Conference:
Abstract: "The term 'biodiversity,' and the emergence of a global debate about its loss is a recent event. However, the reality of biodiversity loss has long been experience, and protested by rural populations, especially in the poorest and most ecologically threatened parts of the world. In my talk, I want to explore two related questions. One is: why is this question now urgently pursued in the global arena. The second is: how do the ambiguities and silences in the international dbate both express and exclude social, economic, and political divisions and contradictions?
"What is 'biodiversity?' How do we measure its loss? Why is its loss important? Biodiversity may be defined in terms of the genetic diversity of all the populations of species on earth. Overwhelmingly this diversity is the current outcome of millenia of random mutation and natural selection. Diversity is most obviously expressed in differences between species, but there is also considerable genetic diversity within and between populations of the same species. But biodiversity may also be defined in terms of 'phenotypes' the observably different varieties, species, genera and higher level taxa of living organisms. Finally, biodiversity may be defined in terms of the diversity of assemblages, or communities, made up of interacting populations of many different species, together with their inorganic conditions of existence - ecosystems..."