Bioprospecting and its discontents: Indigenous resistances as legitimate politics

Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, July-Sept, 2001 by Chikako Takeshita

The most typical expectation placed on indigenous people is to be the allies of conservation environmentalists and play the role of in-situ custodians of genetic resources. Conservation environmentalists recognize the efficacy of maintaining rare biological resources in their original location or in situ, rather than depending on ex-situ means, using gene banks and botanical gardens. They also recognize that many indigenous communities rely on their natural environment for their livelihood and often struggle to save their territories from industrial development and destruction. Environmentalists that see connections between their ecological interests and indigenous peoples' stake in the forests hold that there now exists a synergy between global environmental interests and indigenous peoples' claim over territorial rights. (27) Indigenous peoples living in ecologically endangered areas, therefore, are now registered in this environmental conservation discourse as stewards of the environment, whose interests o verlap the interests of international environmentalists. This portrayal makes indigenous peoples allies with bioprospectors, whose stated goal is to promote the conservation of biodiversity.

Indigenous people are doubly enrolled in their role of stewards through the discourse of sustainable development, which makes environmental management obligatory. The sustainable-development discourse articulates the environmental crisis of the world in a way that has made it a "global problem" for the entire Earth population. (28) The rhetoric assumes that all inhabitants of planet Earth are equally responsible for preventing further degradation of the environment. As citizens of Earth, all of us, including people indigenous to biodiverse areas, are now expected to serve as the stewards of our immediate environments and "share responsibility for sustainable development and/or management of natural resources." (29) In this picture, however, indigenous people are not permitted to perform the task according to what they see as appropriate. The sustainable-development discourse assumes that leadership is in the hands of industrialized countries with their scientific, technological, and economic expertise. (30)

The discourse of sustainable development also promotes the image that local inhabitants are a potential threat to the environment. It highlights the environmental threat of "poverty-struck" people who are compelled recklessly to exploit their environment and maintains that they would put less pressure on the environment if "development" can help these people out from their poverty. The idea that bioprospecting projects will generate economic benefits for local communities and convert potential destroyers into stewards of the environment is an appealing argument for those who wish to promote bioprospecting as an appropriate mechanism for biodiversity conservation.

These three types of identification of indigenous people as "stewards" effectively registers indigenous people as a function of capital that relies on the maintenance of future genetic resources. The assumptions that economic incentives will universally drive local people to conservation and that the economic value of biodiversity made aware to the local community by bioprospecting activities will enlighten indigenous people to preserve the environment are simultaneously problematic and complacent--but not uncommon, nonetheless. The regime of representation of indigenous peoples as stewards defines their needs for them thereafter.