13 Central to an understanding of this shift is the idea that learning is both internally and externally mediated within processes of co-engaged practice. Elias (1987 and 1991) in his works on a long term social process reading of knowledge production, notes a continuous interplay of involvement and detachment. An emergent interplay of processes such as these can provide reflective distance often allowing one to get around problems to a more object congruent grasp of things. Similarly, Margaret Archer (2010) notes the role of internal conversation in emergent social processes that reproduce or change the understandings that inform the valued doings, beings and ways of knowing that people share. Here learning is approached as reflexive social processes that are at once place-based, individual and yet shared, cultural social practices within prevailing cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1990) and within surprisingly robust practice architectures that Kemmis and Mutton (2012) map in their recent study of education for sustainability (EfS). Working with an open-ended perspective on learning is producing a realisation that cultures cannot simply be treated as differing world views but as diverse perspectives within practice architectures that refer to a real world of objects and that lend themselves to diverse effects that all have consequences. Once again the RCE offers promise as a site for co-engaged participants to be engaged in learning and action at a community level in a real world that is responding to and producing risk. Here worlds apart might be re-read as worlds co-engaged in deliberative change practices towards the production of more just and equitable worlds of practice with less risk and rectifying some of the degradation produced over a period of widening modernist exploitation and marginalisation. The case studies presented in this volume highlight how local and regional consortiums that consist of educational institutions, government agencies, and civil society organisations can harness local resources and address challenges relating to sustainable development in the area of bio-cultural diversity. Keeping in mind the practice as well as policy context they are classified under five sections: Conservation and revitalisation of natural and cultural resources; Ecosystem services and sustainable use; Equity, livelihoods and development; Monitoring, documentation, protection, and education; and Worldviews and integration. Ecosystem services and sustainable use Area of RCEs Contributions Learning for conservation & revitalisation of natural and cultural resources Learning collectives of bio-cultural diversity Monitoring documentation, protection and education Worldviews and integration Co-engaged learning practices for Equity, livelihoods and development Learning for Conservation and Revitalisation of Natural and Cultural Resources We live in a time of catastrophic species extinction (e.g. according to IUCN Red List, between 12 and 52 species are threatened with extinction) which calls for local and global stakeholders of biodiversity to take urgent measures for their conservation. Benefits, such as provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural services of ecosystems, were already mentioned earlier in this editorial. Preservation of biodiversity, as long established, is reasonably possible only keeping in mind the ecosystem approach. The ecosystem approach (EA) to management is defined by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) as a “strategy for the integrated management of land, water and living resources that promotes conservation and sustainable use in an equitable way”. Twelve interlinked Principles of EA emphasise, among other factors critical for management of biodiversity, the importance of involving all relevant sectors of society and scientific community, the need to balance local and wider public interests and the rights of the stakeholders, including indigenous peoples, to make their choices. (CBD 2012).
Traditional Knowledge and Biodiversity
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