Charles F. BennettCharles F. Bennett, of the University of California, Los Angeles, presented this paper at the symposium on The Ecology of Conservation and Development in Central America and Panama, sponsored by the Organization for Tropical Studies, San Jose, Costa Rica, in February 1975.
Cultural diversity in the population of a country results in a healthy diversity in the use of land and natural resources of all kinds. Developing countries retain an advantage over industrialized ones in that they tend to have considerable cultural diversity among their peoples, and those concerned with environmental conservation and the utilization of natural resources should learn how to take advantage of this.
The most frequently ignored or overlooked aspect of conservation of natural resources and economic development is human cultural diversity. Or to put it another way, people are generally overlooked even though it is obvious that without human beings there could be no such phenomena as resource conservation and resource development. But when the plans to conserve or develop natural resources are made, the starting point of such deliberations is seldom, if ever, with the diverse needs and aspirations of all the cultural elements that will be affected. This paper, therefore, is addressed to the following propositions:
- The conservation and development of natural resources are basically human-oriented endeavours.- The most important resource any nation has is its people and they must be the prime concern of all conservation and development efforts.
- Cultural diversity must be recognized as an ecological resource, that is, it is a natural resource to be con served along with all the more commonly recognized resources of the ecosystems of which humans form a part.
Most of my remarks will relate to Central America and Panama, but their implications and applications are by no means intended to be restricted to this part of the world.
The importance of diversity to the functioning of ecosystems is now a well-established principle in ecology. Diversity is most often expressed in terms of taxonomic variation and it is known that, in general, mature ecosystems tend to have more taxonomic diversity than do earlier seral stages in the same ecosystems. Other kinds of diversity are also recognized, as, for example, biogeochemical diversity, niche diversity and so on (Odum, 1969). There is growing agreement among ecologists that ecosystems, and particularly humid tropical ecosystems, must possess a relatively high level of diversity if they are to retain stability over long periods of time. The implications of this are very important to conservation and development efforts and one of the growing trends in research is to determine what the lower limits of ecologically safe diversity are in order to provide needed guidelines for conservationists and developers (Farnsworth and Golley, 1974).
However, one searches almost in vain for any mention that human cultural diversity is an aspect of diversity in ecosystems. Quite the contrary, the conventional wisdom appears to view cultural diversity as something to interest social scientists but not as having any ecological significance. But cultural diversity is, in a large measure, an ecological phenomenon; it refers to life style diversity, or diversity in the ways various cultures perceive and utilize the natural resources available to them. This being so, it is obvious that cultural diversity equates, at many important points, with ecological diversity. I will argue later that cultural diversity is a basic and valuable attribute of the ecosystems of developing countries. Out before addressing that argument I wish first to discuss, in a brief manner, the range of cultural diversity in Central America.
Although it is usual to consider Central America as a part of the larger regional unit called Latin America, it is a fact that these nations not only have a rich Indian cultural past but retain diverse Indian cultures to the present day. The most recent census with fairly accurate data on Indian populations yields the following figures: Guatemala, 1497300 (53.6% of the total population); El Salvador, 100000 (0.4%); Honduras, 107800 (5.5%); Nicaragua, 43000 (2.9%); Costa Rica, 8000 (0.6%10); Panama, 62200 (5.8%). By a conservative estimate, these 1817300 Indians represented 39 major tribal or cultural units.
Although one can generalize all these Indian groups into a single ecological type, characterized as agricultural with varying emphases on hunting and fishing, to do so is to obscure widely varying systems of human ecology. There is insufficient space here to detail all or even most of these systems, so only three briefly drawn examples will be presented: Indians of western Guatemala, chiefly Quiché, and Cakchiquel; the coastal Miskito Indians of Nicaragua; and the Chocó of eastern Panama.
In the western highlands of Guatemala hunting and fishing have declined to relative unimportance because of a scarcity of animals (there are some local exceptions). Agriculture is very important and is based on maize, beans and squashes, although many other plants are also grown. A fairly wide range of agricultural systems are present but the dominant one is shifting cultivation. However, there is also a significant amount of what might be termed sedentary hoe cultivation. Crops are grown both for subsistence and for marketing in the region. Many domesticated animals, mostly of European origin, are kept and include pigs, sheep, cattle, mules, goats, chickens and the native turkey and native ducks. An important aspect of the human ecology of this area are the market centres, where agricultural products and home-manufactured textiles and ceramics are sold. The markets serve also as important social centres (McBryde, 1945).
The ecology of the Miskito Indians of Nicaragua has been reported on in detail by Nietschmann (1973). He gave their population in 1969 as approximately 35000 (somewhat higher than official government figures). Some of the Miskito people live in villages adjacent to the Caribbean coast, and others have taken up inland sites once occupied by the Sumu Indians. The coastal Miskito people depend to a large extent on the sea as a source of animal food for their diets. According to Nietschmann, the perfect meal for a coastal Miskito Indian would "consist first and foremost of meat, especially turtle (Chelonia mydas), white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari), or fish, roasted or browned in coconut oil, and boiled young cassava, green bananas, duswa (Xanthosoma spp.) and some wabul, a thick porridge made from boiled green bananas mixed with coconut milk. Highly sweetened coffee, and bread made from flour would complete the meal..." He goes on to say that other foods held in high regard by the Miskito are white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus); pace (Cuniculus paca), a large spotted rodent; agouti (Dasyprocta punctata), a rabbit-sized rodent; manatee (Trichecus sp.), an aquatic herbivorous mammal, hicatee (Pseudemys sp.), a freshwater turtle, and fish of many kinds.
Miskito agriculture is described as "a complex and ecologically conservative system which closely simulates in morphology and function the tropical forest which it replaces. The swiddens are man-created models of ecological diversity in species, and in three-dimensional zonation of polycultural plants which maximize utilization of available sunlight, moisture and humidity while protecting the easily degraded soil from exposure to sun and precipitation."
Turning to the Chocó (Bennett, 1968), we encounter a tribe of forest Indians that inhabits eastern Panama and northern Colombia. These Indians always locate their pile dwellings near the bank of a river or a lake. The Chocó practice a mixed agriculture that includes both shifting and sedentary systems. The more important crop plants are rice, plantains, yucca and bananas. Hunting and fishing are carried on actively and among the game mammals and birds most sought after are tapir (Tapirus), bracket deer (Mazama), agouti, spider monkey (Ateles), cabybara (Hydrochoerus), peccary, curasow birds (Crax), and turkey-like guan (Penelope). Also popular are certain freshwater crustaceans (Macrobrachium sp.) and turtles (Pseudemys).
If there is a market not too distant by canoe, bananas are sometimes grown as a cash crop. The money earned is used to purchase such items as outboard motors, fuel, cooking oil, specialty foods, tobacco, and fabric for clothing. Some Chocó have integrated hogs and chickens into their ecology. The hogs, which are never kept in large numbers, are usually sold and the few eggs produced by the chickens are often used in barter.
These brief descriptions of aspects of the ecologies of some of the Indians in this region show that Indian cultures not only survive but also retain an important degree of ecological diversity. It must be stressed that no two Indian cultures in this region have identical ecologies. Each group has worked out its own unique ways of using the land and the local natural resources. Although it is not unusual for persons writing about the Indians of Central America to group them into two or three large cultural aggregates, the actual ecological diversity does not justify such a procedure.
Often overlooked is the extraordinary range of cultural diversity among the non-Indians of this region. The major cultural stocks are from Africa, Europe and Asia (excluding the fact that the Indians are descended from Asian emigrants of many thousands of years ago).
The African stock is derived from a broad array of cultures that can only with a complete disregard of historical geography be lumped into a unit called African culture. Available data indicate that the people in this region who are of African ancestry came mostly from West Africa and from perhaps dozens of distinct tribal entities representing a broad range of cultures. The diversity of West African cultures is coming to be appreciated more and there is also a growing awareness that these people contributed importantly to the cultural complexes we see today in this region.
People of African ancestry are both rural and urban dwellers. They engage in a wide range of agricultural activities. Their urban employment ranges over the entire gamut of occupations followed by urban dwellers. In short, the African-derived population is divisible into a complex array of ecological types resulting from the totality of their cultural experiences, not excluding those of their respective African homelands.
The European stock is derived from almost every part of Europe, and secondarily from the United States. The most important group, of course, is that which is descended from Spanish stock that arrived to settle early in the sixteenth century. It was this group which contributed most significantly to the changes in human ecology of the region, thus giving rise to the partial misnomer Latin America.
A CHOCÓ INDIAN one of 39 tribes and 39 ways of using land
There are almost as many life styles among this cultural stock as there are life styles in the region. However, for the purposes of general discussion, one may group the people into rural and urban cultures (realizing that these two broad categories are divisible into almost an infinity of subcultures). Of principal interest to us at this point is the rural component.
Most economic activity in the rural areas is focused upon agricultural and pastoral endeavour. Agricultural practices range from shifting cultivation on government or private lands, usually not owned by the cultivator, to large private land holdings where only cash crops are grown. Pastoral activity ranges from keeping a few pigs or cattle to add to family income up to large cattle ranches utilizing the most modern animal husbandry techniques. Income, education and value systems vary widely among the various groups. More important, perhaps, is the fact that each of these rural subcultures tends to perceive and utilize the local natural renewable and nonrenewable resources in differing ways.
In general, the value of local renewable resources tends to be greatest for those who have the lower economic incomes. For example, these people depend upon wild plants for medicine, food, building materials, textiles and other purposes, and the wild animal resource often figures importantly as a source al food. As economic wealth increases there is a greater tendency to turn to commercial sources for these needs, and thus the perceived resource changes. As a further example, the shifting cultivator will view the presence of second-growth forest or woodland as a very desirable ecological feature to be maintained in order to provide future areas for his cultivation. On the other hand, the ganadero will perhaps see the same vegetation as something to be cleared away in order to plant pastures for the cattle he wishes to raise. Local game animals may be seen as a source of food by one rural group and as an object of recreational hunting by another. There is no single "standard" ecology for rural people in this region.
The people who are of recent Asian origin comprise a comparatively small part of the total population. Most are located in towns and cities. However, some members of this group engage in agricultural and pastoral activities and these may embody both New World and Asian cultural components.
The value of cultural diversity relates in various ways to ecosystemic health, but the most important way is that it provides a counterpoise to the ecologically unfortunate trend toward larger and larger areas being converted to monocultural use. Diversity of resource use allows for the maintenance of a multitude of feed-back loops that help to protect the human-occupied ecosystems from shock occasioned by biological, physical and economic perturbations that might otherwise severely damage or even destroy oversimplified ecosystems.
Thus the people living in an area of high diversity are given a significant measure of protection against the failure of food production systems (both controlled and uncontrolled), and by extension the larger regional units are buffered against ecological and economic shocks. It is true that under such a system of diversity short-run economic yields may be reduced, but the trade-off is that an important degree of ecological and economic stability can be maintained over the long run. Keynesian economics assure us that most economic decisions are short-run decisions, but one must note that the ecologists offer us no similar consolation.
Another positive attribute of cultural diversity is that for rural people it acts as a counter stimulant to the attraction of urban migration, which is one of the most significant demographic phenomena in Latin America. When there is little or no appreciation for the ecological and economic value of rural cultural diversity urban migration is hastened, because of the trend toward the creation of ever larger land holdings and the ever more simple monocultural use of the land. The previous labour-intensive economy is rapidly supplanted by a capital-intensive economy in which there are fewer opportunities for human employment, and this is often viewed as a desirable economic development. However, displaced rural people have now become an economic, social and political problem to governments because little employment opportunity exists for them in the towns and cities. Once productive members of rural ecosystems, they now become a faceless aggregate. Normally the governments of developing nations do not have access to a tax base large enough to acquire the sums needed to care for a rootless populace until it can be absorbed into urban economic infrastructures.
Cultural diversity has come to be accepted as a necessary component in all conservation and development plans and projects. It is therefore worthwhile looking at some of the models usually employed by conservationists and economic planners in developing nations.
These models, with but few exceptions, are borrowed from industrialized nations where there is a high degree of cultural homogeneity insofar as the nature of labour employment and labour residence is concerned. Although many such models are available for discussion I will use those that apply to wildlife management as being representative of the problem.
Most industrialized nations control by law the ways by which and the times during which the fish and wildlife resources can be harvested. Typically, there is a licensing system and there are legal restrictions imposed on the size and number of the animal species (or subspecies) that can be taken. There are also well-defined periods when the animals may or may not be legally hunted or fished. Virtually all game birds and mammals are reserved for recreational hunting, which is the correct approach to management of these resources. Fish species may be treated as both recreational and commercial resources with separate laws and regulations governing their catch.
When fish and game conservation measures are drawn up in most developing nations, the legal model of the industrial nations is almost the only one given any consideration. Fish and wildlife resources are therefore seen from a single ecological point of view: that the best utilization is for recreational hunting and fishing and that management should be toward that end. Typically, a single set of laws based on that assumption is promulgated, and immediately the ecological realities and ecological rights of some of the citizenry are ignored.
What is required are laws governing hunting and fishing that reflect the presence of more than one ecological constituency. The laws should answer not only to the desires of those who view hunting and fishing as principally recreational activities but also to the needs of those for whom the animal resource constitutes an important food source. This last consideration also requires regulations designed to control the number and species of animals taken and the times of the year when hunting and fishing may be conducted, but the laws ought to relate to the ecological realities of the cultures involved and should adjust to those realities as closely as sound biological conservation practice permits.
Although it might not be possible to devise hunting and fishing regulations that answer to every human cultural unit present in a nation, it should not be very difficult to recognize all the larger but presently ignored constituencies. It would be a desirable practice to recognize zones or regions in which only subsistence hunting and fishing are permitted. Within such areas fish and game management would be directed toward maximizing production of those species of animals which are most valued as food. Fish and game management would be integrated into the human uses of the ecosystems and perhaps some modification of such use patterns might result in greater yields of animal food. In the case of Indian cultures, every effort should be made to develop conservation programmes that relate to their traditional ecologies. Such programmes, of course, require the application of sound biological management practices, but again they would be integrated into the human systems.
There are some areas remote from all but the sparsest human settlement which contain the very species of game mammals and birds that are most attractive to recreational hunters. These areas should be identified and set aside in special reserves maintained by game management experts. In these situations legal models resembling those of industrialized nations are appropriate because the harvesting activity is essentially the same. Hunters would be required to pay for the services of licensed guides, and for room and board in special inns established for them, and to pay substantial fees for licences. I have in mind here, in part, the practices one may encounter in government-operated hunting reserves in parts of Europe.
Although I have chosen to discuss cultural diversity as it relates to fish harvest, cultural diversity, once accepted as a necessary aspect of sound conservation and development practices, must be part of all conservation and development efforts. The sooner this is done the better. At present, the overly simplistic models employed in conservation and development plans tend to relegate cultural diversity to the limbo designated by economists as "externalities" People are not externalities, and if they come to be considered as such the objectives of both conservation and development are not merely overlooked but are positively opposed.
The problem is that the varied cultural units that make up a nation's citizenry are usually viewed for planning purposes as though they comprised a single cultural -i.e., ecological - aggregate. Moreover, this aggregate is then assumed to resemble the urban aggregates of highly industrialized nations. This is an inaccurate, misleading and ultimately costly view and can only increase rather than decrease many of those very problems that conservationists and developers seek to solve.
It is often lamented that developing nations have nothing but major obstacles in the paths leading to hoped for industrialization. Almost universally overlooked is the fact that these nations still retain a critically important advantage that most if not all industrialized nations forfeited unwittingly. That advantage is the continued presence of ecological diversity in the human sector - a diversity that allows a variety of uses to be made of the natural resources of a nation. This cultural diversity, so often ignored or deprecated, ought instead to be judged one of the most valuable attributes of a nation's ecological patrimony.
FISHING IN PANAMA usually overlooked when fishing laws are passed
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