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Paper short abstract:

Biocultural approaches to conservation uplift local culture as a foundation for protecting global biodiversity, but new opportunities and contradictions emerge as biocultural initiatives begin to receive large-scale funding from multilateral donors.

Paper long abstract:

Culture and nature are increasingly understood as interconnected (Maffi, 2005; Pascual et al., 2023), yet culture has been historically neglected in discourses on sustainable development. This is particularly true for environmental conservation, where conservationists traditionally sought to preserve ‘pristine’ nature without people (Brockington et al., 2008). More recently, biocultural diversity is re-emerging as a lens which understands culture and nature as intertwined and interdependent (Bridgewater and Rotherham, 2018), and there is growing focus on the role that biocultural approaches could play in addressing sustainable development issues (Merçon et al., 2019; Reyes-García et al., 2023).

Alongside academic developments, the role of culture is increasingly recognised in global conservation policy and practice, particularly through commitments to Indigenous peoples and local communities. The Global Biodiversity Framework brings together issues of addressing biodiversity loss, restoring ecosystems, and protecting Indigenous rights as key priorities (UNEP, 2022), while global-scale investments like the Global Environment Facility’s Inclusive Conservation Initiative (ICI) are providing direct financing to Indigenous peoples to strengthen their stewardship over biodiverse landscapes and seascapes (ICI, 2024).

This paper explores the opportunities and contradictions encountered when biocultural approaches – valued for their place-based and culturally relevant attributes – become funded through multilateral donor organisations. Exploring the ICI project as a case study, I draw attention to the ways that aspects of culture may find themselves restricted or reshaped in conservation initiatives to meet expectations or requirements of global funders, reinforcing calls for better attention to power in biocultural approaches for sustainable development (Merçon et al., 2019).