Traditional Culture and Ecological Diversity

Yunnan Province in southwestern China has a long history and is home to many ethnic groups. Each ethnic group has a wealth of traditional beliefs related to biodiversity conservation, such as the Dai and Yi beliefs on sacred forests and   Tibetans people’s reverence for sacred mountains. To this day, such traditional beliefs and the related taboos help protect local biodiversity, whether intentional or not.

In Yunnan’s Deqen Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, the local Tibetan people have a traditional reverence for the sacred Mount Kawagarbo, the highest peak in the province. But they also recognize more than 300 other sacred mountains in Deqen. Reverence for sacred mountains is the basis for how local Tibetan people understand nature. Villagers believe that everything on the sacred mountains, including animals and plants, belongs to gods and is inviolable. They believe that hunting or harvesting where they shouldn’t may bring punishment from the sacred mountains such as torrential rains or mudslides.

So, local Tibetan villagers have developed extensive taboos such as prohibiting logging, stealing medicinal materials, polluting springs, rivers and lakes of sacred mountains, which easily get compliance from most villagers. The taboos have effectively protected the sacred mountains and surrounding ecosystems, creating a de facto nature reserve and a “gene bank” for biodiversity resources.

Many Tibetan villages in Deqen have a traditional organization called “sisters’ association,” established by local females. The “association” is mainly responsible for organizing festivals and religious activities. In recent years, as ideas related to biodiversity protection have spread, some village associations have begun to organize women to protect the ecological environment by protecting forests and planting trees. Those traditional “sisters’ associations” have evolved into organizations tasked with environmental protection in rural areas. The “sisters’ association” in Jiabi Village even set up a “laboratory” for ecological conservation. Its members formulated a series of measures to protect biodiversity including construction of the “climate action forest for carbon neutrality” near Mianzimu Peak, part of Meili Snow Mountain. 

“Mianzimu” means the “goddess” in Tibetan. The peak is more than 6,000 meters above sea level and covered with snow year round. Locals believe the snowy peak is a goddess who protects surrounding villagers, especially women, and manages the local climate. Local female villagers named the forest they planted after the sacred peak, reflecting their determination to protect biodiversity and stand up to climate change. It also mirrors traditional customary law on ecological protection.

Southwestern Yunnan has some of the richest biodiversity in China and even the world. It also has extremely strong cultural diversity. Local ethnic groups have traditional customary laws related to biodiversity, which serve as the spiritual and cultural foundation for local protection efforts. These biodiversity conservation actions are important contributions to the global effort and help address climate change.

Countries including India, Brazil, South Africa, Malaysia, and those in the Andean Community have all formulated laws and mechanisms to recognize and support traditional ecological customary laws and systems of indigenous peoples and local communities in the sphere of protection, management, and sustainable use of biological resources. These countries have worked to integrate traditional practices into the modern environmental legal system.

China is a contracting party to the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from Their Utilization. The Convention and the Protocol stipulate that biological genetic resources have national sovereignty, and the use of biological genetic resources and benefits arising from related traditional knowledge need to be formulated in accordance with the requirements of international conventions. Therefore, Yunnan, which is rich in biodiversity resources and traditional ecological culture, can play a lead role in advancing international legislation on biodiversity conservation and improving biosafety laws and regulations. The province can facilitate wider introduction of the traditional ecological culture of ethnic minorities, especially their ecological customary laws, into the legal system for biodiversity protection. Such efforts will help prevent the loss of biological resources and maintain ecological security and species sovereignty.

The author is a research fellow with the School of Geography and Ecotourism of Southwest Forestry University and the Southwest Ecological Civilization Research Center of China’s National Forestry and Grassland Administration.