Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
6
Environmental Justice, Values, and Biological
Diversity: The San and the Hoodia
Benefi t-Sharing Agreement
Saskia Vermeylen and Gordon Walker
Recent commentaries have identifi ed a number of ways the fi eld of envi-
ronmental justice scholarship is evolving (Walker and Bulkeley 2006; Sze
and London 2008; Holifi eld, Porter, and Walker 2009). First, as demon-
strated in this topic, this scholarship is giving attention to the application
of the environmental justice frame in new places and contexts around
the world (Walker 2009). Second, it is extending its scope to include
increasingly diverse forms of socioenvironmental concern, moving far
beyond the racial distribution of pollution, toxicity, and technological
risk with which the early phases of environmental justice activism were
primarily concerned. Third, it has developed a more pluralistic view of
the multiple interconnected concepts of justice that are part of an envi-
ronmental justice framing and the practices of claim making that this
involves (Schlosberg 2004, 2007). In this chapter we explore these
spatial, material, and theoretical currents and their interrelation through
the case of the San in southern Africa and their claims for benefi t sharing
in the exploitation of biological diversity for commercial gain. Through
exploring the various forms of value and notions of justice revealed in
the San's pursuit of a benefi t-sharing agreement, we demonstrate the
challenges involved in contextualizing environmental justice within what
constitutes a particular and distinctive cultural and political setting in
the developing world.
The San are former hunter-gatherers and the oldest surviving inhabit-
ants of Southern Africa. The arrival of pastoralists and agriculturalists
of the Bantu-language group (in the last 500 to 2,500 years) and white
settlers (in the last 300 years) has resulted in the assimilation, subordina-
tion, or even persecution, of the San peoples. About 100,000 San survive
today in the Kalahari basin, but while their physical survival may no
longer be at risk, their cultural survival is highly precarious. While local
and regional variation exists, the vast majority of the San have lost their
