Earth Stewardship and the Biocultural Ethic: Latin American Perspectives - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 107

to support an ethic that affi rms the value of the vital links between the life habits of
the inhabitants and the habitats where these habits are practiced. Today, the value of
these vital links is also confi rmed by ecological and social sciences. The attention to
the daily life of human communities and their biocultural landscapes - including
ecosystems, historical, socio-political, and cultural settings - contributes to:
(i) discovering the inexhaustible biocultural diversity embedded in the spatial and
temporal heterogeneity of the Latin American region, and
(ii) understanding how today these diverse human and other-than-human forms of life
are threatened by development projects that are insensitive to their existence.
The Catalan (Spain) ecological economist Joan Martinez-Alier stresses that in
Latin America conservation is far from being a luxury. On the contrary, the commit-
ment and action in favor of conservation often springs from those communities who
depend directly on natural resources to live. This conservation perspective is known
as environmentalism of the poor (Martínez-Alier 2002 ).
Resistance movements and recurrent appeals to conservation made by local com-
munities aim to maintain sustainable ecological practices rooted in regional biologi-
cal and cultural diversity. To better understand the interrelationships between
biological and cultural diversity, the Mexican ecologist Victor Toledo, founding edi-
tor of the journal Etnoecologica, promotes the study of the relationships between
Amerindian cultures and nature. 10 Toledo has emphasized the necessity of develop-
ing hybrid disciplines that integrate the cultural, social, and ecological dimensions
to enable communication and mutual respect among different socio-cultural actors
(Toledo 2003 ; Toledo and Castillo 1999 ). The perspectives of diverse indigenous,
peasant, and fi sherman communities agree with those of ecologists and other
researchers regarding the fact that levels of autonomy and social well-being are
higher in areas where ecosystems and biodiversity have been protected (Rozzi and
Feinsinger 2001 ). To enhance the understanding of this “win-win relationship”
between the well-being of humans and of biotic communities and their ecosystems,
and to better understand the value of their expression in local life histories, I have
integrated ecological sciences and environmental ethics into the practice of fi eld
environmental philosophy (Rozzi et al. 2008 ; see Aguirre Sala 2015 in this volume
[Chap. 15 ]). In this practice, students participate with philosophers, ecologists, and
other researchers in long-term transdisciplinary projects of biocultural conserva-
tion. This in situ experience involves “face to face” encounters with co-inhabitants
(human and other-than-human), their habits and habitats. With this methodology
“biocultural diversity ceases to be a mere concept, and begins to be an experience of
10 In Latin America, as in other regions of the world, ethnoecology has been essential to disclose
the richness of Amerindian worldviews and the value of traditional ecological practices (Ulloa
et al. 2001 ). This interdisciplinary fi eld has involved fruitful collaborations between Latin
American and international researchers. Indeed, the International Society of Ethnobiology was
founded in Belem Brazil during the First International Congress of Ethnobiology in 1988. It
involved an active collaboration between Brazilian, Latin American, and international researchers
under the leadership Darrell Posey. In the 1990s, Victor Toledo's collaboration with U.S. ethno-
botanist Janis Alcorn was essential to establish the journal Etnoecologica and to promote a conser-