Small, green and prickly

This paper examines factors leading to loss of diversity in Southern Arabia. Conservation strategies have failed to mitigate this loss (Titon 2016; Shahina Ghazanfar p.c. 2021)so new approaches to sustainability are needed. I propose building resilience into the biocultural system by managing adaptations to changes. Current and proposed strategies for adaptation include raising the prestige of local languages and ecological knowledge, supporting clear communication of that knowledge, and applying the knowledge to current sustainability issues. Similar situations of rapid cultural shift and language loss are used to demonstrate how some of these strategies have been applied in North America and West Africa.