ABSTRACT
The case studies presented in this volume are an eloquent illustration of ‘biocultural diversity in practice’: the on-the-ground application of the idea that maintaining and restoring the diversity of life means sustaining both biodiversity and cultures, because the two are interrelated and mutually supportive. Whether or not the projects, programmes and initiatives surveyed here make this assumption explicitly, they are all, in different forms and to different degrees, informed and guided by this basic idea. It is a testimony to the strength of the idea that its application does not necessarily follow from a single, unified conceptual framework (that is, as if it were a test of a theory), but rather seems to emerge spontaneously, and to some extent independently, time and time again in different places. This is, arguably, the hallmark of ideas whose time has come: they build from the ground up, and from many different sources.
