LTER), addressing problems that encompass decadal or longer time frames, began as a formal term and program in the United States in 1980. While long-term ecological studies and observation began as early as the 1400s and 1800s in Asia and Europe, respectively, the long-term approach was not formalized until the establishment of the U.S. long-term ecological research programs. These programs permitted ecosystem-level experiments and cross-site comparisons that led to insights into the biosphere’s structure and function. The holistic ecosystem approach of this initiative also allowed the incorporation of the human-dimension of ecology and recently has given rise to a new concept of long-term socio-ecological research (LTSER). Today, long-term ecological research programs exist in at least thirty-two countries (i.e., members of the International Long-Term Ecological Research Network, ILTER). However, consolidation of the international network within the long-term socio-ecological research paradigm still requires: (1) inclusion of certain remote regions of the world, such as southwestern South America, that are still poorly represented; (2) modifications of the type of research conducted, such as integrating social and natural sciences with the humanities and ethics; and (3) the incorporation of findings and results into broader social and political processes. In this context, a nascent long-term socio-ecological research network in Chile, which extends over the longest latitudinal range of temperate forest in the Southern Hemisphere, adds a new remote region to international long-term ecological research previously overlooked. In addition, collaboration with the University of North Texas and other international partners helps to further develop an interdisciplinary approach for the integration of the ecological sciences and environmental philosophy together with traditional ecological knowledge, informal and formal education, policy, the humanities, socio-political processes, and biocultural conservation.