from SEED Magazine -
In Defense of Difference
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"Experts have long recognized the perils of biological and cultural extinctions. But they've only just begun to see them as different facets of the same phenomenon, and to tease out the myriad ways in which social and natural systems interact."

The increasing awareness of the inter-related nature of existence adds credence - and even urgency - to heritage and cultural preservation efforts. In essence, the point is not so much on the actual vestiges of culture that are preserved but to have a store of a range and variety of cultural expressions to guard against irreversible and total loss.

"It's the ability of a system — whether a tide pool or township — to withstand environmental flux without collapsing into a qualitatively different state that is formally defined as "resilience." And that is where diversity enters the equation. The more biologically and culturally variegated a system is, the more buffered, or resilient, it is against disturbance. [...] Homogeneous landscapes — whether linguistic, cultural, biological, or genetic — are brittle and prone to failure."

This adds yet another reason for heritage preservation to the one mentioned earlier.
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