"Global Environmental Change, Culture and Development. Rethinking the Ethics of Conservation"

MONTAÑA, ELMA; DÍAZ, HARRY

Rio de Janeiro

Congreso; Climate Conference 2011; 2011

Common Ground Publishing, University of Illinois Research Park

Climate and hydrology expected changes in Latin American drylands are likely to affect drinking and irrigation water availability, threatening productive systems and the subsistence of sectors of the rural population. Research on vulnerability of rural communities in watershed basins of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile have shown that drought and reduced river flows have specially compromised the wellbeing of many of the watersheds’ small producers, who are already vulnerable to other stressors, such as globalization, restricted fiscal policies and situations of poverty and inequity. Increasing global environmental change threatens the survival of these producers, who represent traditional agricultural development models that are based on small-scale production tightly connected to natural cycles. Along with their decline, traditional knowledge and practices related to these models would be lost, including their interpretative schemes and rationales based on values and worldviews different from the prevailing development model. The paper argues that these subordinate development models constitute, in themselves, a heritage worth to be preserved and that their loss would entail a drawback in the achievement of development goals -especially for those with an emphasis on the local. In addition to linking global environmental change to the transformation of traditional development processes and their culture, the paper suggests the necessity of rethinking the ethics of conservation to promote a new multicultural paradigm that values small scale productive and life styles and understands their connections with nature.