Petra Maass The Cultural Context of Biodiversity Conservation Seen and Unseen Dimensions of Indigenous Knowledge among Q'eqchi' Communities in Guatemala Göttinger Beiträge zur Ethnologie Band 2 Universitätsverlag Göttingen Petra Maass The Cultural Context of Biodiversity Conservation Except where otherwise noted this work is licensed under the Creative Commons License 2.0 “by-nc-nd”, allowing you to download, distribute and print the document in a few copies for private or educational use, given that the document stays unchanged and the creator is mentioned. Commercial use is not covered by the licence. Published in 2008 by Universitätsverlag Göttingen as Vol. 2 in the series „Göttinger Beiträge zur Ethnologie“ This series is a continuation of the „Göttinger Studien zur Ethnologie“ formerly published by LIT-Verlag Petra Maass The Cultural Context of Biodiversity Conservation Seen and Unseen Dimensions of Indigenous Knowledge among Q'eqchi' Communities in Guatemala Volume 2 Göttinger Beiträge zur Ethnologie Universitätsverlag Göttingen 2008 Bibliographische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliographie; detaillierte bibliographische Daten sind im Internet über <http://dnb.ddb.de> abrufbar. » Göttinger Beiträge zur Ethnologie « Series Editors Prof. Dr. Ulrich Braukämper and Prof. Dr. Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin Institute for Cultural and Social Anthropology University of Göttingen Theaterplatz 15, D-37073 Göttingen Gedruckt mit Hilfe der Geschwister Boehringer Ingelheim Stiftung für Geisteswissenschaften in Ingelheim am Rhein This work is protected by German Intellectual Property Right Law. It is also available as an Open Access version through the publisher’s homepage and the Online Catalogue of the State and University Library of Goettingen (http://www.sub.uni-goettingen.de). Users of the free online version are invited to read, download and distribute it. Users may also print a small number for educational or private use. However they may not sell print versions of the online book. Satz und Layout: Petra Maass Covergestaltung: Jutta Pabst Titelabb ildung : Petra Maass , Guatemala 2001 © 2008 Universitätsverlag Göttingen http://univerlag.uni-goettingen.de ISBN: 978-3-940344-19-9 ISSN: 1866-0711 Where is the life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? - T. S. Eliot - C ONTENTS Acknowledgements Prologue Abbreviations 1 I NTRODUCTION - from global to local ........................................................................1 1.1 The interdisciplinary approach ...................................................................................3 1.2 What's it all about?........................................................................................................5 1.3 Research perspectives ..................................................................................................9 1.4 The conceptual scheme .............................................................................................13 2 T HE GLOBAL CONTEXT - international policies and loc a l environments ............. ....17 2.1 Biodiversity and indigenous communities..............................................................21 2.2 The Convention on Biological Diversity ................................................................25 2.3 In situ conservation and protected area management ...........................................27 2.4 Biodiversity conservation and indigenous knowledge..........................................29 3 T HE DISCURSIVE CONTEXT - conceptual approaches from anthropology ...............35 3.1 Environmental anthropology....................................................................................38 3.1.1 Contributions from political ecology .................................................................42 3.1.2 Biodiversity as transcultural discourse.........................................................44 3.1.3 Conceptualising nature...................................................................................49 3.1.4 Multi-sited ethnography.................................................................................54 The cultural context of biodiversity conservation 3.2 Perspectives on protected area management ........................................................ 59 3.2.1 Conservation paradigms and local livelihoods .......................................... 60 3.2.2 From conflict to cooperation....................................................................... 61 3.2.3 From principles to practice........................................................................... 64 3.2.4 The remaining quest for participation ........................................................ 65 3.3 Anthropology of landscape ...................................................................................... 67 3.3.1 The polysemic texture of landscape............................................................ 70 3.3.2 Environmental imagery and identity........................................................... 74 3.3.3 Of emplacement and emotional involvement........................................... 76 3.3.4 A matter of worldview .................................................................................. 79 3.4 Anthropology of indigenous knowledge................................................................ 86 3.4.1 The conceptual dimension - definitions and approaches ................................ 89 3.4.2 The empirical dimension - the context of doing .............................................. 94 3.4.3 The symbolic dimension - the context of meaning ......................................... 97 3.4.4 The epistemological dimension - indigenous knowledge and science ............ 101 4 T HE LOCAL CONTEXT - national policies and indigenous communities ................. 109 4.1 The national context................................................................................................ 110 4.1.1 Biological and cultural diversity ................................................................. 111 4.1.2 Historical accounts....................................................................................... 113 4.1.3 From past to present ................................................................................... 115 4.1.4 Environmental policies................................................................................ 118 4.2 The Maya-Q'eqchi' ...................................................................................................... 121 4.2.1 Local economy and social structures ........................................................ 122 4.2.2 Historical references .................................................................................... 125 4.3 The conservational context .................................................................................... 129 4.3.1 The National Park Laguna Lachuá .............................................................. 130 4.3.2 The co-management approach .................................................................. 133 4.4 The ethnographic context....................................................................................... 135 4.4.1 The study sites .............................................................................................. 136 4.4.2 Methodological considerations .................................................................. 139 5 L OCAL EXPRESSIONS OF INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE ............................ 145 5.1 The context of doing - the empirical dimension ........................................................ 147 5.1.1 Land use systems.......................................................................................... 148 5.1.2 The milpa cycle .............................................................................................. 152 5.1.3 Silvicultural and horticultural practices..................................................... 161 5.1.4 Further subsistence activities...................................................................... 169 Contents 5.2 The context of meaning - the symbolic dimension .................................................... 173 5.2.1 The indigenous worldview ......................................................................... 175 5.2.2 Agricultural symbolism ............................................................................... 180 5.2.3 Ritual practice ............................................................................................... 184 5.2.4 The sacred landscape................................................................................... 190 5.3 The context of change - the transformational dimension .......................................... 198 5.3.1 The dynamics of knowledge production.................................................. 199 5.3.2 Knowledge transmission in educational settings .................................... 203 5.3.3 Origins of knowledge fragmentation........................................................ 209 5.3.4 Knowledge encounters in conservational settings ................................. 216 5.4 Outcomes and prospects ........................................................................................ 222 5.4.1 The seen and the unseen ................................................................................. 224 5.4.2 From present to future................................................................................ 228 5.4.3 Towards a conservation of bio-cultural diversity ................................... 235 5.4.4 Rethinking scientific assumptions............................................................. 241 6 C ONCLUDING REMARKS - from local to global .....................................................249 Epilogue ......................................................................................................................................255 R EFERENCES ......................................................................................................................... 257 A PPENDIX ............................................................................................................................... 281 A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many thanks are due to numerous individuals and institutions who have contributed to the various stages of my research and the final texture of this thesis. Above and beyond the privilege of being freely admitted to participate in the lives of indigenous farmers and their families in several peasant communities of Alta Verapaz, the time in Guatemala was enriched by the sharing of these experiences with Sindy Hernández, to whom I owe a great dept of gratitude. Many thanks to her for the inspiring and in- structive joint fieldwork and her rare courage to ignore disciplinary boundaries. My thanks to the Escuela de Biología of the Universidad de San Carlos for their collaboration and logistical assistance. I am also very grateful to my supervisor, Prof. Ulrich Braukämper, for constantly providing intellectual support and space to let me find my own way of realising this doctoral project through a terrifying complexity of themes, methods and paradigms within an interdisciplinary setting. I wish to thank my friend Vera Kalitzkus, who reminded me that anthropological engagement per se means to be in limbo and often implies the demanding task of moving beyond the frame to capture the entire picture. Admitting that there is no completely painless way to get through this venture, she continuously encouraged me to perceive the undertaking as a deeply transforming process of coming into consciousness. Whenever I believed to be lost in seemingly never-ending mental confusion evoked by too much paper and too little passion, she never tired of reassuring me that it is all worth the effort. Acknowledgements Many other friends have patiently provided emotional shelter throughout the course of this arduous transition. This applies especially to my sister Ellika Maass and my sister-in-mind Babette Müller-Rockstroh. Very special thanks to them and other peers such as Julia Trautsch, Peter Just and Rolf Lohse for supporting me by means of of- fering thoughtful comments on the material presented in the following. Sabine Ranft and Heiko Knoch, who helped me with every kind of loving assistance to survive the last tiring episode of getting the thesis written, deserve my heartfelt thanks. I also wish to acknowledge my companion Rüdiger Singer, who appeared at the right moment and inspired me to find eloquent words in the challenging task of defending the thesis. He generously helped me to face the obstacles and joys of a bright post-doctoral life. In the vision of the Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho, » writing is one of the most soli- tary activities in the world. [...] writing is getting lost at sea. It's discovering your own untold story and trying to share it with others. It's realising, when you show it to people you have never seen, what is in your own soul. « 1 I agree with him. But at the tiring time of writing, I realised that a carefully woven net of support and appreciation carried me through to the closing chapter, when I found myself lost at sea in search of an adequate form of literary reflec- tion. This exceptional reward I owe to my parents. The most sincere thanks to both of them who enabled me to endure and to courageously establish a balance between intellectual commitment, social engagement and personal freedom as prerequisites to become deeply receptive to the life of others and thereby to discover what is in my own soul . This very special discovery and the endeavour to share my own untold story rest above all on the confidence I have been kindly given by women and men, children and elders in the Guatemalan communities when crossing their paths with annoying questions and limited ways to give in return. I deeply appreciate that they shared their experiences and narratives, concerns and laughter and taught me that El camino sólo es camino cuando caminas por él. El camino se inicia en cada uno de nuestros corazones y todos lo tenemos que tomar acompañados de nuestra conciencia y nuestros ideales. Ya no podemos seguir viviendo aislados de nuestra hermana Naturaleza. Debemos aprender a no aferrarnos a las cosas materiales, pues sólo así estaremos en condición de hacer por otros y para otros, todo. [...] Nada de lo que está ocurriendo es casual, todo lo que sucede tiene un sentido y una dimensión profundamente educativa, pero sólo lo comprenden aquellos corazones abiertos que están dispuestos a cambiar. 2 1 From his essay In search for my Island (2005). 2 The quotation is from a collection of Q'eqchi' stories edited by Queiros et al. (2000: 63, 68): » The way only becomes the way when you walk it. The way begins in each of our hearts and we all need to enclose it in our consciousness and our ideals. We cannot keep on living apart from our sister Nature. We must learn not to hold on to material things, just as to be able to do everything for others. [...] Nothing of what happens is accidental, everything that succeeds has significance and a deep educational dimension, but this may just be understood by those open hearts, who are willing to change « (translation by the author). P ROLOGUE At the end of March 2003, while helping a Q'eqchi' farmer in a remote village in Alta Verapaz with harvesting his crop, I observed clouds of smoke in the sky. I asked about their origin and supposed the informant would attribute the smoke to extensive forest fires in the northern lowlands. Instead he expressed his concern about the con- flict between the United States and Iraq. Having followed the events on the radio, he interpreted the smoke as an indication of the recent attacks on Baghdad. As the worldview of the farmer does not imply continental geographies, transatlantic dis- tances and country boundaries, a war of global scope could easily influence directly even the local peasant's life in the countryside of Guatemala. Before this conversation between rows of maize, we had walked to the field, passing crop stands and areas in different stages of fallow and primary forest. On the way, the farmer shared his knowledge on almost 100 plant and tree species and talked about agrarian rituals prac- ticed by his community to ensure growth and fertility of the numerous crops culti- vated on their lands. Although the conflict in Iraq indeed had consequences for the local economy, it is beyond the intention of this study to discuss its impacts on the living conditions of rural communities in Guatemala. Neither does it concentrate on the role of modern media in traditional cultures, nor does it intend to analyse the influence of forest fires on the ongoing deforestation process in the study area. The intention of this work is to question the significance of indigenous people's spatial concepts and interpretations of phenomena occurring in their environment. It is about the relationships between people, places and ideas and aims to explore expres- sions of knowledge, thought and images through which humans understand their local world and which guide their actions. The basic idea is to illustrate that there are differ- ent ways of knowing and reasoning, seeing and endowing the world with meaning, which include material and interpretative understandings as well as emotional com- mitments with the natural world. A BBREVIATIONS ADICI Asociación de Desarrollo Comunitario Indígena AIDPI Acuerdo sobre Identidad y Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas BIDAS Asociación Biósfera y Desarrollo Agricola Sostenible BMZ Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung CAFESANO Caficultores Asociados del Norte CBD Convention on Biological Diversity CONAP Consejo Nacional de Areas Protegidas FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations GTZ Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit ICDP Integrated Conservation and Development Project INAB Instituto Nacional de Bosques INTA Instituto Nacional de Transformación Agraria IUCN International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources ILO International Labour Organization IK Indigenous Knowledge IPR Intellectual Property Rights MINUGUA Misión de Verificación de las Naciones Unidas en Guatemala NTFP S Non-Timber Forest Products NGO Non-Governmental Organization PAC Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil PRA Participatory Rural Appraisal STS Science and Technology Studies TEK Traditional Ecological Knowledge TRIPS Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights UN United Nations UNCED United Nations Conference on Environment and Development UNDP United Nations Development Programme UNEP United Nations Environment Programme UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization UPROBON Unión para Proteger el Bosque Nuboso URNG Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca USAC Universidad San Carlos de Guatemala USAID United States Agency for International Development WCPA World Commission on Protected Areas WHO World Health Organization WTO World Trade Organization WWF World Wide Fund for Nature 1 I NTRODUCTION – from global to local In the context of global political governance, environmental issues have become in- creasingly prominent in the past two decades. Among other major international agreements that have been reached in the 1990s, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) paid particular attention to the protection of the ›global commons‹. Based on the realisation that many areas of the world that contain high levels of biodiversity are anthropogenic landscapes inhabited by indigenous and local communities, the signifi- cant role such communities play in preserving natural resources was underlined in the convention. Article 8 asserts the crucial role of protected areas in achieving the objec- tives of the agreement. In particular, it calls for the acknowledgement and wider appli- cation of local knowledge systems as they may contribute to the protection of biodi- versity in natural surroundings. Building on the recognition that the effective man- agement of protected landscapes depends on the participation of local residents, cur- rent approaches have been refined, linking conservation initiatives with community- based development schemes. The emergence of such new political forms in response to conjunctions of global and local actors that cut across national boundaries became a discursive subject of growing interest and enhanced new interdisciplinary enterprises in the academic domain. The discourse on the relationship between economic, eco- logical and social issues in sustainable development and biodiversity conservation has gradually emphasised the re-discovery of culture. A widened, anthropological concep- tion was introduced to encompass a whole complex of distinctive material and non- material characteristics of societies, based on systems of knowledge, values, traditions and beliefs. In this process, indigenous knowledge as a prime part of culture has come to play an important role in international debates on development planning and con- servation strategies. The cultural context of biodiversity conservation 2 The initial objective of this study is to analyse the role of indigenous communities and their particular knowledge systems in the global environmental discourse. Based on the premise that any knowledge is embedded culturally, the study is concerned with the question of how to protect biodiversity in agreement with a people-oriented model of natural resource management. A primary aim is to move towards an under- standing in the more encompassing sense of knowledge associated with social mecha- nisms, historical currents, political issues, cultural identities and interpretations by means of which people structure and comprehend their worlds. I examined these complex articulations in an ethnographic case study among Maya-Q'eqchi' communities living adjacent to protected areas in Alta Verapaz in Guatemala. The operative paradigm that underlies the anthropological perspective indicates that a comprehensive understanding of the cultural context is essential to the success of any initiative designed to promote the sustainable use and conservation of biodi- versity. It is also important to anticipate that human cognitive understandings of na- ture are culturally embedded, bound to locality and intertwined with the broader con- text. This implies a multidimensional reality in which diverse economic, social, politi- cal and historical aspects intersect. Above and beyond its analytical focus on the nexus between biophysical, socio-cultural and politico-economic domains, the study intends to document that indigenous knowledge depends not only on the relationship be- tween humans and nature, but also on the relationship between the visible material and the invisible spiritual worlds. Especially, it aims to explore the significance of the inter- nal dynamics of values related to local landscapes and beliefs in the intimate attach- ment of humans to nature, which are closely tied to subsistence activities and ritual practices that define perceptions of the environment. This unseen dimension that un- derlies natural resource use patterns tends to be underestimated in the international environmental debate on biodiversity conservation policies and is often dismissed in the praxis of protected area management. In developing this argument I will identify the distinct spheres and experiences of indigenous peoples that constitute decisive as- pects of the cultural frame in which conservation efforts take place. The choice of contextualisation reflects my intention to create coherence and uncover interrelation- ships on diverse levels of human agency. Context derives from the Latin verb texere, which means ›to weave‹. Correspondingly, the related verb contexere carries the mean- ing of ›to weave together‹. In a metaphorical sense, I intend to discover the inter- woven character of the political, discursive, material and symbolic dimensions of the human-environment relation and to weave together the seen phenomena and the commonly unseen meanings inherent in indigenous knowledge systems within the ex- panded frame of global conservation efforts. 1 1 This metaphor finds its iconographic correspondence throughout the thesis in the representation of Ixchel , the Maya goddess associated with the art of weaving. Introduction 3 1.1 The interdisciplinary approach Human beings don't just look and see. Things are not just there. How we see, what we see, and what we make of what we see are shaped by the elements of our mental maps. (McCarthy 1996: 6) The present study is part of an interdisciplinary research project focusing explicitly on the CBD as signed at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Not until the agreement came into force was sci- entific attention drawn to interdisciplinary approaches to comprehend the driving un- dercurrents of environmental and social changes associated with global phenomena. Given the importance of biological diversity and sustainable development as central concepts in the global discourse, the academic challenge consists in moving beyond disciplinary boundaries in order to encounter the complexity of ecological, social, poli- tical and economic issues relating to the conservation of biodiversity. To capture these interconnected issues, more holistically conceived frameworks have been widely emphasised. In particular, new approaches that appreciate different research traditions and methodologies, especially in the fields relevant to the implementation of the CBD need to be developed. As an ambitious attempt to encounter this demand, a research programme was designed at the University of Göttingen, entitled Valuation and Conser- vation of Biodiversity. Implementation of Nature Conservation Strategies within the Framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the three-year graduate programme, initiated in October 2000, involved 14 disciplines from eight faculties. Within this project , particular emphasis was given to the investigation of problems and perspectives arising from the implementation of the CBD. Thereby, the main attention centred on the establishment of protected areas as a significant tool of in situ conservation of biological diversity. Given this frame of in- quiry, the scientific questions were related to different levels of analysis. 2 Departing from economic and juridical perspectives, one working group ques- tioned global dimensions and general issues of the CBD as a whole, beyond concrete considerations concerning national implementation strategies. Examining a national example, a second group focused on the implications of the establishment of the Na- tional Park Unteres Odertal in eastern Germany. The investigations included contribu- tions from ecology, geography, political science, environmental history and rural soci- ology. The third working group, which my study is part of, combined equally various disciplinary fractions including agricultural economics, landscape ecology, conserva- tion biology and environmental anthropology. Starting from these perspectives, local, regional and national perspectives on conservation strategies implemented in Guate- mala were investigated. The study areas were located in the central highlands and northern lowlands of the department Alta Verapaz. The investigations took place in 2 For a general account of the research programme and details on the individual projects and the findings of the specific studies developed therein, see the volume Valuation and Conservation of Biodi- versity. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Convention on Biological Diversity edited by Markussen et al. (2005). The cultural context of biodiversity conservation 4 joint-ventures with Guatemalan research counterparts and were also supported by an institutional collaboration with various local NGOs. 3 In addition to field research undertaken to deepen particular scientific understand- ings, the graduate programme involved a wide range of seminars, workshops, confer- ences and encounters with representatives from academic and public domains. On these occasions, discussions comprised multi-layered issues related to environmental protection, including theoretical, methodological and ethical implications. They in- volved especially the exchange of approaches and founding principles of the con- cerned disciplines. The transdisciplinary nature of communication and the many ex- periences informed by the collective endeavour to find a common language have in- fluenced the scope of the present anthropological work and have led to insights that underlie the way the themes as presented in the following have been approached. Al- though not explicitly taken into systematic account, the communicative efforts have enhanced my understanding of epistemological implications inherent in cross-cultural and inter-professional ventures engaged with the production of knowledge through research. In addition to the differences in terms of varying frames of reference, the task to approach problems and perspectives arising from the implementation of the CBD from distinct disciplinary perspectives was challenged by the absence of a clearly bounded object of study. A result of insights emerging from encounters of different ›mental maps‹, the contextual design of the thesis is not only an attempt to document and interpret systems of natural resource use as observed among indigenous commu- nities in Guatemala. The topical and theoretical concerns have also been configured by institutional affiliation. Beyond the ethnographic focus on conditions of cultural significance at the village level, the study frames a broader set of subjects and includes shifts across multiple sites of analysis from transnational movements and national in- stitutions to scientific arguments in the academic discourse. Given this background, the thesis also addresses non-anthropologists involved in research on environment and development. 3 For a documentation of the research of this subproject investigating the problems and perspectives of the implementation of the biodiversity convention in Guatemala, see Birner et al. (2003).