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L’adaptation à l’environnement et l’isolement sont cruciaux dans la genèse de la géodiversité, ou diversité géographique, comme dans la formation des diversités culturelle et biologique. Ces facteurs, d’ordre évolutionniste et écologique dans le dernier cas, historique et géographique dans les autres, se dégradent avec la mondialisation. Après avoir exposé la conception de la géographie sur laquelle est fondée la notion, on examine la formation de la géodiversité qui accompagne le peuplement humain de la Terre, avant de présenter deux cas où les géographies mises en œuvre par les populations expliquent la diversification linguistique par isolement territorial et l’adaptation optimale d’un genre de vie aux écosystèmes marins. Préserver et inventer la géodiversité permettent l’habitation durable de la Terre pour l’humanité et les autres êtres vivants dans leurs diversités respectives.

Geodiversity, as evoked in this paper, refers to geographical, not to geological diversity. The interdisciplinary approach adopted here aims to point out that the forming of geodiversity follows the same patterns as biological and cultural diversification processes. Darwinian evolutionism explains biological diversification through Earth’s ecology, by the isolation of populations and their adaptation to the environment. But during the peopling of the Earth by human populations, their ways of life – geographical techniques mainly related to habitat, food and mobility – took the place of evolution for Homo sapiens, consequently allowing the active adaptation of human populations through the alteration of their environment and the control of isolation owing to geographically-linked techniques and to territories. Humankind thus enters history as a result of its geographical activity, geography being considered here as the science that studies the footprints (or graphics) produced by human populations on Earth (Geo). This process gives birth to Geodiversity, i.e. the diversity of human geographies at regional scales reflecting the diverse and sustainable ways of living on Earth. The peopling of Austronesian Oceania and its consequent cultural diversification such as the adaptation of the Vezo people to the marine environment of the southwest coast of Madagascar, are examples of how ways of life and territories may produce geodiversity. Preserving and inventing geodiversity provide the means to live sustainably on Earth.