Biopiracy of Biodiversity: Global Exchange as Enclosure (review)

This book traces attempts by global private corporations, with the backing of states in the North, to monopolize Africa’s biodiversity, particularly in seeds. It argues that these initiatives from outside form a key source of food insecurity, poverty, and low productivity, leading to the degradation of local survival strategies. The 330-page book is structured in three parts. The first part examines the contradictory processes of biopiracy alongside traditions of sharing seeds, the latter pointing to principles for the future. The second part details the various mechanisms used to enclose biodiversity and the management of landscapes for seed. The last part explores the future options for enhancing biodiversity by utilizing intertwining strategies, and how Africa could return to food security.

The argument traces how African food security has been undermined for centuries by slavery and colonial resource extraction. These legacies are aggravated by current Western policies, in which industrial agriculture, imbalanced trade, and aid all contribute to the privatization of agricultural resources, which encourages monocultures that require homogenized but unsustainable production systems in the South. Neoliberal ideologies, particularly structural adjustment policies, have also weakened state capacities to regulate external actors. The loss of seed diversity has disastrous effects on the poor. Furthermore, the market-based policies proposed by Western institutions undermine the local expertise and local institutions essential to the survival of local communities—especially during times of drought and increasingly adverse climate. Backed by inequitable international laws on intellectual property rights, efforts to expand corporate monopolies over plants and animals have undermined any broad-based participation of communities in managing biodiversity on the basis of collective principles.

The study shows how in southern Africa unequal access to land in the face of historical injustices, and the lack of adequate services and fair commodity prices, have all undermined food security, particularly affecting small farmers. The book traces the historical role of the state in land dispossession in North America, Australia, and southern Africa, and in land redistribution in southeast Asia and Central America. For Zimbabwe land redistribution since 2000 (and the conflicts that ensued) are examined in relation to the unsustainable nature of the earlier market approaches toward land—approaches now being replicated in South Africa and Namibia. Mushita and Thompson argue that the promotion of market-led land redistribution is unworkable; it is essential to find new interactive approaches involving both state and social actors. Moreover, markets have also failed to enhance the livelihoods of small farmers through equitable exchange. Landholders will need to be protected from the spread of exploitative agricultural subcontracting systems as these undermine biodiversity and small producers’ incomes.

However, having laid out the dangers, the authors also argue that the despoliation of local indigenous knowledge and the loss of genetic heritage are resisted in numerous ways. Exploring many viable alternatives proposed by a host of actors—African farmers, communities, social movements, scientists, and a mix of public and private agents—they propose diverse solutions to food deficiencies and food insecurity. Some of these proposals involve revitalizing complex and multifaceted indigenous food distribution systems, and rejecting unsustainable production patterns based on uniform foods. Instead they envisage building new systems of production and exchange based on the principle of collective food sovereignty. To implement such goals, autonomous social movements must engage with the state, aiming to rebuild the state capacity to support the poor, to regulate markets, and to provide space for private actors. The authors also commend the African Union’s model laws on biodiversity and argue that various public-private partnerships may lead the way.

In short, drawing on their extensive experiences with food security issues, the authors skillfully combine the voices of a variety of key actors on the continent with a thorough assessment of available evidence, to bring a critical problem to our attention. The appendixes provide invaluable documents outlining the declaration on seed sovereignty, a genetic bill of rights and the African Union...