SUBJECT: RE: Improved communication and benefit sharing schemes
AUTHOR: Heidi Wittmer
DATE: 14th April 2003

KEYWORDS: Communication, governance, property rights.

SUMMARY: The author agrees with the importance of communication in biodiversity conservation, and identifies the different stakes involved. She goes on to discuss biodiversity governance and the need to relate the multiple actors and the multiple levels to each other.

In my view Michalis Skourtos has highlighted several key issues for biodiversity conservation. Communication is crucial for a better understanding of issues and stakes. In my view one fundamental challenge here is that local communities, whether indigeneous or "just" local, are not homogeneous and not the only groups with stakes involved. So we have different often competing groups and interests at the local level as well as stakeholders from other levels (including the global level and future generations). A second challenge arises from the the fact that the stakes and perspectives differ as well. So whereas in the context of biodiversity science the issue consists of understanding and conserving how biodiversity functions, etc., other stakeholders are interested in using certain biological resources, combating threats to their livelihood production (e.g. in the form of animals feeding on their crops), or maintaining sacred cultural elements, or they might be only interested in using the land for other purposes whether consciously or not (construction, pollution deposition). What is at stake for the different groups has some overlap but differs considerably. Obviously the different interests involved are not operating on a "level playing field" some are organized, some have political influence others have other means of influence.

This is where the concept of property rights, especially conceived of as a bundle of rights, as Michalis Skourtos suggests, can contribute to understanding the different interests and stakes. Property rights are conceived of as a right an individual or group has to use, manage, reap the benefit from, sell or pass on certain resources. It becomes a right through the fact that society acknowledges and protects this right. This is the result of policy on the one hand and acknowledgement of the actors involved on the other. This is were I would like to introduce the term of biodiversity governance.

What is interesting is that for some aspects of biodiversity property rights are established whereas for others they are not. What multilateral agreements such as the CBD contributes is a framework within which the distribution of these property rights can be negotiated internationally. It is, however, only a framework. What social science research can contribute is to analyze the ongoing negotiation within this framework and understand how property rights are being assigned and redistributed in this context. Ulrich Brand and Christoph Görtz analyze the negotiation within the CBD on intellectual property rights and the unequal distribution between the industries involved and other interests at the international level. What this implies for the negotiation processes at national or subnational levels is a second debate. Especially important with regard to EPBRS is the role science or more precisely arguments developed within science plays in these negotiation processes. Regina Birner and I have analyzed how in the struggle on the community forest law in Thailand, which was essentially a renegotiation of property rights to forests, arguments from different scientific debates (hydrology, biology and social science) have been used by the competing groups in society. So communication issues and benefit sharing in biodiversity conservation go much further than the interaction between scientists and local groups. Research on these questions in the context of biodiversity is so far at best anecdotal. To understand governance implies relating the multiple actors and the multiple levels to each other. I would be very interested in learning more about what Michalis Skourtis suggests: "to look at negotiation breakdown through self-serving biases in fairness judgements" as a possible way to establish normative principles for a fair benefit-sharing.

In my view what is central for EPBRS in this context is to intensify the ongoing interaction between the different disciplines in order to better understand the interrelations between biodiversity research and biodiversity governance.

A contribution by:

Heidi Wittmer
UFZ- Leipzig-Halle
Postfach 500136
04301 Leipzig