Untangling politics of power in biodiversity
management
7 June 2002 - When it comes to managing biodiversity, relations between scientists,
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and indigenous peoples can be complex,
even conflictual affairs. This emerges from a seminar examining ‘NGOs, indigenous
peoples and local knowledge: politics of power in the biodiversity domain’.
The seminar was organized at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris on 27 and 28 May by
the Apsonat team within the Centre national de recherche scientifique (CNRS), in
collaboration with the transdisciplinary LINKS programme launched by UNESCO as
World Conference on Science follow-up.
The problem of prior informed consent is illustrated by the mésaventure of
ethnobotanists Brent and Elois Ann Berlin of the University of Georgia. They found
themselves in the middle of a conflict which forced them to cancel their
bioprospecting programme in the Highland Chiapas in Mexico. They were there to
identify a number of medicinal plants used by the indignenous Mayas communties
(8,000 in total) as part of a project to commercialize these plants with a
pharmaceutical company. Despite the fact that the ethnobotanists were there to help
develop local income, two NGOs, one local and the other international, accused the
couple of biopiratery.
In discussion on the Maya mishap, Gonzalo Oviedo acknowledged the
‘fundamentalism’ of some NGOs, whose extremism harmed rather than helped
indigenous populations. To make matters worse, he added, scientists lacked the
courage to denounce true acts of biopiratery.
If local development projects were able to get off the ground, anthropologist Edvard
Hviding noted, this was because mutual incomprehension as to the agenda of the other
party was not necessarily an obstacle. To illustrate his point, he cited the example of
the Solomon Islands, where forestry groups, conservation NGOs and local peoples
had managed to collaborate on a project which meant different things to different
people.
Speakers highlighted some effects of globalization on local biodiversity management.
Local knowledge has gained formal international recognition, for example, thanks in
part to Agenda 21 and the Convention on Biological Diversity adopted at the United
Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992. Yet these same texts
have accorded NGOs a mediation role in an area in which they are simply
intermediaries.
The whaling issue has been globalized through the creation of the Whaling
Commission. Since 1946, it has been trying to ensure a fragile equilibrium between
local and international NGOs wishing to protect the whales, indigenous peoples who
wish to hunt for subsistence and countries who advocate or oppose whaling
protection.
Peter Bridgewater, Director of UNESCO’s Division of Ecological Sciences, related
one outcome of this year’s session. Furious at being denied the right to hunt
commercially some 50 small whales this year, Japan has retaliated by preventing the
hunting quota from being renewed for the indigenous Inuit Inupiat in Alaska, who
hunt whales for subsistence. Japan argues that whale hunting is as much a tradition for
its coastal areas as for the indigenous Inuit.
Extracts from original text by Marie Roué. For further information, contact:
d.nakashima@unesco.org or roue@mnhn.fr