The Politics of Knowledge and Global Biodiversity

Alice Vadrot

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317913481
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

The establishment of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) points to the crucial role attributed to science and knowledge for the successful implementation of biodiversity politics by both scientists and policy-makers. With the increased importance of biodiversity in international politics, and in part inspired by the success the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has had in raising awareness of global warming, the call for an 'IPCC for Biodiversity' was successful.

The Politics of Knowledge and Global Biodiversity gives a full overview of the process of its implementation as finalised in 2013 and proposes an innovative conceptual framework that puts this specific case into a more general perspective of international politics and relations. It provides a detailed empirical analysis of the knowledge politics associated with the establishment of IPBES and its conceptual framework and methodological approach is grounded in a theoretical perspective.

This pioneering work is the first to examine IPBES in this way and is essential reading for researchers and scholars of International Relations, Environmental and Biodiversity Politics, Science-Policy Interfaces and Global Environmental Governance. It will also be of interest to political scientists and social scientists.

1

HOW WE VIEW NATURE NOW

The emergence of ‘Biodiversity’

It is impossible to understand the development of scientific knowledge without taking into account the transformation of power mechanisms. The typical case would be that of the economy. But also a science such as biology has developed out of complex elements such as the development of agriculture, relations with foreign countries or also the subjugation of the colonies. Reflecting on the progress of scientific knowledge is not possible without reflecting on the mechanisms of power.

(Foucault 1994/2005: 146)¹

The interaction between knowledge and politics has always played an important role for the understanding of political processes, contents and structures, related power struggles and domination acts. Plato, in his Socratic dialogue ‘Politicos’, already demonstrated to what extent the possession of political power requires specialised knowledge and how those who possess political power embody and represent such knowledge (Plato 1921). Whilst the aim of the ‘Politicos’ was to define the specific role of the statesman and, as the end of the dialogue shows, of the philosopher, Plato clearly points to the role of knowledge that is exercised, and is visible through and by the means in which social divisions are made and stabilised. In this respect, knowledge is conceptualised as an instrument for ruling society, and for legitimising, exercising and maintaining state power.

But what is this knowledge actually about and what meaning is attributed to it? This question is always centrally important whenever scholars (from whatever perspective) study the role of knowledge in politics and society. Analytically speaking, knowledge is conceptualised as justified true belief. Plato made a distinction between the different modes of justification that range from intuition and experience (practical knowledge) to the justification through the application of agreed and predefined methodological and conceptual frameworks. The latter is what is meant by scientific knowledge in the tradition of Francis Bacon, where it is viewed as potential power and offers the possibility of dominating nature (Bacon, N.O.I. Aph. 3). Similarly Michel Foucault has described scientific knowledge both as a tool for hegemonically taking hold of the world and as a process resulting from power struggles and the exercise of power (Foucault 1975: 36).

1.1 Knowledge, control and natural biodiversity

Foucault on biology

The development of scientific knowledge concerning nature has gone through several historical phases, as has the relationship of mankind to nature. In 1978, at a conference in the Institut franco-japonais in Kyoto, Michel Foucault was asked whether the parallel transformation of power and knowledge analysed through his work Surveiller et punir (1975) reveals his pessimistic position towards knowledge in general. He responded by saying that the relationship between both is not hierarchical, but rather interdependent and co-constitutive. The example he used was the development of biology (Foucault 2005: 146). When Foucault analysed how the corpus of knowledge related to the description and understanding of life came into being, his emphasis lay rather on transversal elements: first, the development of agriculture; second, relations with foreign countries; and third, the repression of the colonies. The focus on the interrelations between these elements in the development of a scientific discipline and a corpus of knowledge providing both, knowledge on nature and knowledge on the way in which to make use of nature for common wealth, provides a useful start to this book.

At first, Foucault argues that the formation of scientific knowledge about biology was linked to the development of agriculture, that is, the cultivation of life forms. In this respect human practices regarding the organisation of, the working with, and the control over animals, plants, fungi and other living organisms are linked to cognitive processes and human abilities such as observing, comparing and categorising nature. Indirectly, this assumption was picked up by scholars aiming to better understand what makes nature become biodiversity. Oksanen (2004) points out that ‘[w]hatever we think about the origin of this ability, [we] must admit that humans need organisms for food, fiber, medicines, tools, and many other purposes. To utilise natural diversity, we have to categorise, we need the criteria of similarity and difference, by means of which we can distinguish edible from nonedible, useful types from useless, dangerous from harmless and so on’ (Oksanen 2004: 2). For example, the ability of indigenous people to classify plants generates knowledge about the role of the plant in the ecosystem and/or its benefits for humans. They ‘employ their own taxonomy, encourage introgression, select, hybridize field test, record data and name their varieties’ (Lamola 1992: 3). Indeed, for many generations, practices such as planting, breeding and valuing elements of nature to ensure the reproduction of humankind were part of indigenous knowledge and they are also perceived as a way of ensuring sustainable management of natural resources (Warren 1996: 82). On the one hand, these practices led to the generation of knowledge; on the other hand, they anticipated the demand for expertise, and the development and application of new knowledge and technologies needed for the appropriation of natural resources.

A second element that characterises how science views nature in Foucault’s understanding is the result of the relations with foreign countries. Foucault has argued that scientific knowledge about biology has also emerged out of specific forms of repression in the colonies, that is, the forced appropriation of land and natural resources under the objective of primitive accumulation (ursprüngliche Akkumulation), as Marx would have framed it in his critique of the political economy in 1890. What is framed today in terms of ‘bioprospecting’, namely the process of commercialising new products on the basis of the discovery of specific characteristics and traits of plants and animals (also described as biopiracy), is – according to Foucault – central to the development of biology as a scientific discipline. With regard to biopiracy, the discovery of new products is characterised by (violent) exploitative appropriation of local and indigenous forms of knowledge, typically by commercial actors and beyond the ‘typical’ types of repression by colonial powers. Biopiracy, as well as bioprospecting, point to the inherent challenge of research on nature, particularly with regard to the increase in industrial research and the uncontrollability of the flows of scientific results. Michel Foucault’s perspective is not limited to the interrelations between scientific knowledge and power, and the argument that these are inevitably linked and co-constituted. It also sheds light on the conditions for, and the impact of, the development of scientific disciplines, and shows how these relate to practices of repression, dispossession and appropriation. These ambiguities are reflected in the development of the biodiversity policy field and make biodiversity (science and knowledge) a political issue.

Biodiversity is political

Indeed research on biodiversity has had an openly political dimension since at least 1992, the date when the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was open for signature within the framework of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. To some extent one could say that developments in biodiversity research contributed to the establishment of the CBD. First, because of increased scientific evidence on the negative impacts on biodiversity loss and second, because of increased evidence on the necessity to develop an international regulatory framework for biotechnology and the life-science – industries. Whilst the second dimension is evident with regard to the CBD’s objectives to which I will refer in Chapter 3, the first is not as evident. Political frameworks have an impact on science – through research governance – and scientists in turn are important actors in the construction of political and legal frameworks, as well as in raising awareness about specific problems in the public at large (Görg et al. 1999: 12). In this respect scientific knowledge about biodiversity and the concepts used to assess biodiversity are inevitably part of the exercise of political regulation, that is, of direct control, involved in the regulation of natural resources.

Scientific knowledge is not the only explanatory factor in international politics and policies; states have, to a certain degree, some direct control over political, social, economic and ecological developments. However, direct control ‘is only one element of the (societal) regulation of societal relations with nature’, and international agreements to regulate biological diversity ‘must be regarded rather as establishing a regime to regulate the rights of access to, and more or less exclusive rights of disposition of, biological diversity’ (Görg and Brand 2000: 372). A new form of biopolitics described by Flitner et al. (1999) ‘also includes the societal regulation of these forms of appropriation and their inherent contradictions’ (Görg and Brand 2000: 372). Whilst some research on global environmental politics reduced these to cooperation among states and how it can be improved, authors such as Görg and Brand show how this perspective ‘tends to ignore the complex crisis of the relationships between societies and ongoing economic competition among nation-states’ in the regulation of biodiversity (Görg and Brand 2000: 371). They argue that national regulations within the framework of international politics constitute ‘a necessary aspect of the process of creating stable conditions for the commodification and valorization of genetic resources’ (Görg and Brand 2000: 371). They suggest that the ‘life science industry’ has a major role to play within this ‘network of international regulation’ that is characterised by competition.

A modern paradox: the regulation of biodiversity

Biodiversity science in general, and related disciplinary approaches (for instance, habitat-, system-or place-based approaches for the assessment of ecosystem services; taxonomy, on-ground or in situ observation compared to remote-sensing and the contribution from biodiversity informatics) in particular, contribute to the regulation of the biodiversity policy area. The IPBES is one excellent example of how ‘institutions, relations and policies are vulnerable to reactivation and contestation’ (Howarth 2010: 329). I will show that the specific way in which states regulate biodiversity within the framework of international politics relates to the constitution of scientific knowledge on ‘living forms’. Görg and Brand have argued that the analysis of environmental politics is often reduced to the definition of specific conditions designed to increase cooperation between nation-states. Similarly, Kütting and Lipschutz are concerned that most analyses of environmental politics deal with the ‘fine tuning’ of institutional arrangements and global governance mechanisms (Kütting and Lipschutz 2009: 4) and are often based on normative claims about what global environmental politics should look like. Such normative claims produce contradictions, and are inherent in biodiversity knowledge and the modalities for its production, generation and use that cannot be perceived as independent from the regulation and appropriation of biodiversity.

The most evident example concerns the role of biotechnology and genetics, and related attempts to provide a legal framework for access and benefit sharing. Regulation took the shape of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), adopted in 2000, and the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from Their Utilization to the CBD, adopted in 2010.

The Nagoya Protocol points to the difficulty of differentiating between practical and theoretical knowledge about biodiversity; how are we to deal with the challenge that biodiversity knowledge cannot be abstracted from its role in organising societal relations with nature? Another problem that is partly tackled by the Nagoya Protocol is how to deal with the knowledge of indigenous communities, which is both a commodifiable resource and a source of knowledge about the management of natural resources. Warren points out that indigenous knowledge, which was disregarded for a long time, is one of the most important sources for the sustainable management of natural resources (Warren 1996: 82). Moreover, it is argued that indigenous knowledge is not only a product of the application of specific methodologies and of observations transmitted from one generation to the other, its methods and techniques for managing natural resources actually contribute to the conservation of biodiversity.

Thus Foucault’s perspective on the development of scientific knowledge may be extended to include the role of traditional and indigenous knowledge. Using this perspective, Escobar (1998) has looked at the debate on biodiversity and has identified three underlying discourses: the discourse on conservation science, the discourse on sustainable development and the discourse on benefit sharing. He argues that ‘conventional scientific disciplines continue to dominate the overall discourse’, even though traditional knowledge is gaining increasing attention (Escobar 1998: 58). The focus on the technical and scientific debate constitutes a mode of domination and a precondition for the ‘neoliberal imposition of the industrialized countries’ (Escobar 1998: 58); further he argues that the biodiversity discourse has resulted in the construction of an institutional apparatus ‘that systematically organizes the production of forms of knowledge and types of power, linking one to the other through concrete strategies and programs’ (Escobar 1998: 56). In other words, it is necessary to add the social and political dimensions of biodiversity knowledge to the traditional taxonomic ones. From a STS perspective, the conditions under which scientific knowledge and scientific communities emerge need to be taken into consideration and the corresponding networks and social practice in the development of scientific concepts recognised. Against this background research has to take seriously the disputes over the role of such knowledge in policy-making processes and in the negotiations towards the establishment of the IPBES.

In the footsteps of Foucault, I will connect the development of scientific knowledge and related forms of regulation to specific modes of repression, appropriation and domination in the national regulation of biodiversity within the framework of international politics. In this respect access to natural resources and traditional knowledge are as much related to power mechanisms as they are a precondition for the development of the science of biology and of knowledge about biodiversity.

However, the framework introduced by Foucault to grasp the development of (scientific) knowledge lacks explanatory power with regard to the underlying causal mechanisms. What are the driving mechanisms leading to specific forms of the appropriation of nature and the development of criteria for valid, legitimate and reliable biodiversity knowledge?

1.2 The birth of biodiversity in the 1980s

The term biodiversity – that is often used as a synonym for ‘biological diversity’ – dates back to ‘The National Forum on BioDiversity’ held in Washington, DC, 21–24 September 1986, under the auspices of the American National Academy of Science and the Smithsonian Institute (Wilson 1988: v). The aim of the forum was to bring together 60 experts from the fields of biology, the economy, agriculture and philosophy, as well as representatives of relevant agencies, in order to assemble knowledge on the state of global biological diversity (ibid.). In the preparation of the conference Walter G. Rosen, Senior Program Officer in the Board on Basic Biology, had coined the term. Many scholars would agree that this conference gave birth to biodiversity research.

In 1988 Edward O. Wilson published th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 How we view Nature now: the emergence of ‘biodiversity’
• 2 A novel approach: ‘epistemic selectivities’
• 3 Who needs a ‘Science-Policy Interface’ for biodiversity?
• 4 Conception and birth of a new international body: the IPBES
• 5 The manifold narratives of the IPBES negotiations
• 6 Epistemic selectivities: knowledge and institutional change
• Appendices
• Index