Trans Inst Br Geogr

NS 28 35–55 2003ISSN 0020-2754 © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2003

Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Bioprospecting: from theory to practice (and back again)

Noel Castree

This paper critically assesses the theory and practice of biodiversity prospecting in the developing world. Taking the case of perhaps the most famous bioprospecting broker – Costa Rica’s National Institute of Biodiversity – rival theoretical discourses on the ‘selling nature to save it’ approach to environmental conservation are unpacked. This approach, currently

de rigueur

in mainstream global environmental organizations, is touted by its advocates in the academic and policy world as an effective tool for ‘green developmentalism’. For a cohort of university-based left critics, however, bioprospecting is one more troubling example of ‘post-modern ecological capital’ in action, representing the further commodification of nature for profit purposes. By treating the rival theoretical discourses on bioprospecting produced by differently situated knowledge communities as objects of analysis, the paper asks fundamental questions about the grounds on which evaluations of bioprospecting might be made. It is argued that the radical critique buys its logical and moral power at the expense of its practical relevance, while advocates of selling biodiversity have made their case with only limited empirical persuasiveness. On the basis of a heuristic distinction between immanent and external critique, the paper seeks to put the evaluation of bioprospecting in particular, and green developmentalism more generally, on a new cognitive and normative footing. In so doing it impinges on recent debates over the wider relevance of ‘critical’ thinking in human geography and cognate fields in the current conjuncture.

key words

bioprospecting biodiversity Costa Rica INBio theoretical discourses internal and external critique situated knowledge communities

evaluative standpoints policy relevance

School of Geography, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL email: noel.castree@man.ac.uk

revised manuscript received 22 October 2002

Introduction

This essay has a dual purpose. In the first place, itinterrogates the often heated arguments made forand against bioprospecting. This interrogation focusesspecifically on how bioprospecting’s advocates anddetractors make links between theoretical proposi-tions – of an explanatory and normative kind – andempirical evidence. Secondly, the conflicting argu-ments over bioprospecting are used to raise somewider questions about the relevance of ‘critical’thinking in human geography and cognate fields.My principal argument is that critiques of biopro-specting (i) take the form of external and overly

abstract evaluations and (ii) in both the explanatoryand normative sense are weakly grounded in empir-ical evidence. Ironically, they share this latter weak-ness with the analyses proffered by bioprospecting’scheerleaders. As a result, these cheerleaders do not,in my view, find themselves confronted with thekind of compelling critique that might unsettle theirconfidence in its benefits. This matters, because anawful lot is at stake in bioprospecting – both in itsown right and because of the alternatives to it thatare disbarred or permitted depending on whetherand where the practice is promoted. Accordingly, inthe latter part of the essay I suggest how evaluationsof bioprospecting by those on the academic left might

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Noel Castree

be made more rigorous. This speaks to the broaderissue of how ‘critical’ academics might (or might not)‘make a difference’ to that which they study.

Bioprospecting is one of the most controversialconservation practices currently being touted bywhat Neil Smith (1998, 272) calls ‘establishmentenvironmentalists’. Like ecotourism, it offers bio-logically rich but economically poor countries in theSouth a means to ‘save nature by selling it’ (McAfee1999). Bioprospecting, to use a minimalist definition,involves ‘the systematic search for genes, naturalcompounds, designs and whole organisms in wild-life with a potential for product development’(Mateo

et al

. 2001, 471).

1

More ambitiously, it ‘aims toreturn benefits to the stewards of biological resources. . . [establishing] a contractual relationship betweenthose who provide [these] . . . resources . . . and otherswho use [them]’ (Brush 1999, 536) – a combination ofconservation, development and equitable sharing ofbenefits that McAfee (1999) calls ‘green develop-mentalism’. For its many advocates in the academicand environmental policy world, bioprospecting isregarded as a potentially important mechanism fordelivering green development on the ground. For itscritics, by contrast, it is regarded as conceptuallyflawed, practically ineffectual and morally bankrupt.While others have tried to weigh the arguments onboth sides (Moran

et al

. 2001), my aims here areavowedly partisan. Writing as someone broadlysympathetic to the critics’ viewpoints, I wish toinquire into the mechanics of explanatory andnormative argumentation rather than trying to deter-mine who is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ about bioprospecting(as if there is some neutral platform from which toview it).

As already mentioned, my argument is that thetheory–evidence link is insufficiently rigorous inthe critical literature, in part because the criticismsmade are not immanent to the object of analysis.Empirically, the focus of my concern will be CostaRica’s National Biodiversity Institute (INBio). Thisis because bioprospecting’s champions and criticshave both used INBio as a ‘master example’ to maketheir cases. As with Emilia-Romagna or RiversideCounty in writings about new industrial districtsand workfare states respectively, the Institute hasassumed iconic status in debates about bioprospect-ing – if, indeed, one can call them ‘debates’, sinceI will go on to argue that it is more a case of rivalconstituencies talking past one another. Founded in1989, INBio has acted as a broker between outsideparties – such as transnational pharmaceutical

companies – and Costa Rica’s untapped biotic wealth.Though by no means the only bioprospectingagency in the South, it has become the privilegedcase study for those who wish to recommend orreject bioprospecting. Among advocates, INBio hasbeen touted as ‘a model’ (Reid

et al

. 1993), as ‘themost advanced case’ (Barbier

et al

. 1994, 194) or, inthe more modest words of its senior employees, as ‘apilot project’ (Gamez

et al

. 1993) and ‘an importantexample’ (Nader and Mateo 2001, 183). By contrast,for critics of bioprospecting – particularly a coterieof left academics in geography, anthropology andsociology (e.g. Brush 1999; Escobar 1996; Flitner1998; Frow 1996) – INBio’s reliance on the marketmechanism ultimately serves up biodiversity as yetanother ‘accumulation strategy for capital’ (Katz1998, 47). For better or for worse, then, INBio has cometo ‘stand for’ the supposed wider merits/ills of bio-prospecting. Rather than speaking for themselves,the ‘facts’ of the INBio experiment are thus beingsubject to conflicting interpretations among differ-ent knowledge communities situated within andbeyond the academy. Accordingly, they are made toperform two roles simultaneously: they serve asempirical instantiations of a supposed larger phe-nomenon (a particular–general relationship) and theyvouchsafe normative claims about bioprospecting(an is–ought relationship).

In sum, I treat both the wider arguments aboutbioprospecting and the specific claims made aboutINBio as objects of analysis in their own right. In thissense, though I write as someone with real reserva-tions about the theory and practice of bioprospect-ing, the essay treats the discourses of its championsand detractors in epistemically equal terms. Both dis-courses, far from mirroring reality, endeavour toconstruct it in the imagination and in practice. Ofcourse, in recent years those on the academic left –across the social sciences and humanities – havefeverishly sought to deconstruct all manner of layand elite discourses. On environmental matters,‘second generation’ Third World political ecology(e.g. Peet and Watts 1996) and new work on the cul-tural politics of science (e.g. Hajer 1995) have blazedsomething of a trail in this regard. But, as Gibson-Graham (1996) is right to point out, the left has beenless willing to strain its own discourses throughthe deconstructive sieve. This is unfortunate, not tomention inconsistent, since these discourses are asperformative as those they are ranged against. Theyare, in other words, ‘implicated in the worlds theyostensibly represent’ (Gibson-Graham 1996, ix).

Bioprospecting

37

If, then, I take it as axiomatic that discourses ‘arenot only products but producers, capable of decis-ively altering the very forces that brought them intobeing’ (Greenblatt 1991, 6), this is not to say that alldiscourses have the same effectivity. For one of myclaims is that the relatively ineffectual language thatleft critics of bioprospecting have deployed is boundup with their highly academic institutional ground-ing. By ‘ineffectual’, I mean that this language is the-oretically abstract, as well as taking the form of‘external’ criticism. Theory matters, of course, and itis precisely for this reason that the

theoreticist

natureof left criticisms of bioprospecting cannot be leftunchallenged. Likewise, though there is nothingwrong – indeed many things right – with critiquesthat proceed from different premises and have dif-ferent normative standards to the objects of theircensure, I think it worth recalling Trevor Barnes’(1988) argument that internal criticism is usuallythe more exacting form of cognitive and normativeanalysis. This is especially so in the case of biopro-specting because many of its advocates – unlike theirleft critics – are partly or wholly grounded in theworld of environmental policy formation.

As a result of this combination of theoretic andexternal critique, I contend that the arguments ofbioprospecting’s detractors have lacked critical bite.Indeed, I believe this combination has led to argu-mentative impasse coupled with missed opportunitiesfor constructive critique. By argumentative impasse,I mean that bioprospecting’s critics have routinelyframed their analyses so that few viable theoreticalor practical alternatives can be imagined (on debatesin neo-Marxist development theory, cf. Booth 1985).By missed opportunities for constructive critique, Imean that bioprospecting’s left detractors have tendedto speak in a language that is unlikely to influence itsfar more policy-savvy and policy-powerful advocates(on critical economic geography, cf. Markusen 1999).The intellectual integrity of this language has, I wantto suggest, been bought at the expense of its practicalrelevance. Yet if current bioprospecting practices areto be effectively evaluated and practically altered(even over-turned), critics must, to borrow RichardHandler’s (1991) metaphor, speak ‘a language thatpower understands’. In effect, this essay endeavoursto do just that, thereby calling into question not justthe theory and practice of bioprospecting but also thedominant idioms favoured by a cohort of university-based leftists who are critical of it.

The argument is structured as follows. In the nextsection, the Institute and its activities are introduced,

after which I show how its bio-contracting experi-ences have been assimilated to rival theoreticaldiscourses about market-led environmental con-servation. Having unpacked these discourses, I thentake a closer look at INBio, not in order to get beyondthe putative veneer of these discourses, but to inquireabout the grounds for evaluating bioprospecting.The penultimate section offers an internal critique ofINBio that disputes the claims of

both

the Institute’schampions and critics, with a view to placing thelatter on a firmer epistemic and normative footing.

The National Institute of Biodiversity

A privileged signifier

The circumstances in which bioprospecting hasarisen as a concept and a practice are well known.First, sceptics notwithstanding (e.g. Lomborg 2000),recent years have witnessed unprecedented rates ofspecies and habitat loss, especially in the developingworld. Second, it is the open-access nature of thelocal, national and global ‘biological commons’that is seen as the root cause of this – at least byenvironmental economists. Thirdly, this open-accessarrangement has been seen to result not only in‘a tragedy of the biodiversity commons’ but, his-torically, to have allowed Western nations to ‘steal’resources from the world’s biological ‘hotspots’:that is, economically poor tropical and sub-tropicalcountries. In this context, INBio has become analmost obligatory passage-point in evaluations ofbioprospecting’s success/failure and therefore itsfuture as a ‘green development’ practice.

Established just a year after the publication ofEdward O. Wilson

et al

.’s (1988) germinal

Biodiversity

– a book which, in an act of semantic consequential-ity, more-or-less invented the term that was its title –INBio’s mission was ‘to know, to save and to use’Costa Rica’s largely unknown, unsaved and ill-usedbiodiversity. More particularly, this mission was tobe realized by merchandizing previously un- or under-priced plants, animals, insects, microbes, bacteria andgenes. Following Cornell University chemist ThomasEisner’s (1984) injunction, INBio’s intent – statedexplicitly by its director, virologist Rodrigo Gamez(Gamez

et al

. 1993) – was to ‘prospect’ for biologicalresources. In other words, by undertaking a ‘system-atic search for new [commercial] applications of hith-erto unstudied biological species’ (Weiss and Eisner1998, 482) the Institute has, for more than a decadenow, served as the middle-man in between CostaRica’s biodiversity and international bioprospectors.

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Noel Castree

Though no longer unique, it was – and remains –precedent-setting in several ways. It was the firstnon-state institution

2

in the developing world set upwith the express purpose of both understanding andmarketing a nation’s biodiversity. As John Takacs(1996, 292) puts it in his rather acerbic assessment ofthe Institute, ‘biodiversity is the product line, CostaRica Inc. is the corporation, and Rodrigo Gamez isthe CEO’. Secondly, INBio’s first and much pub-licized bioprospecting agreement – with the USpharmaceutical giant Merck and Co. in 1991 (renewedtwice thereafter) – was among the first in moderntimes to redress the long history of what criticslike Shiva (1997) regard as ‘biopiracy’: that is theunlicensed and uncompensated expropriation ofthe South’s biological wealth by the North. Finally,as I will explain later, the agreement with Merckwas both precocious and prescient: for it evidentlyput to work many of the principles that, 18 monthslater, were articulated in the multilateral Conventionon Biological Diversity (CBD).

The fact that INBio could anticipate a global envir-onmental accord in this way is arguably attributableto the fact that it has been hard-wired to a set ofkey players in transnational environmental policy-making since its inception. For instance, whenWalter Reid of the World Resources Institute co-edited

Biodiversity prospecting: using genetic resources for sus-tainable development

in 1993 – a veritable manifesto-cum-DIY-manual for any and all potential biodiversitysellers and buyers worldwide, published under theauspices of the WRI/IUCN/UNEP Global BiodiversityStrategy – Gamez was one of the principal con-tributors. Indeed, INBio serves as the book’s maincase study for ‘good practice’. One reason for its cent-rality in

Biodiversity prospecting

was Gamez’s closepersonal association with the US biologist Dan Janzen,who, along with Edward Wilson, was one of a smallcohort of biologists who helped invent and popu-larize the idea of biodiversity from the mid-1980s(Takacs 1996, ch. 2). Janzen, editor of the compendiousand meticulous

Costa Rica natural history

(1983),

3

has built his academic career upon researches mostlycarried out in Costa Rica and, in the late 1980s, heused his considerable influence in US conservationcircles to garner international support and fundingfor the INBio experiment (Takacs 1996, 291). Indeed,along with Reid, he was one of the editors of

Biodivers-ity prospecting

and has since been a key advisor insuccessive meetings of the CBD parties. More recently,another editor of bioprospecting’s inaugural publica-tion, Sarah Laird,

4

has co-written a broader successor

volume entitled

The commercial use of biodiversity

(tenKate and Laird 1999) in which, not surprisingly,INBio features as one of the main case studies (1999,253–7). Like the Reid

et al

. tome, the book is essen-tially a bioprospecting manual for countries whowant to sell their ‘green gold’ and organizations whoseek to buy it.

Virtually no post-1989 publication on bioprospect-ing is without reference to INBio. Similarly, moregeneral discussions of the free-market approach tobiodiversity conservation – currently

de rigueur

withinnational and global environmental policy circles –single it out for special mention (see, for example,Barbier

et al

. 1994, 194–5; Pearce and Moran 1994,102; McAfee 1999, 150). As already noted, part of thereason for this privileged status is the fact that theInstitute and its senior employees are linked directlyto a network of global environmental policymakers.In light of this, it may seem odd to want to add to thewealth of words written about INBio. True, it is undeni-ably an important example – indeed, for critics andadvocates alike no less than an exemplar – of biopro-specting in action. But for this very reason one mightsuppose that it has, by now, been analysed to death.

In fact, despite its starring-role in both the aca-demic and policy literature in bioprospecting theexisting analyses of INBio are remarkably shallow.One is more likely to encounter a side-bar or throw-away line than a sustained and considered discus-sion of the Institute’s activities. It is not so much thatthe ‘facts’ of INBio’s several bioprospecting con-tracts are not known (though there has been undueobsession with the Merck agreement as if this wasthe main or only one INBio has entered into since1989). Rather, it is that some commentators havebeen obviously selective in their sifting of these facts,while rarely pausing to reflect on the complex ques-tion of what they might signify and how they mightbe evaluated. As I will show later, it has become com-mon – and no doubt unconscious – practice for ana-lysts on whatever side of the bioprospecting debateto assimilate INBio to their preferred worldview. Insaying this, I am not for a minute suggesting thatthere is a ‘right’ way to evaluate the Institute’s work,if only one could lay aside the filters these worldviewsput in the way of our current and future assessmentsof it. What I am arguing, though, is that both advoc-ates and critics have too readily assumed that INBiois an empirical instantiation of broader principlesand logics. These are, respectively, the logics andprinciples of a positively coded ‘free market environ-mentalism’ (i.e. McAfee’s ‘green developmentalism’)

Bioprospecting

39

and a negatively coded ‘post-modern ecologicalcapitalism’. In effect, they represent two differentperspectives on the same thing: that is, the attemptto extend the logic of commodification to solvinglocal and global environmental problems. The workof David Pearce and Arturo Escobar – to take twonotable cases – is a measure of just how far apartthese perspectives are intellectually and politically.They are perspectives to be scrutinized in the sub-sequent sections of this essay.

This said, not all assessments of INBio are ascursory and reductive as I am suggesting. Forinstance, despite its ostensibly proselytizing function,the above mentioned

Biodiversity prospecting

(Reid

et al

. 1993) offers a detailed and candid assessmentof INBio’s likely contributions to Costa Rican con-servation and development. Likewise, a recentattempt by INBio to take stock of its first decadeof work (Zeledon 2000) paints a fairly precise (if rose-tinted) picture, as does a recent related essay byformer employees Werner Nader and Nicolas Mateo(2001). But three things are notable about these excep-tions. The first is just how exceptional they are. Thesecond is that they are penned by bioprospectingenthusiasts, meaning that the range of evaluativeframes one might plausibly use to assess INBio’sactivities are not being put to work. And the third, isthat none of them have been written by the cohortof bioprospecting critics. This latter fact, as I willgo on to show, reflects a situation where the critics’theoretical case against bioprospecting is much moreconvincing than their empirical case.

Before detailing how the INBio experiment hasbeen interpretatively framed, it is necessary to layout some ‘facts’ about the Institute and its activities.This, of course, requires us to grasp an epistemolo-gical nettle. If, at some level, truth is conventional,then it seems illicit, contradictory or just plain naïveto want to state the facts of the INBio case. Unless, thatis, we accept that these facts are themselves alreadyrepresented by others (in previous research, or insecondary and primary data sources upon whichthat research is based) and that, in turn, these ‘facts’are subject to further layers of interpretation by ana-lysts like myself.

5

It is neither possible nor necessaryto circumvent the double-hermeneutic. The particu-lar evidence upon which this essay is based com-prises both previously published and unpublishedstudies of INBio and bioprospecting – studies which,as I have said, will be subject to critical analysis – andmy own engagement with the whole range of bio-diversity stakeholders in Costa Rica. The combination

of the two offers fairly detailed insights into the prac-tical mechanics of bioprospecting in Costa Rica.

6

Butthe picture thus painted is, clearly, neither compre-hensive or value-free. I am emphatically not, in otherwords, presenting a set of ‘baseline evidence’ againstwhich the respective (de)merits of bioprospecting’scheerleaders and critics can be objectively comparedfor accuracy. Rather, I am seeking to explicate therange of activities that INBio has undertaken withoutpresuming that these activities can ever speak forthemselves. Indeed, it is precisely the whole issue ofhow these facts might best (sic) be ‘spoken for’ that isat stake in debates over bioprospecting.

7

INBio: a national bio-contractor

When, in 1987, President Oscar Arias commissioneda ‘Strategy for Sustainable Development’ he furthercontributed to what Cushman (2000, 412) calls ‘CostaRican exceptionalism’ in environmental affairs.

8

Withover 18 per cent of the national territory alreadygranted protected area status – a figure that todayis reputedly 25 per cent,

9

by far the highest in thedeveloping world – Arias sought to make Costa Ricathe first country to act on the recommendations ofthe Bruntland Report. One of the Strategy’s keyrecommendations, with Jansen and Eisner workingbehind the scenes, was the setting up of an institutiondevoted to saving, knowing and using the biodivers-ity of the ‘green Republic’. That institution was INBio,‘a scientific [body] . . . with social orientation [whichis] . . . non-profit and for the public good’ (INBio2001, 1). Endowed through a debt-for-nature swap,its aim was and is to link science and commerce in theinterests of a market-led modality of ‘sustainabledevelopment’. In other words, INBio’s philosophywas that saving the nation’s biodiversity was bestachieved by selling it for others to use – the riderbeing that without a systematic effort to know CostaRica’s largely unknown bio-resources the connectiveimperative between saving and selling could not beestablished. As the Institute’s former bioprospectingdirectors put it, ‘INBio works under the premise thata tropical country will be able to conserve a majorportion of its wild biodiversity if [it] . . . generatesenough intellectual and economic benefits to makeup for its maintenance’ (Mateo

et al

. 2001, 483).Located near the geographic and political heart of

the country, the capital city San Jose, the Instituteconsists of four divisions staffed by some of CostaRica’s most highly qualified scientists, techniciansand administrators. They are the National Biodivers-ity Inventory Division, the Biodiversity Information

40

Noel Castree

Management Division, the Biodiversity Informa-tion Dissemination Division and the BiodiversityProspecting Division. The first three endeavourto systematically gather, identify and catalogueCosta Rica’s biodiversity, with a particular focus onarthropods, plants, molluscs and fungi. By 1996,INBio housed over 3 million specimens, though lessthan 50 per cent had been identified and entered intothe Institute’s two custom-designed databases. Thishighly ambitious process of gathering and trans-forming physical bits of nature into bites of electronicinformation extends far beyond INBio’s premises inSan Jose. Since 1989, the Institute has trained andemployed over 40 ‘parataxonomists’ working fromsome 23 research stations covering the whole rangeof Costa Rica’s remarkably diverse wild lands. Thesetaxonomists are ordinary rural Costa Ricans who aregiven a six-month course on the fundamentals ofbiology and specimen sampling (devised originallyby Dan Janzen) prior to being released into the field.Once labelled and properly packaged, the collectedspecimens are sent in batches to INBio for catalogu-ing and further analysis. If, once in San Jose, samplescannot be identified by in-house biologists, then otherexperts nationally and globally – at, for example, theUniversity of Costa Rica or Kew Gardens, London– are invited to offer taxonomic assistance. In turn,once initial cataloguing has occurred, INBio staffhave the expertise and equipment to undertakesecondary analysis – for example, by running samplesor components thereof through an array of bioassays,which screen for potentially ‘useful’ characteristics.These bioassays typically search for features (chem-ical, genetic or mechanical) that may be commerciallyvaluable to (largely Western) pharmaceutical, agro-foods and cosmetics companies.

This attempt to link knowledge of biodiversity tothe commercial interests of outside parties is facilit-ated largely by the Bioprospecting Division, whichactively seeks out interested parties willing to pay afee for access to INBio’s ‘product’: namely a combina-tion ‘real’ biodiversity and ‘data-diversity’ (Bowker2000). Indeed, the monetary and non-monetary returnsfrom bioprospecting agreements have formedINBio’s principal income stream since 1991, the yearthe Merck contract was signed. These returns per-form a dual role: they must pay for INBio and its160-plus staff while serving the wider goals ofbiodiversity conservation in Costa Rica. Given thebillions of dollars potentially available from commer-cial applications of biodiversity – in the form of drugs,new crop varieties, genes for transgenic organisms

and so on – there are, it seems, real monetary gains tobe had from bioprospecting.

10

Indeed, INBio regardsit as ‘the industry of the [21st] . . . century . . . [inwhich] Costa Rica has a unique opportunity to leadthe process’ (INBio 2001, 2).

Though, as mentioned earlier, the Merck agree-ment has received ‘exceptional attention’ (Reid

et al

.1993, 2) from critics and advocates of INBio/bio-prospecting, it is in fact only one of almost 20 bio-contracts entered into over the last decade by theInstitute and various parties seeking to profit frombiodiversity (see Table 1). Virtually none of the crit-ical literature to be discussed in the next section hasscrutinized this array of bio-contracts, while only afraction of pro-prospecting writers, as we will see,have considered them in any detail. Only Zeledon(2000), Nader and Mateo (2001) and Mateo

et al

.(2001) consider the whole spectrum of bioprospect-ing agreements INBio has entered into since 1991.This said, it is no surprise that the Merck contractreceived so much attention during the early-to-late1990s in the published literature (e.g. Blum 1993;Sittenfeld and Villers 1993; Takacs 1996, ch. 6; Flitner1998). It was, after all, a ‘pioneering agreement’(Weiss and Eisner 1998, 482) in that (i) it was virtuallythe first between a major Western company and adeveloping nation, (ii) Merck paid a not inconsider-able US$1.3 million for exclusive rights of access toa specified number and range of samples, plus anundisclosed percentage of royalties (estimated at1–3%) for any commercial products ultimatelydeveloped from these samples, (iii) the agreementwas not limited to monetary exchange but extendedto Merck providing such things as equipment andtraining to INBio and its staff and (iv) it was aprecedent for future bio-contracts, both for INBioand bioprospectors elsewhere looking for practicalguidance. Nonetheless, the theory and practice ofbioprospecting clearly cannot and should not beevaluated on the basis of just one bio-contract, how-ever pioneering it may have been.

That INBio has managed to attract a range ofclients since the Merck accord is hardly surprising.Merck’s prominence in the pharmaceutical industryhas meant that other firms in the so-called ‘life-sciences sector’ could scarcely fail to take notice.Additionally, bioprospecting offers private sectorpartners the chance to earn some green credentials(Merck, it is worth noting, received the US NationalWildlife Federation’s ‘Environmental AchievementAward’ in 1993 on the strength of its INBio agree-ment) while potentially turning a profit. But most of

Bioprospecting

41

all Costa Rica offers bioprospectors exceptionalopportunities for access to in-situ biodiversity. Itis, in Takacs’ (1996, 289) words, ‘a Canaan for bio-diversity’. Though the figures are imprecise, it isestimated that this one, small, Central Americancountry contains half a million species, or some 5 percent of global biodiversity. Though much of this‘mega-diversity’ is under threat from logging, ranch-ing and coffee/banana growing, the large percentageof national territory designated as nature parks andreserves means that a good deal of it remains actuallyor potentially intact. More particularly, INBio’s‘cooperation agreement’ with Costa Rica’s Ministryof Natural Resources, Energy and Mines (MINAE)gives it direct access to all publicly protected areas ofwild biodiversity in the country. Each and every timeINBio collects biodiversity samples, it does so byapplying in writing to the Ministry and by givingnotice to government staff in the relevant nationalConservation Areas (the country is split into 11).Furthermore, INBio’s activities are undertaken inaccordance with Costa Rica’s impressive battery ofenvironmental laws, especially the Wildlife Law(Ley de la Vida Silvestre) of 1992 and, more recently,the Biodiversity Law of 1998.

11

This is important,

because all the state bureaucracy that firms likeBristol Myers Squibb or INDENA – two of INBio’sprivate sector clients in recent years – might otherwisehave to wade through is dealt with by the Institute.In effect, INBio is Costa Rica’s ‘biodiversity clear-ing house’: by standing between the nation’s stateapparatus, populace and wild biodiversity on theone side, and various client organizations on theother, it offers a legal and efficient means of bringingsellers and buyers of biological resources together ina new marketplace.

12

All this said, it would be wrong to think that bio-prospecting is the only way INBio seeks to conservebiodiversity. The Institute’s Information Dissemina-tion Division also has an active ‘Social OutreachProgramme’ with two main arms, one educationaland focused on ‘knowing biodiversity’, the otherpractical and focused on ‘using biodiversity’ (INBioZeledon, 100 –7). Despite being ten years old, most ofCosta Rica’s estimated 3.6 million inhabitants havenever heard of INBio or the concept of biodiversity.Though wealthy by developing world standards, themajority of the country’s people remain poor andreceive a basic (if any) education. The Institute thusruns an educational campaign, largely through

Table I INBio’s bioprospecting agreements

Partner Year started Remit

University of Costa Rica 1991 General agreement1998 Operation of an NMR unit

University of Strathclyde (UK) 1991 New pharmaceutical products from plant sourcesMerck & Co. (New Jersey, USA) 1991/1994/

1996/1998Pharmaceutical and veterinary products from plants and microbial sources

BTG/ECOS-Costa Rica 1992 Development of a bionematicide from Lonchocarpus sp.

Cornell University 1993 Drug discoveryUniversidad Nacional, Costa Rica 1993 General agreementBristol Myers Squib/Cornell University 1994 Insects as source of new compounds for

pharmaceutical industryInstituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica 1994 General agreementGivaudan Roure (New Jersey, USA) 1995 Fragrances and aromas from Costa Rican biodiversityUniversity of Massachusetts 1995 New insecticidesDiversa (San Diego, USA) 1995/1998 New enzymes from extremophilic and other

micro-organsimsGovernment of Canada 1996 Debt for nature swapINDENA (Italy) 1996 New antimicrobials for dermatological use from plant

sourcesEARTH/NASA/Other Latin American institutions

1997 Chaga Space Project: compounds against regulatory enzymes

University of Strathclyde (UK) 1997 Pharmaceutical productsOffice for Scientific, Technical and Cultural Affairs (Belgium)

1998 MOSAICC project

Phytera (Massachusetts, USA) 1998 Pharmaceutical products from plant sources

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Noel Castree

schools, designed to teach people about the natureand value (economic, aesthetic and practical) of thecountry’s biodiversity. The most recent, expensiveand spectacular addition to this element of socialoutreach was the opening of INBioparque in 2000.Situated adjacent to INBio, this nature park repro-duces in miniature Costa Rica’s several biomes andoffers fee-paying entrants a morality lesson in bio-diversity conservation. The practical arm of socialoutreach, which has grown over the years, involvesINBio staff supporting the considerable number ofnational and international non-governmental envir-onment organizations in Costa Rica in their multi-plicitous efforts to conserve biodiversity practically.

13

These efforts include both wild and anthropogenicbiodiversity, and extend beyond the country’s pro-tected areas. Examples – to give a sense of the rangeinvolved – include initiatives to get campesino andindigenous farmers to grow and sell hitherto unmar-keted ‘natural foods’ and attempts to prevent illegallogging and wildlife poaching in protected areas.

Framing biological prospecting: a conflict of interpretations

I have spent some time discussing INBio specifically,rather than bioprospecting more generally, becauseI want to challenge an assumption that has, it seems,become a commonplace in a good deal of contempor-ary writing about social, political and environmentalissues. This assumption is that certain empiricalparticulars can ‘represent’ in microcosm the supposed‘wider’ benefits/drawbacks of general phenomenathey are supposed to instantiate (cf. Poovey 1999,ch. 1). It is an assumption, as I will now show, thatis made on both sides of the bioprospecting debateviz. INBio. And it arguably compromises the rigourof attempts to evaluate bioprospecting in action(a point I shall pursue in the next section).

Bioprospecting as ‘green developmentalism’

Bioprospecting is a modality of what Eckersley(1993) calls ‘free market environmentalism’, thoughits aims are not simply environmental. Advocatedby a relatively small coterie of nationally and inter-nationally influential theorists and policymakers, itis an approach to nature conservation that proposesto enact a remarkable transformation: namely, to turnan ecologically destructive market into eco-saviour.With ‘missing markets’ and inadequate property rightsseen as the root cause of a plethora of environmentalproblems, its conceptual architects – such as David

Pearce, Charles Perrings, Edward Barbier, DieterHelm, Timothy Swanson and Jeffrey McNeely

14

–argue that privatizing and pricing nature is the keyto protecting it. More ambitiously, they suggest thatmerchandizing previously unpriced environmentalassets might also help economically poor but bio-logically rich communities and countries to develop.Furthermore, the market is seen to possess thecapacity to divert the benefits of development toespecially needy or worthy constituencies within thedeveloping world (such as those groups who areactively conserving biodiversity). With ‘develop-ment’ here defined very much within the constrainingcontext of a global capitalist economy, this aspirationto combine conservation, prosperity and equity usingmarket mechanisms is nonetheless an optimisticand positive one. Indeed, over a decade of debt-for-nature-swaps, eco-tourist ventures, organic agri-culture and the like have demonstrated that theprinciples of free market environmentalism can berealized empirically in a range of developing worldcircumstances. That is, these principles evidentlycombine flexibility with the capacity for broadapplicability. As such, they are principles that attestto what cultural analysts are wont to call the ‘mater-iality of discourse’ (Dryzek 1997, ch. 6). Codified in aset of books, papers and policy documents pennedby Pearce, Perrings, Barbier, Helm, Swanson, McNeelyand others, they act as immutable mobiles, circulat-ing among national and international environmentalpolicymakers where they have had global impacts(witness the property-pricing nexus underpinningthe Kyoto Protocol and the CBD) and local expres-sions (as in the rash of big-game hunting ventures inseveral African countries).

In the case of bioprospecting, there has arguablybeen a self-perpetuating process where exampleslike INBio are implicitly supposed to ‘represent’ thewider principles of selling genetic resources for con-servation and development while, in turn, the spe-cifics of INBio are taken to demonstrate the broadervirtues of prospecting for bio-resources. As I willshow below, this hermetic tacking between the gen-eral and the particular is not undertaken crudely ormechanically. But it does, nonetheless, convenientlyserve to justify both the merits of bioprospecting atlarge and INBio specifically. This argumentativeoscillation largely exists, I think, because of the closelink between senior INBio employees and thoseadvocating the theory and practice of bioprospectingmore generally in academia and the environmentalpolicy world. As noted earlier, Rodrigo Gamez was

Bioprospecting

43

a key contributor to the first international ‘manual’on bioprospecting since when the likes of Pearce,Barbier and Laird have all been quick to cite theINBio case. But more recently, former members ofINBio’s Bioprospecting Division – notably Mateoand Werner, cited earlier, and Ana Sittenfeld

15

– havepenned a string of publications for international aca-demic journals, collaborative books on biodiversity,and international environmental policy gatheringsin which INBio serves as the principal example.

The mutually enforcing cases for bioprospectingin general and INBio is particular go something likethis. According to Reid

et al

. ‘Done well, biodiversityprospecting can contribute greatly to environment-ally sound development and return benefits to thecustodians of genetic resources . . .’ (1993, 2). Inessence, Reid and other prospecting enthusiasts seeit as a vehicle for expressing the tenets of the CBD:namely, that biological resources be conserved andsustainably used, while the benefits deriving fromtheir sale be equitably shared. To realize this trinityof aims, the CBD specified that biodiversity beprivatized and that developed countries supply ‘newand additional resources’ to enable poorer nationsto save – by selling – their biological resources. Bio-prospecting is,

inter alia

, about enforcing proprietaryclaims to genes, biochemicals and species, whileensuring that private capital – in the form of Westernmultinational companies and wealthy universitiesor research institutes – comes forward to ‘reward’biodiverse countries and communities in the South.As Brush rightly observes, ‘Bioprospecting gives usa blueprint for implementing the CBD’s mandates’(1999, 536).

But why, it may be asked, has

bioprospecting

beentouted as such a blueprint as opposed to, say,ecotourism or some other commodity road to greendevelopment? The answer is two-fold. First, as men-tioned earlier, the bioprospecting market is poten-tially very large. In

The commercial use of biodiversity

,ten Kate and Laird (1999, 3) state that ‘combinedannual global markets for the products derived from[biological] resources . . . lie between US$500 andUS$800 billion’.

16

As Nader and Mateo (2001, 183)point out, this colossal sum dwarfs the revenuesgenerated by most present and future potential usesof biodiversity. This said, it does not, of course, rep-resent the returns that a country like Costa Rica mightreceive from selling samples of its wildlife. As eventhe term’s inventor, Thomas Eisner, concedes, thereis only a one in a thousand chance of any biologicalsample progressing to the research stage, while final

product development typically takes 10–15 years.

17

Even then, few biodiversity-based drugs, compounds,organisms and designs become market leaders, sothat source countries for bio-resources will rarelysee more than a fraction of the monies ten Kate andLaird say are potentially available. But these caveatsnotwithstanding, environmental economist FrankMuller nonetheless appears right to argue that ‘Giventhe[ir] magnitude, even a relatively small percentageof these revenues could still mean substantial . . .[earnings] for developing countries’ (2000, 74–5).

This brings us to the second supposed strength ofbioprospecting: that, aside from the monetary bene-fits, it brings unique non-monetary advantages tosource countries. Biotechnology is among the mostresearch-intensive of all industries, and the economicvalue attached to biodiversity increases in propor-tion to the sophistication with which it is understoodand used. This means that what countries like CostaRica are really selling is not ‘raw biodiversity’ butknowledge of biodiversity (Janssen 1999). This is mostobvious in those cases where, say, a pharmaceuticalcompany pays for access to folk knowledge of trop-ical medicinal plants. But even newly discovered bio-diversity has a major actual and potential knowledgecomponent attached to it. The greater the degree ofsample analysis a bioprospecting broker can under-take – using, for example, bioassay arrays – the greaterthe fee per sample it can charge to buyers. As Weissand Eisner put it in their proselytizing essay ‘Partner-ships for value-added through bioprospecting’,

Developing countries naturally wish to begin their . . .prospecting activities at as high a technological level aspossible, so as to maximise their value-added and toavoid relegating themselves to their traditional roles assuppliers of raw materials to industries in more advancedcountries. (Eisner 1998, 489)

So, in theory at least, bioprospecting agreements canbring capacity-building of a potentially high orderto source countries through advanced scientifictraining and smart machinery being a part of the‘value-added chain’.

The activities of INBio evidently bear out thespecific advantages of bioprospecting as a mode ofgreen development in practice. For Nader and Mateoit is making a ‘significant contribution’ (2001, 181) toconservation and socio-economic development; forWeiss and Eisner it is an ‘institutional model’ (1998,482); and in ten Kate and Laird’s global survey of bio-commerce it is the focus of one of a small number of‘best practice’ case studies. Though Mateo avers thatINBio, in fact, ‘does not intend to be a model’ (2000,

44

Noel Castree

54), this is rather disingenuous. By virtue of being themost discussed of all bioprospecting bodies, it hasinevitably been forced to stand for the wider virtuesof market-led sustainable development. This said,none of those commenting favourably on INBio doso uncritically. For instance, Mateo

et al

. observe that‘it is not the gold mine that was originally envisaged’(2001, 486), while Nader and Mateo emphasize thatthe Institute has only survived because of ‘a signific-ant amount of flexibility’ (2001, 189). Provisos aside,these authors all base their assessments of the Insti-tute on the whole spectrum of its activities, provid-ing an element of comprehensiveness missing fromthe critiques to be discussed in the next sub-section.Their assessments comprise the following claims.

First, INBio has generated real revenue by sellingbio- and data-diversity. A sum of US$2 635 611(Mateo 2000, 54) was realized from bioprospectingover the 1991–8 period, an amount now certainlyover the US$3 million mark. Though a derisory sumin global terms, when converted to Costa Rican colon-ies it translates into considerable purchasing power.As, if not more, importantly, all INBio’s agreementswith companies have royalty entailments that couldultimately translate into tens or hundreds of millionsof dollars. Since the Merck contract, INBio has becomeincreasingly adept at specifying ‘milestone payments’in these agreements. These involve the partnercompany/research institution paying the Instituteprogressively higher fees if a sample progresses tovarious research stages (tertiary analysis, prototype,clinical trials etc.).

18

Second, both non-royalty androyalty monies are

directly

linked to conservationin the INBio case. The Institute’s agreement withMINAE specifies that 10 per cent of its annual budgetgo to the Ministry’s national park programme (SINAC),while 50 per cent of any future royalties resultingfrom INBio’s almost 20 bio-contracts are to go toMINAE also. Between 1991 and 1998, MINAE andCosta Rica’s protected areas received over US$1 181 000in this way. Thirdly, INBio has progressivelyprovided to clients ‘more specialized services withhigher added value . . .’ (Mateo 2000, 50). For instance,the agreements with biotech firms Diversa andINDENA were based explicitly on technology transfer,with the two companies obliged to supply cutting-edge equipment and training that would allowINBio to have a fully functional microbiology laborat-ory by 1998. Consequently, the Institute now has thetechnology and expertise to subject compoundsfrom bacteria, fungi and insects to bio-assay guidedfractionation. Fourthly, this overall combination of

monetary and non-monetary compensation raisesthe ‘controversial issue’ (Mateo

et al

. 2001, 481) ofbenefit sharing. The controversy, not just in CostaRica but in all cases of bioprospecting, relates notonly to identifying who the relevant biodiversitystakeholders are, but also to how benefits should bedistributed among them. INBio sought to sidestepthis controversy from the outset by collecting only‘wild’ not anthropogenic biodiversity, and by doingso only in protected nature parks and reserves. Inthis way, it has been able to equate the benefit-sharingissue with the question of what Costa Rican ‘societyat large’ (Mateo

et al

. 2001, 481) receives from INBio’swork on ‘biodiversity as a national resource’ (Naderand Mateo 2001, 193). These aggregate benefitsinclude all those mentioned above, plus the addeddistributional bonus that 40-plus otherwise poorcampesinos have received the educational and incomebenefits of being full-time parataxonomists.

19

Finally, INBio’s role in ‘knowing, using and sav-ing’ biodiversity in a ‘fair and equitable’ way seems tobe self-sustaining. Though Costa Rica’s bio-reservesare finite, knowledge about them is not. Given thatwhat counts as a ‘resource’ is always a socio-technicalquestion (Spoehr 1956), INBio has shown that bothnow and in the future the market for bio-resources‘seems inexhaustible’ (Nader and Mateo 2001,192). As new machines and techniques permit evermore complex study and manipulation of myriadbiological samples, INBio stands to market new andexisting samples repeatedly. Indeed, the Institutehas been careful to limit the element of exclusivityin all its contracts, so that samples have as long andbroad a commercial value as possible. Bioprospecting,then, appears to be at once commercially valuableand commercially sustainable.

In sum, though by no means naïve in their assess-ments, those who advocate biodiversity prospectingas a tool for equitable conservation-led developmentin the South draw largely positive lessons from thepioneering work of INBio. In just ten years, it has intheir estimation turned Costa Rica’s previously ‘free’biodiversity into a stream of compensation whilebuilding future capacity to enhance that stream. Inshort, it has come to ‘epitomize the potential formutual gain’ (Pearce and Moran 1994, 102) that greendevelopmentalism is supposed to be all about.

Bioprospecting as ‘post-modern ecological capitalism’

The critics’ reading of bioprospecting and its CostaRican exemplar could hardly be more different. In a

Bioprospecting

45

series of plenary statements, Stephen Brush, ArturoEscobar, Michael Flitner, John Frow, Cindi Katz, JoanMartinez-Alier and Kathleen McAfee (hereafter,Brush

et al

. unless named individually) have pre-sented a battery of devastating arguments againstthe theory and practice of pricing biodiversity. Brush(1999) makes the most detailed case against pro-specting proper, while Flitner (1998), Martinez-Alier(1996) and McAfee (1999) tackle biodiversity privat-ization more generally. The other authors, workingon a broader canvas, present critiques of the free-market approach to conservation and developmentof which bioprospecting is a part. Though hardlyof a piece, these critics all write out of a post-Marxist perspective (broadly conceived), extendingthe normative concerns of political economy to issuesof ecology.

Escobar (1996 1999) has coined the neologism‘post-modern ecological capitalism’ to describepejoratively what I have depicted above as free marketenvironmentalism/green developmentalism. Where‘modern’, twentieth century capital largely exploitednature as a free good (with increasingly costly con-sequences); twenty-first century capital seeks to makenature a means to the end of profit-making without,in the process, destroying it. In this new regime ofaccumulation, ‘nature has undergone an “involution” ’(Katz 1998, 47) such that unlocking its inner secretsand remaking its very fabric offers capital an ‘environ-mental fix’. According to McAfee (1999), the pricecapital must pay to access hitherto economicallyunvalued environments is seen less as a ‘reward’ tothe stewards of those environments and more as anecessary ‘cost of production’. For her the discoursepeddled by theorists of this version of capitalism –that is, Pearce, Barbier and others – lulls us into afalse sense of the conservation and developmentbenefits it might bring Southern countries and com-munities. As she observes, this discourse

attempts to maintain a separation between environmentalproblems and broader political-economic issues. It pro-motes a bias toward technological solutions and awayfrom social-structural change. (McAfee 1999, 135)

Consequently, its embodiment in global policies likethe CBD and myriad local initiatives like INBio doesnothing to address deeper questions concerningwhat ‘conservation’ and ‘development’ actually meanwithin the context of a capitalist world economy.In its capitalist form, therefore, green developmentis only ‘green’ and ‘developmental’ in the strictlylimited terms specified by its predominantly Western

theoreticians and policy gurus. That it has, in arounda decade, become ‘

the

. . . environmental-economicparadigm’ (McAfee 1999, 136, emphasis added)worldwide is, for McAfee, testament to the way thesethinkers and practitioners have insinuated themselvesinto transnational environmental organizations likethe Global Environmental Facility, UNEP, the FAO,the IUCN, the WWF, the Nature Conservancy andConservation International. Indeed, these organiza-tions have for Frow laid the foundation for nothingless than an ecological ‘new world order’ ‘regulatedby the payment of rent’ (1996, 89).

The merchandizing of biodiversity, as one instanceof this global project to privatize the environmentalcommons, has been criticized by Brush

et al

. preciselyin relation to the conservation–development–equitytrinity it promises to deliver on. Let me take each partof this trinity in turn. For Martinez-Alier, the marketis ‘ecologically irrational’ in something like Dryzek’s(1987) sense of the term. That is, it is a poor socialchoice mechanism for making reasoned decisionsabout the type, magnitude and spatio-temporal dis-tribution of conservation efforts, not to mention thetime-scale over which they should extend. This isbecause the market expresses current preferencesrather than the ‘uncertain and diverse benefits of . . .long-term . . . conservation’ and also because thesepreferences reflect ‘current distributions of powerand income’ (Martinez-Alier 1996, 51, 47). In the con-text of an uneven global political economy, this latterfact means that developing countries will typicallyprice their biodiversity cheaply ‘not because theyattach little value to the benefits of [it] . . . but becausethey are poor’ (Martinez-Alier 1996, 47). Thus the‘true’ ecological value of

in situ

biodiversity forpresent and future generations is not captured inbioprospecting agreements. For Martinez-Alier (1996,51) the worse-case (and likely) scenario is that inthe near future it will be ‘economically rational’ toconvert most remaining areas of wild and cultivatedbio-resources to other uses – with potentially dis-astrous ecological outcomes in the longer term. Anotherway of phrasing this is to say that for its criticsbioprospecting will almost certainly not generatethe revenues required for developing countries toproperly conserve biodiversity.

Similarly biting criticisms have been made aboutbioprospecting’s development credentials. ‘Develop-ment’ is, of course, a weasel-word. Whatever theactual or potential benefits of denominating it in termsof monetary and non-monetary ‘compensation’, thequestion ‘development for who?’ is insistently begged

46

Noel Castree

in bio-accords. For McAfee the market modality ofdevelopment intrinsic to bioprospecting presumesto answer this question while side-stepping thecomplex intellectual and moral issues it poses. Twoissues loom large here. First, bioprospecting general-izes the norms of Western property rights as global‘common-sense’. Development is here coded as prim-arily pecuniary benefits derived from enclosingthe public biodiversity domain (local and trans-national). As Brush (1999, 542) observes, this is ‘amomentous step’, intruding into the socio-ecologicalspaces of those cultures and communities in theSouth who do not conceptually and practicallysequester nature in this way. Secondly, bioprospect-ing fixes the terms of development in another crucialrespect. Because the ‘value’ of biodiversity is meas-ured in dollars, pounds, yen or euros, the question ofwhat

type

of benefits those who meet in the prospect-ing marketplace should receive has already beenforeclosed. As McAfee remarks,

It is simply not meaningful to weigh the amount that a[transnational company] . . . is ‘willing to pay’ for thecontinued existence of a tropical ecosystem against the‘willingness to accept compensation’ for the lost of hisor her ancestral homeland of a resident of that sameecosystem who has little or no cash income, and a vastlydifferent worldview. (McAfee 1999, 139)

Even if one were to accept the terms in whichdevelopment is defined within bioprospectingaccords, critics doubt whether the benefits will bemore than ‘modest’ (Flitner 1998, 158). Worse,McAfee fears that

bioprospecting will go through a cycle of . . . boom, . . .saturation, and then bust . . . becom[ing] yet anotherinstance of the oft-tried – and always failed – strategyof export dependent development in which prioritiesare determined by outsiders. . . . (McAfee 1999, 147)

These concerns about the enframing of developmentrelate, finally, to several incisive criticisms of thedistributional consequences of bio-resource con-tracts. First, Brush (1999) points out that the CBD’sdeclaration of biodiversity as ‘national patrimony’only begins to touch upon the complex and contestedprocess of identifying stakeholders and sharing thebenefits of bioprospecting among them. This is morethan a technical issue because knowledge of bio-resources – wild and ‘improved’ – in ‘source’ countriesis protean, inter-generational, ‘collective, incremental,ambiguous, tacit and socially distributed’ (Brush1999, 548). Given that the possessive individualismimplicit in the contract model is not appropriate tocompensate whole communities of ‘bio-guardians’

in the South, the question of how to operationalizethe idea that biodiversity might be cultural propertyintrudes (see Posey 1999). This becomes especiallytricky when who counts as a biodiversity stake-holder is contested – the most notable cases in theSouth being the ongoing attempts of indigenouspeoples to (re)claim rights over land and resources.Even then there are ethical objections to putting aprice on knowledge and biodiversity that are com-munally ‘owned’. One of these concerns the proprietyof granting monopoly privileges to one country orcommunity when the bio-resources being sold arenot exclusive to them. As Brush argues,

If knowledge and genetic resources collected undercontract lead to a patentable product, communities thatare not part of the contract but have the same resourcescan be deprived of the opportunity to commercialisetheir knowledge. (Brush 1999, 539)

These several indictments of bioprospecting have,with minor exceptions, been brought to bear bycritics on the INBio case. It serves these critics as ‘themodel’ (Brush 1999, 537), as a ‘rare example . . . wheresome detail is known’ (Flitner 1998, 157), as ‘much-touted’ (McAfee 1999, 150) and, at the very least, asthe principal ‘relevant . . . example’ (Martinez-Alier1996, 47). In each case the Merck contract receives allthe attention. Rather than show how all the abovecriticisms can be applied to INBio (which would notbe difficult), let me dwell briefly on those that seemless obviously relevant. The main ones are thoserelating to indigenous rights and the distributionof benefits among various stakeholders. As notedearlier, INBio and MINAE have sought to bypass thestakeholder issue by collecting only ‘wild’ biodivers-ity in protected, non-settled areas and by aggregatingbenefits so that they become an abstract ‘national’quantity. However, McAfee (1999) argues thatINBio’s role as representative of ‘national interests’simply obscures a set of real concerns over the whoand the how of ‘adequate compensation’. For instance,the ancestors of Costa Rica’s terribly marginalized30 000 indigenous peoples – represented by thepolitically weak Mesa Indigena – used many of thecurrently ‘wild’ areas protected by MINAE prior toSpanish conquest. Yet they are subsumed andeclipsed in the homogenizing formula of the ‘CostaRican public’ that INBio putatively serves. As such,the Institute’s contracts arguably ignore the vexedpolitical issue of rights of access and ownership tothe country’s bio-resources. Even the undeniablebenefits enjoyed by parataxonomists drawn from

Bioprospecting

47

communities adjacent to nature parks and reservescannot easily serve to nip the stakeholder–equityissue in the bud. Why? Because these taxonomists areemployed and interpellated as ‘individuals’, thusbrushing under the carpet deeper questions aboutcommunity rights, cultural property and prior-informed consent.

Situating critique: evaluative standpoints, theoretical essences and practical (ir)relevance

It would be naïve indeed to ask who is ‘right’ andwho is ‘wrong’ in the contrasting assessments ofbioprospecting and INBio presented above. As tenKate and Laird (1999, 293) observe, ‘the debate . . .has become highly polarised’ – so much so that it isless a debate and more a conflict of definitions overwhat bioprospecting ‘really is’ and what empiricalinstances of it ‘actually represent’. There is littledoubt that the rival constituencies in this discursivecontest see themselves as making truth-claims aboutthe world. But rather than fathom their veracity, wemight instead enquire about the

truth-effects

of thesediscourses, that is, the way they help to create – inboth thought and practice – the realities they purportto re-present (cf. St Martin 2001). It is not necessary torehearse debates on the ‘realism–relativism’ questionto insist that discourses ‘matter’ in the dual sense oftheir social importance and their physicality. Indeed,the way that the likes of Pearce and McNeely haveparlayed their free-market/green developmenttheories into environmental practice lends credenceto this now familiar claim about the materiality oflanguage. But, in the context of this essay, we mightextend this claim in two ways.

First, all discourses are clearly not equal in terms ofthe magnitude and distribution of their effects. Some‘matter’ more than others. Second, while those on theacademic left have been quick to dissect the dis-courses of all manner of elite and lay constituenciesin a host of contexts, they have arguably been lessprepared to deconstruct their own. These two pointsconverge in the bioprospecting case in consequentialways. To begin, though I consider the case madeagainst bioprospecting to be a powerful one, it is acase that has largely been made by and for

academic

leftists like Brush, Escobar, McAfee and, indeed,myself. In other words, it emerges from a knowledge-community working in a university sector that affordsit the space to make far-reaching criticisms of others’theories and practices. These criticisms circulate

within that specifically situated community andthose (e.g. graduate students, academic publishers)associated with it. But, arguably, the price paid formembership of this academic network is that thecriticisms fail to make a meaningful impact on thevery people, ideas and policies they are rangedagainst. This is a bold statement and so I shouldimmediately qualify it. Some critics of bioprospect-ing (e.g. Posey 1999) have combined the roles of aca-demic analysts and political activists effectively.

20

Assuch they have tried to make their critiques matteroutside the seminar room and the pages of academicjournals. But these individuals are arguably in theminority and, in any case, normally far removedfrom the powerbrokers in decisionmaking bodieslike national environmental ministries or UNEP orthe GEF. By contrast, the likes of Pearce, Reid and thestaff of INBio are far closer to – indeed at times are –these powerbrokers. This is because they eitherstraddle the ‘divide’ between academia and thepolicy world or else lie wholly in the latter.

But there is arguably a second reason why thepowerful critiques of the theory and practice of bio-prospecting remain immured in the academy: namely,the particular nature of these critiques. What I meanhere is three things: that Brush

et al

. offer largely

external criticisms

of bioprospecting; that the attemptto apply these criticisms to INBio amounts to theInstitute being implausibly portrayed as an

empiricalembodiment

of the supposed beastiary that is ‘post-modern ecological capital’; and that

few viable politicalalternatives

are suggested by critics of biodiversityprospecting. Let me explain. Barnes (1988) makes auseful (if potentially overdrawn) distinction between‘internal’ and ‘external’ critique, one explicated morefully by Benhabib (1986, pt I) and McCarney (1990,ch. 1). For Barnes, the former is the more exactingform of criticism because it tackles opponents ontheir own cognitive and normative ground, ratherthan bringing external criteria to bear. Though someof the several charges Brush, McAfee and otherslevel against bioprospecting do take the form ofinternal criticism, they are arguably outweighed byobjections launched from a platform different to thatoccupied by pro-prospecting theorists like Pearceand practitioners like Mateo and Nader. True, thepower of external critique is, precisely, that it takesissue with that which seems ‘obvious’ or ‘common-sense’ or which is otherwise hegemonic. But this powerarguably wanes in proportion to how far-removedsuch critique is from the norms of its object. In thecase of bioprospecting and INBio, the post-Marxist

48

Noel Castree

sensibilities Brush

et al

. bring to bear have undoubtedlogical and moral force. But this force only registers,of course, if one already shares these sensibilities orcan be persuaded of their paradigmatic power. Thecapacity for an external critique to alter the theoryand practice of bioprospecting must thus remain indoubt. Because it speaks a different diagnostic-normative language to those driving the biopro-specting agenda forward, it risks falling on deaf ears.

21

This weakness, in turn, relates to how the ‘prin-ciples’ of bioprospecting are connected with‘examples’ like INBio. In reading Escobar and McAfeeparticularly, one might be forgiven for thinking thatcapitalism, in its ‘post-modern ecological’ (i.e. free-market/green development) mode, is a juggernautrenting all existing socio-ecological relations asunder.Though these authors might reasonably retort thatin their work post-modern ecological capital is butan ideal-type or a heuristic, the worry is that thistheoretical construct takes on a certain life of itsown. True,

as

a theoretical construct it is perfectlylegitimate – indeed, illuminating – to make

theoretical

criticisms of it (whether internal or external). Asphilosopher John O’Neill (1998, 7–15) argues in hisqualified defence of ‘market essentialism’, the powerof conceptual abstraction lies in its capacity toidentify the core characteristics of capitalism whileremembering that they never exist in a pure form inthe real world. In the bioprospecting case, Brushabove all others identifies these characteristics in aparticularly clear and comprehensive way. But whenbioprospecting’s critics seek to pass, in an unmediatedmanner, from theoretical to empirical critique prob-lems arise. There is, most obviously, the problemof conflating the theoretical with the empirical,notwithstanding the impossibility of makingtheory-neutral statements about the material world.Relatedly, there is also the problem of depicting‘post-modern ecological capital’ as a ‘global’ entitythat hovers above, and then enters into, myriad ‘local’situations. As Gibson-Graham puts it,

when we refer to an economy-wide imperative ofcapital accumulation, we stand on . . . unsafe ground . . .[assuming] its local manifestations . . . are always only. . . elaborations of a dominance that already (abstractly)exists. (Gibson-Graham 1996, 16, 15)

Both these problems, I would argue, apply to criticsof bioprospecting explicitly and implicitly. Theyapply explicitly in that in the relatively few empiricalcases cited as illustrations wider arguments are nottreated in any detail.

22

Of the authors mentioned,

Flitner offers the most detailed consideration ofINBio, extending to just four paragraphs (closelyfollowed by Martinez-Alier’s three), and even thenthe evidence appears to be selectively presented tobolster the broader critique of bio-commerce. Theimplication, then, is that cases like INBio are capsuleillustrations of the flaws of transnational processesof nature commodification (cf. O’Neill and Gibson-Graham 1999). There is, in short, little sense thatexperiments like INBio might be

complex

and

specific

,not empirical realizations of theoretical or globalimperatives. Left critics really ought to do better. A‘rigorous’ critical analysis of INBio and bio pro-specting – to return to the loaded term I used in myintroductory comments – would thus have to takethis complexity and specificity seriously, not tomention evaluate it immanently (cf. Blommaert 2001;Theodore and Peck 1999).

23

Finally, it seems to me that the above mentionedcombination of external critique and theoreticism isclosely tied to the conspicuous failure of biopro-specting critics to offer plausible practical alternativesto that which they criticize. As Sayer argues, all criti-cism ‘presupposes the possibility of a better way oflife’ (1995, 33). But this possibility remains unactual-ized if it is left implicit or else linked to infeasibleprojects for social or ecological transformation. Thereis, of course, a normative tension endemic to allexercises in critique: namely, between ‘tinkering’with the world within the limits imposed by prevail-ing norms and structures and between remakingthe world in some fundamental way. The former‘politics of fulfilment’ as Benhabib terms it is, bydefinition, more tractable than the latter ‘politics oftransfiguration’ (1986, 120). But it buys its feasibilityat the expense of its practical and moral radicalism.There is no easy way to exit this dilemma. This said,one should not think that a politics of fulfilment is

necessarily

a ‘status quo’ endeavour (cf. Harvey 2001,ch. 2). There is, we should not forget, room for allmanner of practical measures to improve the worldwithin the real, but nonetheless not

pre

-

determined

,conditions in which people make their history andgeography.

Alas, critics of bioprospecting have generallyfailed to elaborate what such measures might looklike. Escobar, Flitner and McAfee work at a level ofabstraction that implies a notional ‘post-capitalist’relation with nature in the North and South butnothing more concrete than this. Indeed, their imageof a hegemonic, rampant ‘green capitalism’ seems tooffer little hope for attaining such a post-capitalist

Bioprospecting

49

future, other than through the dispersed, localizedefforts of non-mainstream NGOs, consumer groupsor charities (see also Gibbs 2000). Frow, working ata similarly abstract level, does at least attempt toaddress normative issues head on (1996, 99–100). Buthis defence of the local and global biodiversity com-mons against the pressure to privatize and sell is notaccompanied by any discussion of what, if any,measures might in practice keep the commons open.Finally, Brush and Martinez-Alier, in their moregrounded contributions, envisage mechanisms for‘social goods’ compensation for developing coun-tries and ‘ecologically corrected’ bio-contracts respect-ively.

24

But, again, the feasibility of both is scarcelyexplored. One should further note that none of thecritics I have mentioned consider how bioprospect-ing contracts might be improved or superseded inspecific socio-ecological contexts, like the one INBiofunctions in.

25

Towards an alternative critique

I am arguing, then, that if the critique of bio-prospecting is to really bite it needs to be immanent,contextually grounded and policy relevant – thoughnot exclusively so. In this penultimate section of theessay I want to work towards the first two elementsof such a critique, in an illustrative rather thanexhaustive way and, as a corollary, the third elementalso. Biodiversity prospecting does not precede andpre-empt specific empirical ‘instances’ of it. Thoughdocuments like Reid

et al

. (1993) and ten Kate andLaird (1999) adumbrate abstract/idealized theoreticalprinciples, bioprospecting – like any social practice– does not entail these principles being ‘grounded’in actual contexts and surviving intact. Rather,bioprospecting consists of an iterative relationshipbetween these principles (as they circulate in keytexts and documents) and their messy actualizationin distinct socio-ecological contexts. Though onemight hesitate to say that these contexts are singular,they are, at the very least, unique. This unique-ness should not be effaced in any assessment of thetheory and practice of bioprospecting. Indeed, as Iwill now suggest, an appreciation of uniqueness canstrengthen the case left wing critics might makeagainst prospecting’s architects in the academic andpolicy world.

In the second section, I referred in passing to CostaRica’s ‘exceptionalism’ in environmental affairs. INBiois one of several elements comprising that exception-alism. The other elements have arguably presented

the Institute with especially propitious conditions inwhich to function: namely, an elaborate nature con-servation infrastructure, enthusiastic state support,an established legal framework, and a prior historyof Western sponsorship of national conservation ini-tiatives. In short, if something like INBio was goingto originate anywhere, it is no surprise that ‘any-where’ turned out to be Costa Rica. Though otherdeveloping nations now have INBio-like organiza-tions (for example, Mexico), it must be acknowledgedthat INBio has enjoyed real advantages because ofthe peculiarly favourable socio-political conditionsprevailing in Costa Rica (see Campbell 2002).

In this sense defenders of the theory and prac-tice of bioprospecting are absolutely

right to insistthat the Institute cannot easily serve as a model orexemplar. But, contrary to their intentions, such aninsistence can in fact be used to demonstrate the reallimitations of INBio and, by implication, of biopro-specting institutions in developing countries offeringfar less favourable conditions for such institutions tofunction in. This last comment may seem immedi-ately to contradict my claim that one should notdraw putatively ‘wider lessons’ from supposedly‘representative’ ‘local examples’. But what I am argu-ing is that the very uniqueness of the INBio casemakes it very hard to see how its particular circum-stances could be replicated elsewhere. Because, as Iwill now show, INBio has failed to deliver evengiven the propitious conditions prevailing in CostaRica, then one must have real doubts about the abil-ity of other bioprospecting contractors to deliver too.

What, then, do ‘failure to deliver’ and ‘real limita-tions’ mean here? As we have already seen, there isclearly no absolute benchmark or scale one can referto in order to provide an answer to this question. Weare thus left with the task of establishing the groundsfor an internal assessment of the INBio experiment.Though it may seem that these grounds have alreadybeen laid in my earlier presentation of how advoc-ates make their case for bioprospecting and INBio,I suggest that this is not the case. Though these advoc-ates, between them, draw upon a range of criteriaand indicators to make their arguments, two prob-lems loom large. First, it is implicit that these are gen-eral criteria that precede any empirical instantiationsof them. But this is arguably problematic, becausecriteria selection must, at some level, be context-dependent. To abstractly posit standards that spe-cific cases must concretely live up to is, surely, to putthe proverbial cart before the horse. Secondly, itremains highly unclear how one decides at what

50 Noel Castree

point chosen criteria have been ‘satisfied’. In otherwords, I am arguing that bioprospecting’s advocateshave seemingly failed to appreciate the sheer com-plexity of the evaluation process and how it relates tothe specificity of the cases evaluated. Though theseadvocates offer a greater quantity of evidence whenmaking their case compared to their critics, like thesecritics their case is far from secure because it is insuf-ficiently well grounded. Let me explain.

As I have already noted, authors like Mateo, Naderand Sittenfeld offer assessments of INBio over thewhole period of its activities, thus counteractingcritics’ preoccupation with the Merck agreement.However, this comprehensiveness notwithstanding,the manner in which these authors have gone aboutevaluating the Institute’s achievements remainsremarkably vague and unsophisticated. This issurprising since Mateo is not alone when he recog-nizes that

The issue of benefits accrued from bioprospecting iscomplex given the inherent [problems] . . . of assigningvalue to factors such as contributions of knowledge of. . . biodiversity and gains from the transfer of know-how and technology. (Mateo 2000, 53)

As noted, the complexities here attach to establishingrelevant criteria (i.e. what count as ‘benefits?’) andthen somehow determining at what point they havebeen satisfied (itself implying the need for somequantitative measure of bioprospecting benefits). Inthe case of INBio, the published literature appearsexplicit enough about what the criteria are. ForMateo et al., it is the earlier mentioned trinityof conservation, development (‘the generation ofwealth [to] . . . alleviate poverty’) and equitable sharing(‘communities . . . must benefit from bioprospectingactivities in their own regions’) (2001, 480). Likewise,for Sittenfeld et al. the criteria are ‘generating incometo support protected areas, conservation manage-ment activities and local community development’(1999, 9). When I say these criteria are clear enough,though, all I mean is that they are stated explicitly.What is missing, though, is any attempt to specifywhat they might actually mean, both in general andin Costa Rica. They are posited as catch-all, port-manteau criteria rather as they are in global policydocuments like the CBD. What is further missing isany attempt, other than through pure assertion, todemonstrate the way or degree to which they have been metby and through INBio. Let me take each problem in turn.

At no point have analysts supportive of INBiodefined what ‘conservation’, ‘development’ and

‘equitable sharing’ actually mean – this despite Naderand Mateo’s patently misleading promise to offer ‘adetailed analysis . . . of the benefits drawn from bio-prospecting . . .’ (2001, 188). Instead, the meanings ofthese terms are assumed, or else reduced (withoutfurther discussion) to just one of several conceivablereferents they might have. This is most evident inassessments of individual bio-contracts, where onemight reasonably expect some attempt to specify thebenefits accrued in Costa Rica – such as in Sittenfeldet al.’s evaluation of the 1994–9 INBio–Bristol MyersSquibb/Cornell University contract to prospectinsects for new chemical compounds in the GuanacasteConservation Area (ACG). In the mere 1.3 pages(out of 20) devoted to discussing conservation anddevelopment benefits we learn the following:

The information generated by the . . . [contract]continues to support and build useful knowledge forconservation, and to generate income at ACG directlythrough employment, expenses, and payments forresearch fees, and indirectly by encouraging otherinvestments at the ACG. From the total budgetallocated to Costa Rica of $1,650,975, 30.3% . . . wasexpenditures directly in the ACG. An additional$84,400 was generated . . . from visitors’ expenses thatare directly because of the [contract], and representsincome indirectly generated for the ACG and itsneighbourhood.

This is a fascinating, problematic and immenselyquestion-begging statement. It is also as specific asthe authors get in their definition and demonstrationof the benefits of this particular bio-contract. It isplain to see that conservation is nowhere defined,while development is equated with monetaryamounts whose significance is, apparently, self-evident. Meanwhile, benefit sharing is expressed interms of vague claims about income generated forthe communities abutting the ACG. Evidently, thesheer fact that jobs and income has been generatedsuffices to substitute for any real discussion of whatthe conservation–development–equitable sharingnexus might mean in substantive terms. Accordingly,this trinity serves as rhetorical atmospherics that,through sleight-of-hand, is passed off as having beendelivered on the ground.

Not surprisingly, if one looks at those attempts –for instance, by Mateo (2000) and Mateo et al. (2001)– to move up from the level of one bio-contract toINBio’s contracts as a whole, the semantic slipperi-ness is exacerbated. Mateo attempts to demonstratethe conservation credentials of a decade of biopro-specting in Costa Rica by reference to the

Bioprospecting 51

clear-cut example . . . [of] MINAE us[ing] its share [ofINBio’s contracts] to support the management andupkeep of Coco Island National Park, a unique anddiversity-rich marine sanctuary. (Mateo 2000, 53)

As with Sittenfeld et al., the very fact of moneyhaving been raised and then spent on Coco Islandserves, implicitly, as a proxy for a discussion of whatconservation actually is in this context. Meanwhile,INBio’s development credentials are affirmed withmention of the ‘significant’ sums raised throughbioprospecting and the ‘significantly enhancedknowledge, training and transfer of technologyachieved . . .’ (Mateo 2000, 53). Aside from the implicitreduction of development to money generation perse and ill defined ‘knowledge, training and technology’,the repetition of the term ‘significant’ substitutes forany proper analysis of what it actually means inpractice.

This last comment brings us to the second problemwith the way affirmative assessments of INBio havebeen presented. Let us suppose that the criteria formeasuring the achievements of INBio were fullyexplicated by the likes of Mateo, Nader and Sittenfeld.For example, let us imagine that Mateo et al. – whostate that ‘access’, ‘compensation’, ‘transfer of tech-nology’, ‘training’ and ‘sustainable uses’ are thekey criteria (2001, 485–6) – specify what the substant-ive content of the criteria are. The question stillremains: how does one demonstrate how and to whatextent these criteria have been met in practice? If wetake ‘compensation’ and, for simplicity, define this interms of money received by INBio for bioprospect-ing, then how much money is ‘enough’ to ensure thatcompensation has been adequate? Is it money suffi-cient to pay for the protection of all or just one ofCosta Rica’s protected wildlife areas? If so, over whattimescale? Or is adequate compensation achievedwhen enough money is recouped to pay for moreINBio staff in San Jose and the rural research stations?If so, how many staff and at what skill and incomelevel? What I am driving towards here is not theconclusion that criteria measurement is impossible –it is, in fact, quite possible depending on hownumerous and precisely defined the criteria are – butthat it is undeniably difficult and fraught, not tomention avowedly political (Porter 1994). That thosetouting bioprospecting and INBio have not, as yet,come even close to tackling the issue of criteria meas-urement, not to mention the issue of criteria specifica-tion, must be counted as a profound weakness intheir case. In effect, the best these bio-advocates cansay is that because bioprospecting has, as INBio

shows, done something rather than nothing for con-servation, development and benefit-sharing in theSouth, it should be applauded and perpetuated.

In the case of INBio, then, an internal critiquepoints up an exceptional lack of rigour in the waybioprospecting has been evaluated. The issue is not alack of factual knowledge about the nature and out-come of the Institute’s almost 20 bio-contracts thislast decade, but rather what that knowledge signifiesin the specific context of Costa Rican society andecology. Quite simply, the internal criteria for evalu-ation do not exist while the issue their measurementis ducked. Of course, if one were to tackle theserelated concerns in real depth and detail, one quicklybecomes embroiled in intellectually, morally andtechnically complex questions. Tackling these ques-tions (even superficially) will be time-consumingand necessitate dialogue between analysts of INBioand various biodiversity stakeholders in Costa Rica.But, these challenges notwithstanding, it is notunreasonable to demand that those sympathetic tobioprospecting go at least some way to establishingand measuring contextual criteria for evidence evalu-ation in an explicit way. Without such an effort ofcontextual specification, claims about INBio’s workwill remain imprecise to the point of being hollowand rhetorical.

In the Costa Rican case, criteria specification andmeasurement would have to reckon with a set ofdiverse factors and conditions that will not be collig-ated in the same way elsewhere in the developingworld. For instance, to make judgements aboutthe wildlife conservation benefits of bioprospectingalone, we would have to define conservation inrelation to some of the following highly specific con-siderations: the number and diversity of genes,species and habitats in the country (raising the ques-tion of ‘how much’ conservation is ‘good’?); thefact that biodiversity loss is currently very high inCosta Rica, despite all the conservation legislationexisting on paper (raising the question of how muchconservation is, pragmatically, achievable anddesirable?); and the fact that an unusually high num-ber of biodiversity stakeholders in Costa Rica arelocal and international environmental organizations(which biases the question of ‘how much conservationis enough?’ from the start).

What can one say in the absence of a fully con-textual evaluation of the INBio experiment? Oneresponse is to argue that until such an evaluation isundertaken the verdict on the Institute remainsopen. Another response is to say that since such an

52 Noel Castree

evaluation could determine its own criteria, then itwould be ‘biased’ from the start and thus be essen-tially meaningless. This second response would not,I think, be incorrect, except that it implies the possibil-ity of a putatively ‘un-biased’ (i.e. value-free) evalu-ation. One can conceive of a case where the criteriaare set so narrowly and selectively that the Institute’sbioprospecting activities could be made to look‘good’ or ‘bad’ depending. But a third response – andone that is I think plausible – is to say that a contex-tual evaluation of INBio by those supportive of bio-prospecting is necessary because it will demonstratewith clarity how limited the Institute’s activitieshave been. This is not to diminish the unprecedentedgains INBio has made in the bioprospecting fieldand, of course, I realize that one can only define‘limited’ in relational not absolute terms. But whenone is presented with all the ‘facts’ about INBio, onesuspects that a rigorous evaluation will only exposehow meagre the benefits have been relative to evenminimally and narrowly defined criteria of develop-ment, conservation and equitable benefit sharing.

Conclusion: making critique matter

INBio will doubtless live on well into the twenty-first century and new bioprospecting brokerageswill doubtless continue to be established in otherdeveloping countries. Within its own broad terms ofreference, the market route to green development, ofwhich INBio is a part, can deliver some undoubtedgains (witness the revenues and associated spin-offsresulting from eco-tourism worldwide this lastdecade or so). But if bioprospecting is to amount toanything more than selling bio-resources cheaply forlimited returns, then its advocates will have to thinkmore rigorously about the size, nature and distribu-tion of the several benefits it potentially brings.Aside from the issue of defining benefits (which Ihave focused on in the previous section), this alsoraises the issue of what positive policy suggestionscan be offered to contextually tailor prospectingpractices to yield the best possible benefits.

It is here that the left should have something tosay, and activist academics like Darrell Posey showthat policy research does not automatically makeone complicit with the neo-liberal establishment. Bycomparison, the combination of theoreticism andexternal criticism characteristic of the bioprospect-ing critics I have considered in this essay leaves themvulnerable to the charge of political irrelevance.Ironically too, by seeing INBio as one instance of a

rampant eco-capitalism little space is left for envi-sioning how bioprospecting might be practicallyreplaced or else altered to deliver more ‘progressive’benefits. The left of human geography has, of late,been agonizing over the question of the relevance ofcritical intellectual work. Though there is no simpleway to make academic inquiry matter in the worldbeyond universities, there is arguably somethingglib about critique which, whatever its logical andmoral power, remains at one remove from its objects.Changing the world entails understanding the worldfrom within not from the dizzy heights of abstracttheory and ethical oppositionality. Rather than rejectbiological prospecting on grounds of principle, weneed instead to ask: what kind of bioprospecting forwhat kind of benefits in which contexts? In answer-ing such a complex question we may still end uprejecting bioprospecting, but at least we do so onimmanent grounds, both theoretically and empiric-ally. We may, equally, find ways to redefine and alterits benefits in the interest of certain notions of eco-logical and social justice. In either case the academicleft will certainly find its imagination taxed in makingpractical judgements about specific contexts regard-ing particular bioprospecting practices. This is whymy all-too-brief critique of how bioprospecting’sadvocates make their case empirically insisted uponattention to conjunctural particulars not unspecificexplanatory or moral generalities. There is, in short,a world of engaged critique to be had if only onemakes the effort to embrace it.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Ron Martin and Adam Tickellfor their very helpful comments on the first draft.This paper draws on field research conductedin Costa Rica and I therefore offer a collectivethank you to the many people who gave of theirtime and expertise during my field visits. I wishto acknowledge the financial assistance of the RSG-IBG, who part-funded my Costa Rica trips throughtheir small grants scheme. Finally, I’m grateful toRamon Ribera for translating Spanish to Englishbetter than I can.

Notes

1 There are three main types of bioprospecting: genetic,chemical and mechanical/bionic (Mateo et al. 2001,473). These can be applied to both ‘wild’ and ‘anthro-pogenic’ biodiversity.

Bioprospecting 53

2 There is some ambiguity here as several commentators(e.g. Flitner 1998, 157) have described it as a quasi-state body. In strictly legal terms INBio is a non-profit,private institution. However, in practice it retainsa formal link to the national state because it hasprocedural and financial ties to MINAE, Costa Rica’senvironment ministry. This does not imply any directcontrol on the part of MINAE but, rather, that INBiohas certain commitments to MINAE that it must fulfil.

3 A book that, prior to the foundation of INBio, wasthe unrivalled source of information on Costa Ricanwildlife.

4 Laird, formerly of the Rainforest Alliance, is now afreelance researcher with policy interests in access toand control over biodiversity. She wrote a chapterexplaining how bioprospecting contracts might workin practice in the Reid et al. (1993) book, and has sinceundertaken detailed investigations of bio-contractingin Cameroon and South Africa.

5 And, of course, anthropologists (e.g. Clifford 1988) andsociologists of science (e.g. Woolgar 1988) who havewrestled most intensively, and at times tortuously, withthis issue of how the empirical world is re-presentedin thought.

6 This essay, as stated, weds a critical analysis of exist-ing theoretical and empirical claims about biopro-specting in published academic and policy literatureto insights plucked from a body of secondary andprimary data on INBio gathered by the author. Duringtwo research trips (May and August–September 2001),23 face-to-face interviews were conducted with a varietyof bioprospecting stakeholders in Costa Rica. Theseincluded senior figures in INBio, parataxonomists,senior members of environmental non-governmentalorganizations (international and local), indigenousorganizations and representatives of MINAE. In addi-tion, a large volume of secondary information onlynominally in the public domain was assembled, includ-ing unpublished reports on bioprospecting in CostaRica, copies of INBio’s contracts, and untranslatedgovernment documents, edicts and laws. Phone inter-views were conducted with representatives of all butone of INBio’s prospecting partners from the last decade.This essay is not, though, a systematic presentationand analysis of the data gathered by the author (for thatsee Castree unpublished). Rather, this essay reflects moreon the broader question of evidence evaluation. Thisis less an issue of the quantity and quality of evidenceand more one of what evidence is made to stand-for –cognitively and normatively – by those using it.

7 Das’s (2002) recent essay on contrasting interpretationsof the Green Revolution is an interesting counter-point to the present paper in this regard. Implicitin his analysis is the idea that one can adjudicatebetween rival perspectives on an issue by recourse toseemingly theoretical evidence. Though I doubt verymuch he would want to defend such a position, byavoiding the difficult issue of the theory–evidence

relationship, he exposes himself to criticism on thisvery point.

8 Costa Rica is a country of exceptions and contradic-tions. It is a biodiversity hotspot, containing an estim-ated one twentieth of global biodiversity despiteonly being the size of West Virginia. On paper, atleast, a quarter of the country has protected areastatus and yet rates of deforestation and biodiversityloss are among the highest in the developing world.Finally, the country is among the most stable in LatinAmerica and its close cultural and trading links withthe USA no doubt partly accounts for the unusuallylarge number of English-speaking environmentalNGOs active in the country (like Conservation Inter-national, the Rainforest Alliance, and the WorldResources Institute). For basic introductions to CostaRica see Baker (1993) The Costa Rica Handbook, Barry (1989)Costa Rica: A Country Guide and Daling (1998) Costa Rica.

9 I say reputedly because the figures vary depending onthe source. Mateo (2000, 45), for example, insists thatsome 34 per cent of the country is protected when oneincludes public lands, private reserves and indigen-ous territories. However, figures like this are almostcertainly paper figures only. In practice there aredoubts about MINAE’s capacity to protect (often remote)designated areas, while many private nature reservesand indigenous areas are subject to illegal logging,poaching, ranching and mining. This perhaps explainsNygren’s (1998, 202) low estimate that only 12 percent of the country’s nature reserves and parks arebeing effectively protected.

10 In a well-known and contentious paper in Nature,Costanza et al. (1997) tried to place monetary valueson the various ‘services’ currently provided gratis bythe world’s biodiversity, costing them into trillions ofUS dollars.

11 Among Costa Rica’s several claims to fame in the envir-onmental field is that it has perhaps the most compre-hensive environmental law of any developing country,with seven Acts covering a range of nature-related issues.

12 Though INBio does not, de jure, have exclusive rightsto access and sell Costa Rica’s biodiversity, it has amajor de facto advantage since no other organizationlike it exists in the country, with the exception ofCATIE – a tropical research centre in Turrialba – anduniversity biology departments.

13 Costa Rica is something of a conservation favouriteamong governmental and non-governmental environ-mental agencies world-wide. Virtually every inter-national environmental NGO has a presence in thecountry, while the US government has for decadesused the country as a test-bed for new eco-initiatives.

14 See Pearce (1989), Perrings (1995), Helm (1991), Swanson(1997) and McNeely (1988).

15 Tamayo et al. (1997); Nader and Mateo (2001); Mateoet al. (2001); Mateo (1997, 2000); Nader and Rojas(1996); Sittenfeld (1996); Sittenfeld and Lovejoy (1998);Sittenfeld et al. (1999); Sittenfeld et al. (2000).

54 Noel Castree

16 This is an estimate for the revenues generated bythe following biotechnology sectors: pharmaceuticals,botanical medicines, seeds, horticulture, crop protec-tion, ‘natural foods’ and cosmetics.

17 For instance, according to Nader and Mateo (2001,187) the US National Cancer Institute tested over114 000 extracts from some 35 000 plant species fornew anti-cancer drugs between 1960 and 1982 and onlyone – taxol – is being used clinically today.

18 The precise payments remain undisclosed so thatINBio does not hobble itself in future contract negoti-ations with new companies and research institutions.

19 Though no published figures exist on salaries paid toparataxonomists since bioprospecting began at INBio.

20 Of the principal critics of bioprospecting I cite in thisessay, Martinez-Alier stands out as arguably the least‘academic’ and the most activist (aside from the nowdeceased Darrell Posey). His socialization into Spanishacademia arguably accounts for this difference. InSpain, as in Italy, the university left has along seen itsrole as a practical as much as intellectual one. Theother critics I cite are all Anglophone academics whoare, arguably, largely immured in universities.

21 Or, rather, on the ears on the already converted, i.e.those on the academic left.

22 Though he does not talk about INBio specifically, I thinkEscobar (1996 1999) is especially culpable in this regard,persistently favouring ‘vignettes’ about his chosen studyarea – rural Colombia – over sustained case analysis.

23 Again, my point here is not that we can check theveracity of the ‘theory’ against ‘the facts’ – a naïve andlong discredited version of epistemological realism.Rather, I aim to question the way theoretical categoriescan breath life into their own cognitive-normative claimsby collapsing the distinction between knowledge and‘reality’ so that the former substitutes for the latter (whatBhaskar has famously called the ‘epistemic fallacy’).

24 Brush cites publicly provided education and healthprovision as possible candidates rather than moneyper se, while Martinez-Alier envisages a body like theUN ensuring that developing countries get the ‘fullmonetary value’ for their biodiversity rather than justwhat they are ‘willing to accept’.

25 This imbalance between the critics’ biting diagnosis ofbioprospecting and their sketchy attempts to envisionalternatives is perhaps a very direct reflection of theiraforementioned status as university-based critics. Whenone’s audience is other academics reading articles inlearned journals, the opportunity to envisage abstractor utopian futures presents itself in ways it arguablydoes not when one’s audience is policy practitionersseeking concrete solutions.

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