The Ecosystem Approach of the Convention of Biological Diversity as a tool for conservation and restoration at the southern tip of the Americas

The Ecosystem Approach of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is “a strategy for the integrated management of land, water and living resources that promotes conservation and sustainable use in an equitable way”, thus promoting the overall aims of the CBD. While most traditional wilderness concepts have transported the idea that conservation or restoration of nature is best achieved by reducing or eliminating any human influence, the Ecosystem Approach emphasizes that any management of nature and biodiversity is also a matter of societal choices and thus depends on a variety of human values. Our studies in the course of the German-Chilean research project BIOKONCHIL demonstrated that even in the small population of a remote ecological “frontier” place such as the Cape Horn region various different ideas of “functioning” nature exist. They depend on differing societal relations of people towards nature and biodiversity, which embrace cognitive, material, nonmaterial and identification criteria. The differing societal relations and the values included in them lead to differing ideas as to what “functioning” ecosystems in this region might be. We propose that a further careful development of the Biosphere Reserve zonation idea can provide a perfect way to integrate different societal perspectives on nature also (or especially!) in areas of wilderness-development frontiers.