Hi folks - Our rapidly growing community BCLS has now 1000 members in ~ 4 months, including members like the Ecological Society of America, The International Association of Ethnobiologists, UNESCO, IUCN/UNEP members, some stakeholders working in ministries of the environment/agriculture, some large environmental media companies, some journal editors, lab. pages, etc ...). If you haven't seen it yet, check it out here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/110834970079444098643. BCLS is a community created and moderated by scientists and other specialists from civil society. The community is dedicated for both professionals and the general public interested in interacting, understanding and solving some of the challenges at the intersection between the natural environment and human cultural traits. Rather than blaming humans for their past mistakes, we are trying to understand how biodiversity and humans can receive mutual benefits from living with each other in places where there is no possible choice to be made between nature- and human centric objectives, i.e. between the conservation of biodiversity, the production of a diversity of goods and services for human livelihoods, the development of a diversity of social structures, the creation of a diversity of locally adapted new technologies while maintaining the diversity of traditional knowledge and folk practices, as well as the conservation and development of psychological and linguistic practices. Altogether this network of interconnected biological and cultural traits contribute to the fabric of a unique biocultural diversity, that characterize these places. These places are neither landscapes and seascapes where humans are embedded in the biosystem, nor biosystems embedded in the anthroposystem, but rather a different thing altogether: they are 'BioCultural Landscapes & Seascapes' (BCLS). BCLS and associated biocultural diversity clearly constitute a "third way" in global landscape functioning and management that fascinates us.
The primary goal of the BCLS community is to bring real scientists and relevant knowledge holders to the public, for science and policy outreach. A secondary and long-term goal is to create an environment that fosters interdisciplinary collaborations between Scientists, Managers, Landowners, NGOs, lawyers, journalists, Community or State representatives, Policy- makers and other stakeholders from Civil Society, around how we understand the interaction between the Ecology, Evolution, Economy, Sociology, Health, History, Geography, and other other Cultural traits in BCLS. Furthermore our goal is to enable and promote cloud collaboration between all these stakeholders in order to make sustainable and resilient decisions for the management of BCLS and biocultural diversity. If you want to know more, come and join BCLS - discuss current science/management findings and issues; Post and interact around your last work / papers / videos / slideshows, advertise your project / seminars / conferences / workshops on these topics (many seminars already booked with some requests for Hangout on air); raise funds for your successful projects, post/scan for job ads (already plenty of job opportunities from around the world); make new connections, etc ... We really hope to see you there, bringing your comprehension of the unique BCLS that you study or from the place you live, and present it to the world. NB: Please don't forget to take a minute to read the guidelines & rules of our community before posting: https://plus.google.com/u/0/113715128728162470816/posts/joY1q8NBjyw Very sincerely the BCLS group
