by Luisa Maffi
Northwestern University, USA
June 1998
to be published in Nature and Resources
the UNESCO journal on the environment and natural resources research

Abstract. Several international instruments concerned with biodiversity conservation--in particular, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)--have begun to acknowledge the intrinsic link between biological and cultural diversity. Efforts are underway to enshrine the preservation and protection of traditional ecological knowledge in the documents now being drafted to implement the CBD. Another aspect of the diversity of life, linguistic diversity, must also be given attention and be protected in this context. Local languages are the repositories of traditional knowledge, yet they are vanishing fast under the pressure of global forces that are also threatening biological and cultural diversity. For the sake of continuity of the diversity of life on earth, we must recognize the role of language in the creation, transmission and perpetuation of local knowledge and cultural behaviors, and accord indigenous and minority languages the same protection and chances for survival as are beginning to be granted to the traditional cultures they sustain.
Biocultural diversity and international processes
 The concept of biocultural diversity is becoming increasingly familiar in environmental conservation circles internationally, especially since finding its way into international instruments such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) after the 1992 Rio Summit (UN Conference on Environment and Development). Article 8(j) of the CBD is specifically concerned with indigenous peoples, traditional knowledge and related rights. It states that each Contracting Party must:
Subject to its national legislation, respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity and promote their wider application with the approval and involvement of the holders of such knowledge, innovations and practices and encourage the equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the utilization of such knowledge, innovations and practices.
 Indigenous organizations have been very active vis-à-vis the implementation of Article 8(j) at the meetings of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the CBD. At the latest meeting (COP IV, May 4-15, 1998, Bratislava, Slovakia), they succeeded in passing a decision that calls for the creation of a continuous working group in charge of advising on the measures necessary to protect indigenous peoples' knowledge, innovations and practices. In spite of persisting concerns about being actually enabled to participate in the working group and affect its recommendations, indigenous organizations consider this decision a success on the road to full recognition of the importance of their environmental knowledge and practices for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity.
 While the processes surrounding the CBD have been in the spotlight, it is perhaps less well known that the first international document to incorporate an integrated notion of biocultural diversity was the Declaration of Belém of the International Society of Ethnobiology, elaborated in 1988 at the 1st International Congress of Ethnobiology in Belém, Brazil. Aware of the simultaneous extinction threats facing tropical and other fragile ecosystems on the one hand, and indigenous peoples on the other, ethnobiologists stressed indigenous peoplesí stewardship over the worldís biological resources and affirmed the existence of an "inextricable link" between cultural and biological diversity on earth.
Linguistic diversity and biodiversity
Threats to linguistic diversity. Interestingly, at about the same time linguists were beginning to voice widespread concern about the status of the worldís languages and to warn of another impending extinction crisis, of a magnitude and pace comparable to, if not greater than, that affecting biodiversity: one that would dramatically reduce linguistic diversity through the disappearance of most of the numerically small languages spoken by indigenous and minority peoples. In linguistsí calls to action vis-à-vis this crisis, a parallel was often drawn with the loss of biodiversity, as a way of suggesting comparable damage to humanityís heritage. However, in these initial pronouncements, no significant attempt was made to go beyond such parallels and ask whether there might be more than a metaphorical relationship between these phenomena. It is only recently that this question has been explicitly asked and the idea proposed that, along with cultural diversity, linguistic diversity should also be seen as inextricably linked to biodiversity. 
Defining and measuring linguistic diversity. In order to address this issue, let us begin by defining linguistic diversity. As with biodiversity, there are various definitions of linguistic diversity. Most commonly, however, the number of different languages spoken on earth is used as a proxy for global linguistic diversity. There are an estimated 5,000 to 7,000 languages spoken today on the five continents, of which 32% in Asia, 30% in Africa, 19% in the Pacific, 15% in the Americas, and 3% in Europe. Of these languages, statistics indicate that about half are spoken by communities of 10,000 speakers or less; half of these, in turn, are spoken by communities of 1,000 or fewer speakers. Overall, languages with up to 10,000 speakers total about 8 million people, less than 0.2% of an estimated world population of 5.3 billion. 
Figs. 1., 2. about here
 On the other hand, of the remaining half of the world's languages, a small group of less than 300 (such as Chinese, English, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, and so forth) are spoken by communities of 1 million speakers or more, accounting for a total of over 5 billion speakers, or close to 95% of the world's population. The top ten of these alone actually comprise almost half of this global population.
Fig. 3. about here
Indigenous and minority languages at risk. Taken together, these figures show that, while more than nine out of ten people in the world are native speakers of one or other of only about 300 languages, most of the world's linguistic diversity is carried by very small communities of indigenous and minority people. These are the languages that have been and continue to be under threat, due to the ever-growing assimilation pressures that promote incorporation of their speakers into "mainstream" society and the collective abandonment of the native languages in favor of majority languages (a phenomenon known as "language shift"). Virtually all languages with 1,000 speakers or less are threatened in this sense, although even more widely spoken languages are fully susceptible to the same pressures. Many of these smaller languages are already at risk of disappearing due to a drastic reduction in the number of their speakers, with younger generations decreasingly or no longer learning their language of heritage. Many more have reached a stage of near extinction, with only a few elderly speakers left. Statistics about "nearly extinct" languages range between 6% and 11% of the currently spoken languages. In some projections, as many as 90% of the world's languages may disappear during the course of the next century. These figures portray a threat to linguistic diversity that may be far greater and more imminent than the threat facing biodiversity.
 It is a historical fact that languages, like biological species, have undergone extinction before. Informed guesses suggest that the peak of linguistic diversity on earth may have occurred at the beginning of the Neolithic (10,000 years b.p.), at which time more than twice the current number of languages may have been spoken. Population movements and political and economic expansion have long contributed to reducing linguistic diversity everywhere in the world, even well before the era of colonization and empire building. As with biodiversity, however, what is unprecedented is an extinction crisis of the present magnitude and pace. It has been estimated that there may already be 15% fewer languages now than 500 years ago, when the era of European colonization began.  Losses have been especially marked in the Americas and Australia. And the trend is now accelerating throughout the world, with Australia and the Americas (especially the U.S.A.) still in the lead.
Causes of language loss. By and large, the main waves of colonial and imperial expansion in human history (both European and of other major civilizations) have come not only to the detriment of local peoplesí sovereignty and control over their ancestral territories, resources, and cultural traditions, but also to the detriment of their ancestral languages. Whenever assimilation into the dominant culture has been the goal (as it has been in most cases), this assimilation has been effected crucially by way of linguistic assimilation, through the imposition of the dominant language in schooling, the media, government affairs, and most other public contexts--and, in parallel, through the denigration of the local languages (and the cultures they embody) as "defective", "primitive", unfit for the "modern world", as well as through the severe restriction of their contexts of use and even the explicit prohibition of and punishment for their use. Awareness of the political implications of linguistic assimilation was perhaps never better expressed than by the 15th century Spanish grammarian Antonio de Nebrija. In 1492, presenting Queen Isabella of Spain with his grammar of Spanish (the first grammar of any modern European language), Nebrija so explained its purposes in his introduction: "Language has always been the consort of empire." 
The "curse of Babel" debunked. We may well feel sorry for the speakers of these smaller languages who have lost or are losing their ancestral tongues. But is it not the case that this linguistic assimilation is ultimately just an inevitable consequence of the in turn inevitable process of globalization the world is witnessing? Is this not, after all, a small price to pay for intercommunication and world stability? At long last, a widespread attitude has it, humanity will be freed of the burden laid on it by the "curse of Babel": the multiplicity of languages. With fewer different languages in use, this line of reasoning goes, it will be easier to communicate with people elsewhere in the world; once marginalized populations will be able to develop and prosper; ethnic conflict will decrease; national unity will no longer be threatened; and we will finally be moving toward the globalized cosmopolitan world that is the ultimate destiny of humanity.
 However--whatever we may think about the inevitability of globalization and the ultimate destiny of humanity--none of these arguments is supportable. Firstly, they are mostly expounded by speakers of languages that are comfortably not at risk of going extinct. Secondly, and very importantly, the learning of other languages does not have to occur at the cost of losing one's own language (in technical terms, it doesnít have to be subtractive); it can be additive, leading to a situation of stable multilingualism in oneís mother tongue and one or more other languages. Again, it is rare for indigenous or minority groups to abandon their languages in favor of a majority one without direct or indirect pressures from governments and other outside forces. Faced with the challenges of modernity, indigenous and minority language speakers may or may not wish to preserve their own languages and cultural traditions, but should not have to find themselves systematically pressured into the latter choice. Indeed, one may seriously question whether choice under such pressure can be called choice at all.
 Furthermore, marginalized ethnic groups who opt for or are forced into assimilation into a linguistic and cultural majority often do not succeed in overcoming their marginalization but end up among the dispossessed within "mainstream" society. As for the issue of ethnic conflict and national security, specialized studies show that ethnic differences (whether identified with language, culture, religion, or any aspects of social organization) do not normally constitute the source of conflict, although they may be seized upon and attributed special meaning as a basis for mobilization when conflict does arise. In particular, there is no evidence to suggest that the use of different languages by neighboring populations may constitute per se a cause of conflict; nor, for that matter, does monolingualism within or between countries seem to be a guarantee for peace. When populations of speakers of different languages coexisting in adjacent or the same territory do come into conflict, the causes of such conflict reside more commonly in socioeconomic and political inequality and competition over land and resources, as well as in the denial (rather than the granting) of linguistic and cultural rights. 
 The idea of Babel as a "curse" is a widespread interpretation of this element of the Judaeo-Christian religious tradition, yet not necessarily a valid one. It is perhaps more accurate to see the divine intervention that brings about a multiplicity of languages as a way of curbing the arrogance and single-mindedness of monolingual empire builders. Other religious traditions suggest that a diversity of languages (and cultures) is a good thing. To cite just one example, according to the Acoma Pueblo Indians of New Mexico the mother goddess Iatiku causes people to speak different languages so that it will not be as easy for them to quarrel.
Multilingualism and linguistic ecologies. Above all, these arguments completely ignore that--for most of human history, and even today in many parts of the world--high concentrations of different languages have coexisted side by side in the same areas. Over 800 different languages are still spoken in the island of New Guinea--the main hotspot of linguistic diversity. There and elsewhere, complex networks of multilingualism in several local languages and pidgins or lingua francas have been a commonplace way of dealing with cross-language communication in situations of contact. This extensive multilingualism has been a key factor in the maintenance of linguistic diversity historically, countering the increasing effects of linguistic assimilation.
 Linguists are only beginning to realize that there may be structure to such linguistic diversity. The functional relationships that develop in space and time among linguistic communities that communicate across language barriers have been referred to as "linguistic ecologies". An ecological theory of language takes as its focus the diversity of languages per se, and investigates the functions of such diversity in the history of humanity. It seeks to identify the mechanisms that sustain a language ecology over time--which are, in fact, the very same mechanisms that will be required to build a genuine multilingual and multicultural society in todayís global world. Furthermore, the study of traditional linguistic ecologies reveals that they encompass not only the linguistic and social environment, but also the physical environment, within a worldview in which physical reality and the description of that reality are not seen as separate phenomena, but instead as interrelated parts of a whole. 
Language and the environment: The inextricable link
Overlap of linguistic and biological diversity. To understand how language and the environment may be seen as parts of the same whole, let us first consider some striking correlations between linguistic and biological diversity.  The majority of the smaller languages (which, as we have seen, account for most of the worldís linguistic diversity) can be labeled as "endemic", in that they are spoken exclusively within this or that countryís borders. Comparing a list of countries by number of endemic languages with the IUCN list of "megadiversity" countries, one finds that ten out of the top 12 megadiversity countries (or 83%) also figure among the top 25 countries for endemic languages.
Tab. 1 about here
 A global cross-mapping of endemic languages and higher vertebrate species brings out the remarkable overlap between linguistic and biological diversity throughout the world. Similar results can be obtained by cross-mapping endemic languages and flowering plant species.
Fig. 4. about here
Language, knowledge, and human-environment coevolution. What may account for these correlations? Several geographical and environmental factors have been suggested that may comparably affect both biological and linguistic diversity, and especially endemism: 1) Extensive land masses with a variety of terrains, climates, and ecosystems (e.g., Mexico, USA, Brazil, India, China); 2) Island territories, especially with internal geophysical barriers (such as Indonesia, Australia, New Guinea, the Philippines); 3) Tropical climates, fostering higher numbers and densities of species (e.g., Cameroon, Zaire). All these factors are thought to increase linguistic diversity by increasing mutual isolation between human populations and thus favoring linguistic diversification.
 In addition, an ecological phenomenon has also been proposed as possibly accounting for biodiversity-linguistic diversity correlations: a process of coevolution of small-scale human groups with their local ecosystems, in which over time humans interacted closely with the environment, modifying it as they adapted to it, and acquiring intimate knowledge of it. This knowledge was encoded and transmitted through the local languages, which thus became in turn molded by and specifically adapted to their socioecological environments. As one linguist puts it: "Life in a particular human environment is dependent on people's ability to talk about it.". 
 This may sound like a truism worthy of little note, but it is not so. That remark embodies one of the most basic functions that language performs for humans, and in its deceptive simplicity reveals where the "inextricable link" between language and the environment is to be found. At the local level, linguistic and cultural distinctiveness has often developed even among human groups defined as belonging to the same cultural area or whose languages are considered to be historically related, and who live within the same bioregion. As local groups have adapted to life in specific ecological niches, they have developed specialized knowledge of them, and specialized ways of talking about them, to convey this vital knowledge and ways of acting upon it for individual and group survival. What has been said of Australian Aboriginal tribes could be said in hundreds of other cases of local peoples around the world: "Coincidences of tribal boundaries to local ecology are not uncommon and imply that a given group of people may achieve stability by becoming the most efficient users of a given area and understanding its potentialities." 
Linguistically anthropogenic landscapes. In this light, then, it becomes possible to suggest that landscapes are anthropogenic (human-made) not only in the sense that they are physically modified by human intervention--as ethnobiologists and ethnoecologists have shown contra the myth of pristine wildernesses--but also because they are symbolically brought into the sphere of human communication by language: by the words, expressions, stories, legends, songs that encode and convey human relationships with the environment and that inscribe the history of those relationships onto the land.
 Traditional place-naming also both occurs in an ecological context and carries high cultural significance for indigenous peoples, "as a framework for cultural transmission and moral instruction, as a symbolic link to their land, and as a ground for their identity". Named landmarks convey and evoke knowledge both about the physical environment and about daily human activities, historical events, social relations, ritual, and moral conduct: "wisdom sits in places".  Landscapes are networks of such places of knowledge and wisdom and thus, in this sense also, anthropogenic.
Losing the link
The extinction of experience. It is this inextricable link between language and the environment that is lost when external forces begin to undermine traditional cultures, pushing them into the "mainstream". Whether this process is propelled by dispossessing local peoples of their sovereignty over land and resources, trampling their cultural traditions, or promoting linguistic assimilation (generally, all three phenomena occur at once and are mutually reinforcing), the end result is the same. Local peoples lose control over, and contact with, their natural and cultural environments. As they are removed from their lands, or subsist in highly degraded ecosystems, and are absorbed into a market economy in which there normally is little room for traditional subsistence practices and resource use, local ecological knowledge and beliefs and the wisdom about human-environment relationships begin to lose their relevance to peopleís lives.
 This phenomenon has been called the "extinction of experience", the radical loss of direct contact and hands-on interaction with the surrounding environment.  In turn, local languages lose their crucial function of communicating and upholding such knowledge, beliefs and wisdom that are increasingly less significant and intelligible to younger generations. Furthermore, local knowledge does not "translate" easily into the majority language to which minority language speakers switch; and along with the dominant language usually comes a dominant cultural framework that begins to take over and displace the traditional one. Because in most cases indigenous knowledge is only carried by oral tradition, when shift toward "modernization" and dominant languages occurs and oral tradition in the native languages is not kept up, local knowledge is lost. Due to its place-specific and subsistence-related nature, local ecological knowledge is at especially high risk of disappearing.
Knowledge loss. The patterns and factors of erosion of languages and linguistically-encoded environmental knowledge are beginning to be systematically identified and quantified. For example, among the Piaroa Indians of Venezuela the persistence of ethnobotanical knowledge has been found to negatively correlate with age, bilingualism and schooling. Younger, more acculturated Piaroa show dramatically lower levels of competence than their older, less acculturated counterparts in identifying local plants by their Piaroa names and the cultural uses of those same plant species.
Figs. 5-8 about here
 Often, the loss of traditional languages and cultures may be hastened by environmental degradation--such as for logging, mining, agribusiness, cattle-raising, and so forth--by creating a negative feedback loop. In the Yoem pueblo of the Yaqui people of the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, the performance of Yoeme ritual is hampered by the disappearance from the local environment of many plant species that were traditionally employed in religious ceremonies. Ritual is one of the main contexts for the teaching of the Yoeme Truth, and in particular of the intimate spiritual and physical connection with and respect for nature. "Yaquis have always believed that a close communication exists among all the inhabitants of the Sonoran desert world in which they live: plants, animals, birds, fishes, even rocks and springs. All of these come together as a part of one living community which Yaquis call the huya ania, the wilderness world. [...] Yaquis regard song [as a part of ritual] as a special language of this community, a kind of 'lingua franca of the intelligent universe' ". The Yoeme elders' inability to correctly perform ritual due to environmental degradation thus contributes to precipitating language and knowledge loss, and creates a vicious circle that in turn affects the local ecosystem. 
Preserving and restoring language, culture, and land
Community efforts. The Yoeme example clearly shows how, for local peoples, the struggle for maintaining or restoring the integrity of their cultures, languages, and environments configures itself as one interrelated goal. This holistic approach is increasingly evident in the grassroots efforts that are being made around the world. As an example, Native Californians are engaging in integrated biocultural conservation efforts. The linguistic and cultural revival activities in which they are involved go hand in hand with advocacy for environmental restoration on their lands and the renewed use of native plants for traditional handicrafts, such as basketweaving, and for other purposes.
 On the other hand, if acculturation has such measurably negative effects on traditional knowledge and languages, as in the case of the Piaroa, should local peoples reject the framework of modernity altogether, including the Western schooling that brings about dominant languages and cultural patterns--or, for that matter, the biomedical care that undermines the prestige of traditional medicine, and other similar cultural change? Some indigenous groups, such as certain Amazonian tribes, have made this choice, taking refuge deeper into the forest. Others have chosen to integrate aspects of the two worlds, for instance by combining formal schooling with curricula based on their own cultural traditions and formulated in their native languages. The Hawaiians and Maori have been at the forefront of the latter kind of approach. In still other cases, educational efforts have been aimed at marking the distinction between formal, Western-type learning and traditional, informal learning. In Australia, several Aboriginal groups use an approach whereby they separate "white knowledge" (literacy, numeracy, etc.), taught by monolingual English-speakers, with White Australian content and structure, from their own Aboriginal knowledge. Their own knowledge is rather "lived" than taught in schools. 
The need for choices. Whatever choices local peoples may make--and as we have seen, they make a variety of them--what matters is that there be choices. As in the case of language learning (acquisition of a majority language doesnít have to be subtractive; it can and should be additive), here too it does not have to be a matter of either-or between different cultural frameworks (as it is far too often purported to be by dominant cultures). Local peoples must simply remain free to consciously choose if and how much of either framework--the traditional and the exogenous--they may wish to maintain or adopt. Some groups, as in the Amazonian case, may indeed choose isolation. But others, perhaps most, will probably choose some form of integration between, or parallel adoption of, frameworks. And in so doing, after all, they will not be doing anything different--if done in freedom and not under pressure--from what humans throughout history have done in situations of contact: mixing and matching, which has contributed to so much of the cultural and linguistic diversity that we know today.
Language as a resource
Linguistic diversity and the human potential. Questions about the consequences of loss of linguistic and cultural diversity have been raised mostly in terms of ethics and social justice, and of maintaining the human heritage from the past--and rightly so. However, when we consider the interrelationships between linguistic, cultural, and biological diversity, we may begin to ask these questions also as questions about the future--as related to the continued viability of humanity on earth. We may ask whether linguistic and cultural diversity and diversification may not share substantive characteristics with biological diversity and diversification, characteristics that are ultimately those of all life on earth.
 The relevant issues relate to the adaptive nature of variation in humans (as well as other species), and to the role of language and culture as providers of diversity in humans. Human culture is a powerful adaptation tool, and language at one and the same time enables and conveys much cultural behavior. While not all knowledge, beliefs, and values may be linguistically encoded, language represents the main instrument for humans to elaborate, maintain, develop, and transmit such ideas. "Linguistic diversity... is at least the correlate of (though not the cause of) diversity of adaptational ideas." Therefore, it is possible to suggest that "any reduction of language diversity diminishes the adaptational strength of our species because it lowers the pool of knowledge from which we can draw." 
 It is true that diversity characterizes languages (and cultures) not just with respect to one another, but also internally, with patterns of variation by geographical location, age grade, gender, social status, and a host of other variables. This internal variation combines with the variation ensuing from historical contact among human populations in propelling language and culture change and all manners of innovation. However, as more and more languages and cultural traditions are overwhelmed by more dominant ones and increasing homogeneization ensues, one of the two main motors of change and innovation--the observation of cross-linguistic and cross-cultural difference--breaks down, or is seriously damaged. The end result is a global loss of diversity.
Avoiding "cultural blind spots". From this perspective, issues of linguistic and cultural diversity preservation may then be formulated in the same terms that have been proposed for biodiversity conservation: as a matter of "keeping options alive" and of preventing "monocultures of the mind".  It has been argued that convergence toward majority cultural models increases the likelihood that more and more people will encounter the same "cultural blind spots"--undetected instances in which the prevailing cultural model fails to provide adequate solutions to societal problems. Instead, "[i]t is by pooling the resources of many understandings that more reliable knowledge can arise"; and "access to these perspectives is best gained through a diversity of languages." Or simply stated: "Ecology shows that a variety of forms is a prerequisite for biological survival. Monocultures are vulnerable and easily destroyed. Plurality in human ecology functions in the same way." 
Supporting linguistic, cultural, and biological diversity: The role of scientists
Benefit for the many or for the few? Pronouncements about the importance of diversity often conclude on some universalistic note. Yet it is time to go beyond these general (and generic) statements, true as they may be. That we need diversity--cultural, linguistic, biological--for the benefit of humanity is undoubtedly true. But far too often, as local peoples are the first to know, the hailed "benefit for humanity" has actually meant the benefit (and specifically the economic benefit) of a very small, privileged subset of said humanity, one that does not include that vast majority of humans in which most of this diversity resides. Ethnoscientists have realized to their dismay that they may have been even too successful in affirming the validity of traditional ethnobiological and ethnomedical knowledge--thus unwittingly attracting droves of unscrupulous bioprospectors to the lands of the indigenous peoples whose knowledge they have painstakingly documented. Supporters of cultural diversity balk at the thought that someone may now be earning millions selling multicultural T-shirts in the places where cultural diversity least abounds. And if we are good enough explicating and advocating for the role of language in the diversity equation, the time may not be far away when someone will begin to devise ways to make a business out of linguistic diversity--and not to the advantage of those who hold most of it.
Terralingua. As we work for the maintenance of cultural, linguistic, and biological diversity, we must be constantly aware of these risks. And this is why research, applied work, and advocacy must go hand in hand today. This is not to say that basic research is no longer needed, but it is to say that it can no longer proceed in a vacuum, and that scientists need to educate themselves and others as to the nature and implications of what they do. It also means that scientists must become much better at listening to what indigenous and other local peoples around the world have to say about what they want and need, and be more prepared to ask if and how they can help.
 With these thoughts in mind, in 1996 an international and multicultural group of scientists created the NGO Terralingua: Partnerships for Linguistic and Biological Diversity, which is devoted to a mixture of research, information, applied work and advocacy concerning the worldís linguistic diversity and its relationships with biodiversity.
 Among the basic principles guiding Terralinguaís work are:
o That the diversity of languages and their variant forms is a vital part of the world's cultural diversity;
o That biological diversity and cultural diversity (of which linguistic diversity is a major component) are not only related, but often inseparable, perhaps causally connected through coevolution;
o That, like biological diversity, linguistic diversity (represented mostly by indigenous languages) is facing rapidly increasing threats that are causing a drastic loss of both languages and the knowledge of which they are carriers, including knowledge about the environment and sustainable resource use;
o That the continued loss of linguistic, cultural and biological diversity will have dangerous consequences for humans and the Earth; and
o That, therefore, the fate of the lands, languages and cultures of indigenous peoples is decisive for the maintenance of biodiversity and linguistic and cultural diversity. 
Table 2 about here
Acknowledging the link. Over the past two years, Terralingua has been striving to promote this perspective both locally and globally in support of indigenous as well as minority communitiesí struggle to holistically preserve and protect their linguistic, cultural, and natural environments through self-determination (or local determination in the case of local communities). It is apparent that these concerted efforts are beginning to make a difference, and that recognition of the inextricable link between linguistic and biological diversity is beginning to emerge internationally. The International Society of Ethnobiology has enshrined this perspective in its Draft Code of Ethics,   which states that: "Culture and language are intrinsically connected to land and territory, and cultural and linguistic diversity are inextricably linked to biological diversity", and upholds the right to preserve and protect local languages as a part of the principle of self-determination. International bodies such as UNESCO, UNEP, and the UN Centre for Human Rights are turning their attention to issues of indigenous languages within the framework of biocultural diversity preservation and the protection of the rights of indigenous peoples. It is likely that in the near future the notion of linguistic diversity will become as familiar as that of cultural diversity in the debates surrounding international instruments concerned with biodiversity, like the Convention on Biological Diversity.
 As this process unfolds, we are coming full circle to a holistic view of language, culture and land that may have once characterized localized human communities throughout the world, and that indigenous peoples today are holding up for the rest of humanity to see.
NOTES AND REFERENCES