Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
land rights and with that, the opportunity and skills to hunt and gather
food. They are almost invariably poor by local standards, and few can
survive on subsistence farming because this requires access to land, suit-
able soil and climate, and some capital in the form of livestock or fences
to protect their crops. Many depend for their livelihood on seasonal
farmwork (often paid in kind) and the collection of bush food. In coun-
tries like Namibia and Botswana food aid from the government is impor-
tant. Seen as an archetypical hunting and gathering society, the San are
subject to numerous ethnographic studies, documentaries, fi lms, post-
cards, and so on (Suzman 2001).
The very specifi c environmental resource we focus on in this chapter
is
Hoodia gordonii
, a traditional (medicinal) plant of the San that was
patented without their prior consent by a state institution, the South
Africa Council for Scientifi c and Industrial Research (CSIR), which then
licensed its development and commercial use to multinational compa-
nies. Belatedly a benefi t-sharing agreement has been negotiated between
the San and the CSIR, as required under the Convention on Biological
Diversity (CBD), which demands “equitable” benefi t sharing from the
use of biodiversity between companies and indigenous local communi-
ties. By examining both how this benefi t-sharing agreement and search
for an equitable outcome have been structured and pursued and how
this process has been viewed by local people, we reveal how different
notions of what constitutes justice and different forms of value are at
the core of a process that continues to be in dispute.
Through the Hoodia case study, we are embedding the concept of
justice in the well-developed discourse regarding indigenous peoples'
rights and their struggle to determine their own destiny.
1
The attitude of
the international institutional community toward indigenous peoples has
changed from being “assimilationist” in the ILO Convention 107 toward
the recognition of indigenous peoples' self determination rights in the
UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Within the context
of the Hoodia case study, concepts such as traditional knowledge, com-
modifi cation, property, indigeneity, customary law, sui generis protec-
tion, and self-determination rights are all focal points in the debate about
indigenous peoples' property rights and self-determination rights.
However, based on our own observations in the fi eld we feel there is not
only a need to better defi ne these concepts because a lot of the literature
and policy frameworks are out of tune with some of the daily realities
lived by indigenous peoples, but it is important from an ethical point
of view to gain a better understanding of what these concepts mean in
