The Importance of Biocultural Diversity

so i'm very very happy to be here and as italian of course i have to say that my talk probably will be again about grannies i don't know why as italians we we love grannies but this is part also of my story of my biography as as a scholar as a national biologist and that's why actually when rene invited me here i thought i had to be really true and i will i will try to explain what nine friends i i love them and i have loved them a few of them passed away taught me because at the end of the day as an ethnobiologist we have not put much salt on our own in the soup but we have met people they have taught us and they have um they have really had a remarkable role in teaching uh the amount of salt and of course the variety of soda to be put in the soup so basically nine friends um you see strange names from different parts of the world i would like to begin with two very important uh fathers and mothers of the ethnobiology daryl posey and anina atkin passed away a few years ago but these two persons were very important in bringing me to this idea that science has to make a step down science has to establish a dialogue with the local communities because the local communities and their traditional knowledge maybe know much more than we know and in general idea there was this wonderful um expression to say that culture and nature are very linked there is an instructable link a mysterious link between culture and nature and of course daryl was very important in my life for letting letting me appreciate the spiritual value of biodiversity biodiversity is not about plants and animals only is about the ways we look at them and these ways we look at them the way we perceive plants and animals and the environment is sometimes very very important much more important than probably our sisters and brothers in the biodiversity world and of course the need for a transdisciplinary and human science we will come back to these and i wanted just to begin to say thank you to these two persons they they are not more among us but they gave me a lot and as i told you as italian grannies again these are three marvelous old women from a very tiny little village in southern italy inhabited by arbesch their bresh are descendants of albanians and these three women in different ways have changed the way how i i had in my mind the botany when i began to do this work i thought there is a plant kingdom of course and this plant kingdom as it is taught in many university classes is classified is categorized according to families these two um three old ladies told me instead for many many days that their idea of classifying plants is is very different and actually they had a category for a specific group of plants which included the idea of edibility yakra yakra cannot be translated in the scientific language they are the plants they grow in environment they are pretty disturbed by by the human beings and they can be eaten and they were eaten they were gathered they were blanched they were generally and they are still fried with olive oil and chilies so the category of lyakra is something we do not know in the science and that brought me to this strong feeling that the developed and showing and we have in the science are not enough to establish this dialogue between science and traditional knowledge is not an easy job and for all of us ethnobiologists the first important and difficult story is to try to translate what is specific vernacular term means a term referred to a plant and the first important problem we have is that the one-to-one correspondence never exists many times people may name different plants with the same vernacular term is that wrong no it's very right because according to their idea of plants they may exist plants they have similar taste or they have pungent taste or they may be used in similar ways for example in southern italy in this village marshworth which is a wild plant which test is very close to the test of celery and watercress are named with the same term is that wrong no it makes perfectly sense and even the mental map of plants the people have in traditional cultures is very different from what we have in the books of botany for example amaranth and uh fathen they are generally named in the same kind of of of level because they are used in similar ways and much more interesting is that these mental maps of ma of of plants depend very heavily from where the plants are gathered they are in other in other words mental maps they consider the ecology of these plants the botany is not so far yet and that's why i think we need um we need to learn we need to listen to listen botanists and probably many scientists around the world too much time they in the past they went in different places in the world and they pretended to know things but actually what we should do is to listen and then listen again this is a very interesting feature of the ethno gastronomy in this village people according to the bitterness of plant classify plants as food or medicine and there is a very interesting stuff which is in between um different species of tasseliation um they are consumed because they are believed to be very healthy nowadays we know from the pharmacologists these plants are the most antioxidative plants we have in europe and they are still consumed according to this folk knowledge system traditional knowledge systems then are profoundly embedded in the local landscape in the language in the history we cannot really divide this is culture this is nature is just the result of the co-evolution the fact that in these gastronomies we use a certain things for reaching certain aims the fourth person i would like to talk about is another very important teacher for me is one of the lastest warned virgins um living in a very isolated area in albania justina duni in one of the most untouched probably place in in europe and they're the people they've been always pastoralists they use their plans according to very unique features for example justina taught me that celeb the tubers from wild orchids may be a wonderful and delicious food in the winter when the people and especially the kids feel feel weak justina has taught me that even a nettle or beach soup has a dignity and has to be respected not only when other members of the family eat it but when animals eat it this is is in fact a soup which is prepared only for the cows and then only in this way the cows according to the knowledge of justina may produce a delicious milk which will then fit in all magnificent dairy products for which these mountains are very famous but justina told me also another important story that the traditional knowledge changes evolves is not just static it's not just traditions traditions are made by continuous evolutions innovations and actually after the communism in northern albania people went back to gada salaam and other plants much more than they they were used to do during the communism so in a kind of magic way traditional knowledge was revitalized why because of course um during the post communist in the mountains many problems arises public health problems arrived and delivery of care was very very difficult so that told me that traditional knowledge is the result of a continuous co-evolution between human beings and and what we call nature the last two friends in this session i would like to talk about our two friends they come from very different world olga is a russian german who migrated back to germany a few years ago after the family lived in ger in in russia for more than 250 years back migration and rosa li zika is one of the last venetians living in eastern romania in a wonderful lively landscape close to the danube these two wonderful women taught me that even the representation of traditional knowledge may change over time of course they could remember and they still do of course the marmalade the gem with the flowers of dandelion a wonderful sweets from sorry leaves and not to forget of course the lacto-fermented vegetables they could be actually probably very useful this evening after the the european championship match because the water is considered very very healthy against drunkness but the lesions i learned from these two ladies was that even traditional knowledge is effect is experiential is very much represented that means we talk probably about things we are attached to in different ways depending on the person we have in front of us so in one word the traditional knowledge and you of course as chefs know this better than me is a narrative is a way of representing an experience and then is a way through which we negotiate our identity so where do you go from here i think and that is actually funny because i wrote this before coming here and yesterday evening i was thinking that what we have experienced so far yesterday we had a wonderful day with renee and the other friends is part of what uh i drafted as as a dream what is important is to feed our appetite for biocultural diversities and to celebrate these diversities we need platforms like the ones we are now thank you very much rene for building such a essential platform too often scientists live in a tower and of course many of other stakeholders live in another world we need platform where we can talk together and i think is so important that we can share our experiences we can share our knowledge other important point in my opinion education we need desperately need of platforms through which we can educate young people and we can re-educate each other we live in a time of crisis of problems and they think to build these networks will also facilitate the building the so-called resilience which is very much needed in this time resilience is a very nice word but actually in practice is what local communities in many parts of the world have really have really generate every day and then let me go back to the idea of dairy palsy about the spiritual value of biodiversity when we talk about food when we talk about knowing how to manage a natural environment at the end of the day we talk about care food providers shepherds farmers are care providers and we need to care i think very much each other in order to appreciate this value which is the probably the most interesting essence of biodiversity what these may mean in our society at large for scientists for chefs for foodies i don't know but i think we need to find space and times from for these platforms because these are very very important and then we come to my last friend my last and probably most important and mysterious friend levi one of the wise elder of the one of the first nations on vancouver island in canada i spent many many days with him alone in the middle of the forest and talking about biocultural diversity many many times he told me you know at the end of the day andrea this is your concept is the concept of the people they come from the western culture they think biology nature and culture were divided and that's why they need to build new words but actually he was keeping me saying what you express we would express in another way we would just say ishookish savalk everything is one everything is connected and since everything is won i think we can also say we are all one thank you very much okay uh stand here andre stand here uh some lights and some any questions for uh andre we've got a question here not about the football hopefully okay hello do you believe this is uh not kind of kind of risky to try to melt science with this uh knowledge i don't know if no as a scientist as a scientist i think we need to be open-minded and to recognize that in specific domain i don't want to say in in many things but in many domains the science has not given the most final word we need to learn from the people they have lived together with the nature for centuries and millennia because without this kind of experiential knowledge also our creativity and innovation is very mutilate so in my opinion um that does not for me the science should do another another job everybody has to has to continue to do its its job but we need a dialogue we need finally a dialogue because let's be honest all these delicious products you probably use in your cuisine comes from farmers comes from fishermen as we have seen this morning they have the knowledge and they have a knowledge which is probably not embedded in the agronomy and botany books we have in our universities and that's why you have i think you folks have an amazing role in in trying to build um this platform and to reconciliate this different kind of knowledge at the end of the day probably let me say traditional knowledge and science that they are fruits from the same tree this is beautiful but they are different fruits and we need to appreciate one fruit and the other together sorry that's better but i believe that um this kind of thought uh creates some kind of aberration when you think about to melt two different concepts then you've got something like is biodynamics i got once again to this concept but i think you you cannot to uh in in our time you cannot think that you you can do science and grow vegetables and uh and think that the stars can influence this process i think is this is very risky to to give this this message to the people well to begin a work that has been never done is challenging there are of course bottlenecks we cannot go now in details there are many bottlenecks what is the work in my opinion that is urgently needed okay uh any more questions uh andrei talked about the importance of having a platform to share ideas and talk so that's what we should be doing andre ethnographers are often in a race to capture and record a culture and preserve it before it disappears can you give us your view on the cultures that you're looking at their strength their ability to survive in an evolving world and also how we pass on that knowledge so that you know it doesn't get lost well this is also our responsibility because we have built the wrong idea that we have all answers we have built a faked idea in front of local communities they had historical much less power in the world that we can solve everything so i think we have also the responsibility to work together with the local knowledge in addressing the problem of of the transmission we need to reinstill this knowledge we need of course to marry this knowledge with the modern science with innovation i think um we cannot escape from this responsibility and and and many communities all over the world i think are more and more aware now of um this kind of subtle interstitial but delicious rich value they have let's think about the languages languages are music and we are losing languages every day more than we lose plans but of course since we are what we are who we are in the especially in the past decades we tend to look at more at things but not at musics so i think we we have a responsibility we cannot leave all in the hands of local communities they are very often marginalized okay one uh last question quick question and a short answer where's our question okay right at the top and a short answer please andre thank i'm not sure if it's a short answer not long ago i i sat in a meeting of chefs uh who were told that science needed to come into the kitchen much more that that that the kitchen was a place of wives tales and and false knowledge and so i'm wondering if it is really communication and not knowledge the language of that these two different groups speak that is the issue and if so how if you could quickly suggest a way to communicate better amongst ourselves does that make any sense yeah i i think that actually we need to to go out from our towers this is the main point because it is true that of course science should enter into the kitchen i would like to say and believe me this is not just to to make you happy that i would like to see more farmers and chefs within the universities i think that we need to to go out from our towers very strong because at the end of the day knowledge is not just a body of of something that is just theory not knowledge has to be embedded with practice and you are the real let's say expert of practice you are the heroes of practice so i think you can understand probably much more than me and then scholars how this dialogue has to happen but of course it is a very open task i don't have any exact recipe in my pocket