The politics of knowledge at the CBD

Vandana Shiva takes issue with the view, implicit in documents issued by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), that Western systems of knowledge are scientific while non-Western traditional systems are not. She calls for the adoption of a pluralistic view of knowledge systems which would respect different systems of knowledge, each with its own logic and epistemological foundation.

THE issue of indigenous knowledge in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) forces us to rethink many of the biases that have been built into the characterisation of knowledge.

Inherent in the classification and categorisation of traditional knowledge is the notion that Western knowledge traditions are scientific while non-Western traditions are unscientific and no longer valid.

There is no epistemological basis for characterising non-Western traditional knowledge as unscientific and Western knowledge as scientific. Traditional systems of knowledge have their own epistemological and scientific foundations. They differ from reductionist and Cartesian systems of Western knowledge. However, the mechanistic and reductionist assumptions on which the last few centuries of evolution of dominant Western science were based are being given up by emergent Western sciences themselves.

The idea that modern reductionist science is a description of objective reality, unprejudiced by value judgements, is being rejected increasingly on historical and philosophical grounds. It has been historically established that all knowledge, including modern scientific knowledge, is built on the use of a plurality of methodologies, and reductionism itself is only one of the scientific options available.

There is no 'scientific method'; there is no single procedure, or set of rules that underlies every piece of research and guarantees that it is scientific and, therefore, trustworthy. The idea of a universal and stable method that is an unchanging measure of adequacy and even the idea of a universal and stable rationality is as unrealistic as the idea of a universal and stable measuring instrument that measures any magnitude, no matter what the circumstances. Scientists revise their standards, their procedures, their criteria of rationality as they move along and enter new domains of research just as they revise and perhaps entirely replace their theories and their instruments as they move along and enter new domains of research (Paul Feyerband, 'Science in a Free Society: New Left Books, 1978, p10).

The emergent theories of complexity, dissipative structures and self-organisation that are replacing the reductionist paradigm of biology have more in common philosophically with traditional systems of knowledge than with Cartesian science. (Fritjof Capra, 'The Web of Life', Anchor Books, 1996).

Ignoring the latest development in the sciences the CBD Secretariat papers replicate the biases that characterise Western reductionist knowledge as scientific and fail to see the scientific basis of traditional knowledge.

Epistemologically flawed

The nomenclature of 'Scientific Knowledge' and 'Traditional Knowledge' is epistemologically flawed. It suggests that traditional knowledge is not scientific. In reality, what we have is different traditions of knowledge and traditional knowledge systems have their own scientific basis. In some cases, modern 'scientific' knowledge is highly unscientific when viewed from the perspective of forest biodiversity. For example 'scientific' forestry views non-commercial species as 'weeds'. Similarly, the introduction of alien species such as eucalyptus guided by 'scientific forestry' principles can lead to the destruction of forest biodiversity. These systems of forestry science lack an ecological perspective, which many systems of traditional knowledge have. The 'ecological perspective' and 'scientific' status have in the report been disassociated from traditional knowledge, disrespecting diverse knowledge traditions and falsifying their characteristics.

The idea of split and hierarchy between 'scientific' and 'traditional' knowledge should be rejected. Such a division cannot be epistemologically justified.

In the note on 'Traditional Related Knowledge', this false division is reintroduced in the Section on 'The nature of traditional knowledge'. This section identifies 'traditional' as local, in contrast to 'cosmopolitan' and 'Western' knowledge. This suggests all traditional knowledge has only localised relevance and existence.

However, major traditions such as systems of Ayurvedic knowledge which depend on a deep knowledge of medicinal plant biodiversity are also widely practised and are not restricted to small localities. The documents are therefore riddled with a Eurocentric bias in the analysis of knowledge, a bias which is particularly inappropriate in a subject matter dealing with cultural and biological diversity.

The CBD should avoid antiquated and false characterisations of traditional vs modern, unscientific vs scientific, non-Western vs Western, local vs cosmopolitan. The appropriate epistemological framework for the CBD is the recognition of diverse systems of knowledge as a pluralistic array rather than as a hierarchy. The CBD documents however falsely perpetuate an hierarchy.

Pluralism Vs Hierarchy of Knowledge Systems

Diversity and pluralism are the characteristics of the Indian environment and Indian society. We have a rich biodiversity of plants for food and medicine. This agricultural diversity and diversity of medicinal plants have in turn given rise to a rich plurality of knowledge systems in agriculture and medicine.

However, under colonial influence our biological and intellectual heritage was devalued. The priorities of scientific development and Research and Development efforts guided by a Western bias transformed the plurality of knowledge systems into a hierarchy of knowledge systems.

With knowledge plurality mutating into knowledge hierarchy, a horizontal ordering of diverse but equally valid and diverse systems is converted into a vertical ordering of unequal systems, with the epistemological foundations of the system being imposed on others to invalidate them.

Western systems of knowledge in agriculture and medicine were defined as the only scientific system. Indigenous systems of knowledge were defined as inferior, and in fact as unscientific. Thus, instead of strengthening research on safe and sustainable plant-based pesticides such as neem and pongamia, we focused exclusively on the development and promotion of hazardous and non-sustainable chemical pesticides such as DDT and Sevin. The use of DDT causes millions of deaths each year and has increased the occurrence of pests 12,000-fold. The manufacture of Sevin at the Union Carbide Plant in Bhopal led to the disaster which killed thousands and has disabled more than 400,000 people.

As the realisation of the ecological failure of the chemical route to pest control grows, the use of plant-based pesticides is becoming popular in the industrialised world. Corporations that have promoted the use of chemicals are now looking for biological options. In the search for new markets and control over the biodiversity base for the production of biopesticides, chemicals, TNCs like W R Grace are claiming IPRs on neem-based biopesticides.

The experience with agrichemi-cals is replicated in the field of drugs and medicines. Indigenous systems of medicine and the biodiversity of medicinal plants were totally neglected in our scientific research and health policy which focused exclusively on the Western allopathic system and on technology transfer from the Western pharmaceutical industry. Thus the health and pharmaceutical budget was heavily weighted in favour of the development and dissemination of the Western allopathic system. In spite of lack of official support, indigenous medical systems are based on over 7,000 species of medicinal plants and on 15,000 medicines of herbal formulations in different systems. The Ayurvedic texts refer to 1,400 plants, the Unani texts to 342, the Siddha system to 328. Homeopathy uses 570, of which approximately 100 are Indian plants.

The economic value of medicinal plants to 100 million rural households is immeasurable.

As a result of increasing public awareness of side-effects of hazardous drugs, and the rise of strains resistant to antibiotics, the Western pharmaceutical industry is increasingly turning to the plant-based system of Indian and Chinese medicine. Patenting of drugs derived from indigenous systems of medicine has started to take epidemic proportions. The current value of the world market for medicinal plants from leads given by indigenous and local communities is estimated to be $43 billion. Using traditional knowledge increased the efficiency of screening plants for medical properties by more than 400%.

The failures and non-sustainability of the chemical route to agriculture and health care provide an opportunity to re-evaluate knowledge systems, and move from the false hierarchy of these systems to a plurality. Such a pluralistic view of knowledge systems would imply respect for the different systems in their own logic and in their own epistemological foundations. It would also mean that one system (viz. the Western) does not have to serve as the measure of scientific adequacy for all systems, and diverse systems do not need to be reduced to the language and logic of Western knowledge systems.

The integrity of our biological intellectual heritage can be protected only in such a pluralistic perspective. A hierarchial perspective will continue to project the Western paradigm as scientifically superior in spite of its current failures in the context of sustainability of health care and nutrition. The assumption of hierarchy is also the underlying basis for legitimising piracy as invention.

This phenomena of 'biopiracy' and 'intellectual piracy' in which Western commercial interests claim products and innovations derived from and currently used by indigenous knowledge traditions as their 'intellectual property' protected through 'intellectual property rights' like patents have emerged as a result of the devaluation and hence the invisibility of indigenous systems of knowledge and the lack of protection for these systems. This devaluation is linked to the imposition of the reductionist methods of Western science to the non-reductionist approaches of indigenous knowledge systems. Further since Western-style IPRs systems are biased towards Western knowledge systems which reduce biodiversity to its chemical or genetic structures, the indigenous systems get no protection, but piracy of these systems is protected.

In the absence of a protection system for biodiversity and indigenous knowledge systems, and with the universalisation of Western-style IPRs regimes, such intellectual and biological piracy will grow.

Vandana Shiva is a scientist and activist. She is also a contributing editor for Third World Resurgence.