LEADLawEnvironment and

DevelopmentJournal

VOLUME

9/2

EPISTEMIC SELECTIVITIES AND THE VALORISATION OF NATURE: THE CASES OFTHE NAGOYA PROTOCOL AND THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL SCIENCE-POLICY

PLATFORM FOR BIODIVERSITY AND ECOSYSTEM SERVICES (IPBES)

Ulrich Brand and Alice B.M. Vadrot

ARTICLE

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This document can be cited asUlrich Brand and Alice B.M. Vadrot, ‘Epistemic Selectivities and the Valorisation

of Nature: The Cases of the Nagoya Protocol and the IntergovernmentalScience-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)’,

9/2 Law, Environment and Development Journal (2013), p. 202,available at http://www.lead-journal.org/content/13202.pdf

Ulrich Brand, Professor of International Politics, University of Vienna, Universitätsstrasse 7,1010 Vienna/Austria, Email: ulrich.brand@univie.ac.at

Alice B.M. Vadrot, Research Fellow, ICCR Foundation, Schottenfeldgasse 69, 1070 Vienna/Austria,Email: vadrot@iccr-foundation.org

Published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 License

* We would like to thank Wendy Godek for language editing, three anonymous reviewers, Christoph Görg, John Kleba,Dwijen Rangnekar, Markus Wissen and the participants of the Workshop ‘Fairness and Bio-Knowledge – The NagoyaProtocol’ in June 2011 in Warwick for useful comments on earlier versions of this article.

ARTICLE

EPISTEMIC SELECTIVITIES AND THE VALORISATION OFNATURE: THE CASES OF THE NAGOYA PROTOCOL AND

THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL SCIENCE-POLICY PLATFORMFOR BIODIVERSITY AND ECOSYSTEM SERVICES (IPBES)

Ulrich Brand and Alice B.M. Vadrot*

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction 204

2. Epistemic Selectivities: Theoretical Considerations 207

3. Truth and Power in Selective Biodiversity Politics 2103.1 Biodiversity Knowledge and the ‘Pay to Conserve Logic’ 2103.2 Science-policy Interface for Sustaining the ‘Pay to Conserve Logic’ 2113.3 The Implementation of the ‘Pay to Conserve Logic’ Through and

Beyond Markets for Ecosystem Services 215

4. Conclusion: The Making of Epistemic Selectivities andBiodiversity Knowledge 218

1INTRODUCTION

Despite worldwide recognition that the loss ofbiodiversity must be stopped due to the enormousand interrelated problems it is causing – from thedestruction of local livelihoods and potentialresources for the development of drugs and seeds toimplications for climate change and, not least of all,the intrinsic value of biological diversity1 – effortsto achieve the target of halting the loss of biodiversityhave failed.2 At the Conference of the Parties to theConvention on Biological Diversity (CBD) inNagoya in October 2010, it had to be acknowledgedthat the ‘2010 target’ – formulated in April 2002 asthe aim to reduce the growth rate of biodiversitydegradation – was missed. Twenty years after theCBD came into force in December 1993, the existingbiodiversity governance system, of which the CBDconstitutes a key element, is increasingly picturedas deficient, fragmented, and unstructured.3 Theresults of the United Nations Conference onSustainable Development held in Rio de Janeiro inJune 2012 complement this picture. The concept ofthe ‘Green Economy’ and accompanying reform ofthe UN structure as a means of reinvigoratinginternational environmental politics and policiesrepresents an awkward attempt to mainstreamenvironmental issues and to remove complexproblems at hand. The vision is that economicvaluation of natural resources and the developmentof market-based environmental and new innovativefinancial policy instruments will contribute to

solving environmental problems without dismissingthe idea of economic growth.4 In this respect,commodification framed in terms of identifying andjustifying new financial sources and markets for theprotection of nature is a ‘new’ trend inenvironmental policy-making based on the premise‘[...] that the natural environment can best besafeguarded by valuing and managing ‘nature’sservices’ as tradable commodities’.5 The concept of‘Green Economy’ and the proposed market-basedpolicy instruments are attractive to internationalpolicymakers because they blame ‘[...] biodiversitydestruction on abstractions: ‘market failure’ and‘policy failures’ [...] [purporting] to provide anobjective metric for estimating the values of allcomponents of nature worldwide [...]’.6

The coining of the term ‘biodiversity’ by Rosen in1985 represented a critical point in the developmentand evolution of biodiversity research, especially withregard to the economic value of biodiversity. Morerecently the publication of both the MillenniumEcosystem Assessment and The Economics of Ecosystemsand Biodiversity (TEEB) have emphasised the

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1 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Ecosystems andHuman well-being: General Synthesis (Washington DC:Island Press, 2005) [hereafter MA 2005] and TEEB, TheEconomics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity: An InterimReport (Cambridge UK: Banson Production, 2008)[hereafter TEEB report].

2 Status of Implementation of Goals 2 and 3 of the StrategicPlan Focusing on Implementation of NationalBiodiversity Strategies and Action Plans and Availabilityof Financial Resources: An Overview, UN Doc. UNEP/CBD/WG-RI/2/2 (2007).

3 Benoît Martimort-Asso and Philippe LePrestre, IssuesRaised by the International Environmental GovernanceSystem (Paris: IDDRI, Working Papers No.12/2004,2004).

4 UNEP, Towards a Green Economy: Pathways toSustainable Development and Poverty Eradication(Nairobi: UNEP, 2011) [hereafter Green EconomyReport], World Bank, Massive Show of Support for Actionon Natural Capital Accounting At Rio Summit, PressRelease, 20 June 2012, available at http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/2012/06/20/massive-show-support-action-natural-capital-accounting-rio-summit; WBCSD – World Business Council forSustainable Development, Vision 2050. The New Agendafor Business (2012), available at http://www.wbcsd.org/vision2050.aspx and for a critique, Ulrich Brand, ‘AfterSustainable Development: Green Economy as the NextOxymoron?’ 21/1 GAIA - Ecological Perspectives forScience and Society 28 (2012).

5 Kathleen McAfee and Elizabeth N. Shapiro, ‘Paymentsfor Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism,Social Movements and the State’ 100/3 Annals of theAssociation of American Geographers 580 (2010).

6 Kathleen McAfee, ‘Selling Nature to Save It? Biodiversityand Green Developmentalism’ 17 Environment andPlanning D: Society and Space 133, 151 (1999). In a laterarticle, McAfee refers to the term ‘selling nature to saveit’ in order to grasp the implications of internationalpayment for ecosystem services (PES) projects financedby biodiversity banking and carbon-offset sales. SeeKathleen McAfee, ‘The Contradictory Logic of GlobalEcosystem Services Markets’ 43/1 Development andChange 105 (2012).

advantages of an anthropocentric view of biodiversityand related research on the interrelations betweenbiodiversity, ecosystem services, and human well-being. In the introduction to the famous book,Biodiversity, Edward O. Wilson claims that‘Biodiversity must be treated more seriously as aglobal resource, to be indexed, used, and above all,preserved’.7 Some scholars interpret this history tobe an indicator of the crucial role of biologists andnatural scientists in setting the political agenda onbiodiversity and in pointing to the value ofbiodiversity and the necessity of related research.8More recently, a more effective interplay betweenbiodiversity science, policy, and valuation ispromoted on both scientific and political terrains asimpetus for more effective biodiversity governanceand implementation of the CBD. The coupling ofthese three elements has supplemented the efforts ofthose arguing that ‘IPCC for biodiversity’ is likelyto contribute to more effective and efficient policyand politics of nature conservation. After seven yearsof consultations and negotiations, the IntergovernmentalScience- Policy Platform for Biodiversity and EcosystemServices (IPBES) was finally established in April 2012in Panama as an independent and intergovernmentalscience-policy interface for strengthening the linkbetween science and policy for biodiversity.9

The implementation problems of the CBD are,however, more diverse. It is widely recognised thatthese relate to the inefficiency of MultilateralEnvironmental Agreements (MEAs), the overlappingand fragmented structure of the biodiversitygovernance system, the UN negotiation principles,and the intangible scope of the CBD, especially

regarding the objective to couple the conservationand use of biodiversity with ‘[…] the fair and equitablesharing of the benefits arising out of the utilisationof genetic resources […]’10. However, anunderstanding of the underlying causal mechanismslike the political economy of biodiversity and relatedconflicts requires a more sophisticated understandingof both international biodiversity politics and therelationship between science and policy, i.e. howproblem perceptions and framings and theinstitutions, concepts and instruments developed to‘solve’ these problems become accepted andhegemonic. An analysis of underlying causalmechanisms and their theoretical explanation isinsofar important and challenging as the processthrough which the modes of dealing with theecological crisis become accepted is hegemonicallystructured and conflictual at the same time. Forinstance, the discrepancies regarding the expectationsof states from the Global North and from the GlobalSouth of the impact of the CBD on the realisation ofnational interests and agendas affect the content,negotiation, and forms of compromises.11 But, in theend, the CBD’s ‘[...] global economic paradigm pinsthe fate of diversity on the outcome of competitionamong economically powerful bidders in the ‘global’market who may at best have a temporal interest inthe conservation of one or a few elements of diversityexercised from their eco-social context’.12

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7 Edward O. Wilson ed, Biodiversity 3 (Washington:National Academy Press, 1988).

8 David Takacs, The Idea of Biodiversity: Philosophies ofParadise 1 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 1996); Markku Oksanen, ‘Biodiversity ConsideredPhilosophically: An Introduction’, in Markku Oksanenand Juhani Pietarinen eds, Philosophy and Biodiversity 1,4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) andCheryl L. Dybas, ‘Biodiversity: The Interplay of Science,Valuation, and Policy’ 56/10 BioScience 792 (2006).

9 Report of the second session of the plenary meeting todetermine modalities and institutional arrangements foran intergovernmental science-policy platform onbiodiversity and ecosystem services, 24 January 2012,UN. Doc. UNEP/IPBES/MI/2/9 (2012) [hereafterPanama Outcome].

10 Article 1 of the CBD. Overview in: Ulrich Brand andChristoph Görg, ‘Regimes in Global EnvironmentalGovernance and the Internationalization of the State: TheCase of Biodiversity Politics’ 1/1 International Journalof Social Science Studies 110 (2013).

11 Ulrich Brand et al., Conflicts in Environmental Regulationand the Internationalisation of the State. Contested Terrains(London/New York: Routledge, 2010) and Kristin G.Rosendal, ‘The Convention on Biological Diversity:Tensions with the WTO TRIPS Agreement over Accessto Genetic Ressources and the Sharing of Benefits’, inSebastian Oberthür and Thomas Gehring eds, InstitutionalInteraction in Global Environmental Governance: Synergyand Conflict among International and EU Policies 79(Cambridge/Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2006). Notethat within the political and public debate of Northerncountries, confusion between biological diversity andspecies conservation remains; c.f. Beate Jessel, ‘ZwischenAnspruch und Wirklichkeit. Das Übereinkommen überdie biologische Vielfalt und sein Einfluss auf dieNaturschutzpolitik’ 21/1 GAIA 22 (2012).

12 See McAfee, Selling Nature to Save It, note 6 above, at151.

Bearing this in mind, we argue that the regulation ofknowledge on biodiversity plays a crucial role insustaining and implementing this global economicparadigm of valorisation. Hence, the features ofinternational biodiversity politics, which is mainlyinstitutionalised through the CBD, can better beunderstood when we consider two dimensions:13 firstand quite explicitly, the interplay betweenbiodiversity science, policy, and valorisation in theframework of the CBD in general and the NagoyaProtocol in particular and the problem diagnosis ofa too narrow (scientific) knowledge base that hasshaped the negotiations leading to the establishmentof the IPBES. And, second, the trend towards afurther commodification of nature under the auspicesof the concept of ecosystem services that ‘has reachedthe highest level of global environmental governanceand development policy’.14

Against this background, the aim of this article is toanalyse the interplay between biodiversity science,policy, and the tendency towards economicvalorisation. This is visible in the negotiationsleading to the establishment of the IPBES and theNagoya Protocol by detecting the ‘pay to conservelogic’ and the explicit and implicit assumption thatthe valuation of biodiversity leads to betterarguments for its conservation and sustainable usefrom the struggles over meaning and powerinvolved. In order to do so, this article departs fromthe premises of the strategic-relational approach

assuming that political action takes place understructured conditions, i.e. a strategically selective,pre-existing context, which favour certain strategiesover others. This means in our understanding thatthe knowledge actors have on both the institutionaland discursive context within which they act andtheir interpretation of the means by which the objectshould be governed to best realise their interest andstrategies, is selectively structured. Moreover, themeans by which they understand, interpret, andconstruct this context influences, though selectively,the equally selectively strategic constitution of theunderlying structure and the object to be governed.

In order to clarify the role of knowledge and sciencein policy-making processes, the concept of epistemicselectivities is introduced and serves as an analyticaltool that guides the analysis. The concept is basedon a specific understanding of selectivities as apolitical mode of the political economy ofinternational biodiversity politics. It takes (a) thediscursive power of ‘knowledge and truth’ intoaccount as well as the fact that (b) the CBD is partof the internationalised state, which is a mechanismthat tends to privilege certain interests andworldviews over others,15 and, at the same time,creates a terrain to deal with manifold societal andpolitical conflicts. Consequently, we detectimportant roots of governance ineffectiveness orfailure not only in the absence of political will ordiverging political interests but also in thecontradictory dynamics of modern capitalisteconomies and societies and more particularly in itstendency towards the commodification of nature asan overall trend and as an often plausible way todeal with problems. Moreover, the political

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13 Of course, actual climate change policies also constitute aplatform of discourses and mechanisms to deal withcontrolling what ought to be governed, e.g. in the Amazon.And, indeed, the development of concepts and instrumentsshows similarities and overlaps, as in the case of REDD+(Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and ForestDegradation) and payment ecosystem services (PES), whichare market-based environmental policy instruments thatboth aim to set the financial value of natural resources andprocesses in order to establish global markets. Theoverlapping processes which constitute the objects ofgovernance could be a separate research agenda. However,in this article we focus on the CBD and related mechanisms.

14 Jessica Dempsey and Morgan M. Robertson, ‘EcosystemServices: Tensions, Impurities and Points of Engagementwithin Neoliberalism’ 36/6 Progress in Human Geography758 (2012) and Erik Gómez-Baggethun and Manuel RuizPérez, ‘Economic Valuation and the Commodificationof Ecosystem Services’ 35/5 Progress in Physical Geography613 (2012).

15 For an interesting example relating to the struggles ofdifferent worldviews with regard to the recognition of‘biocultural rights’ throughout the negotiations of theNagoya Protocol, see Kabir Bavikatte and Daniel F.Robinson, ‘Towards a People’s History of the Law:Biocultural Jurisprudence and the Nagoya Protocol onAccess and Benefit Sharing’ 7/1 Law Environment andDevelopment Journal 37 (2011). ‘Biocultural jurisprudencethen is the theory and practice of applying a bioculturalrights framework to law and policy, when such law andpolicy affects a community whose peoplehood is integrallytied to their traditional stewardship role and fiduciaryduties vis-à-vis their lands and concomitant knowledge’.Id., at 50.

economy of biodiversity politics considers itsembeddedness in North–South relations and relatedforms of knowledge and truth.

In the following sections, we first elaborate thetheoretical consideration which our analysis is basedon by introducing the notion of epistemicselectivities in the context of a criticalconceptualisation of the state, which goes beyondan understanding of the state as a rule-setter and aproblem-solver. Thereafter, three dimensions ofepistemic selectivities are examined. First, we discussthe specificities of biodiversity knowledge and therelation to ‘the pay to conserve logic’. Second, theway in which science-policy interfaces contributeto the sustainability of this logic and, third, themeans by which related inequalities are embeddedand implemented through the CBD in general andthe Nagoya Protocol in particular are discussed. Thearticle ends with a tentative outlook and an argumentfor why epistemic selectivities provide a valuableanalytical framework for understanding thedynamics and problems of global (environmental)politics over the last three decades.

2EPISTEMIC SELECTIVITIES: THEO-RETICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Epistemic selectivities are those mechanismsinscribed within political institutions which privilegeparticular forms of knowledge, problem perceptions,and narratives over others. The notion of epistemicselectivities differs from the concept of epistemiccommunities insofar as it builds on a specificunderstanding of the relations between structure andagency, taking into account the notion of discursivepower and hegemony. Epistemic communities,defined as a group of professionals with expertise ona defined issue that is based on a shared set of norms,beliefs, and problem perceptions, are seen tocontribute to increasing cooperation in internationalpolitics by providing policymakers with knowledgeon emerging issues. Beyond the provision of specificknowledge and expertise, epistemic communities are

seen to frame current and future policy issues,16 andto set standards and criteria for the validation of thisknowledge, often defined in terms of usableknowledge.17 One could argue that epistemiccommunities significantly contribute to theseparation of facts from non-facts and of science fromnon-science,18 i.e. the definition of what accounts asscientific evidence and as policy relevant knowledge.It is important to note that the concept of epistemiccommunities starts with the assumption of sharedbeliefs and norms among a specific group of expertsthat potentially leads to the establishment ofinstitutions interfacing science and policy such as,for example, the IPCC. But the concept does not takeinto account the mechanisms privileging particularforms of knowledge within those institutions and thehegemonic account of knowledge beyond thedefinitional role of particular networks of experts.

In turn, the notion of epistemic selectivities wepropose in this article takes into account patterns ofselectivity leading to the domination of specific formsof knowledge, perceptions of problems, andnarratives over others. It is based on the assumptionthat political institutions are material condensationsof societal power relations and discourses thatsimultaneously underlie, form, and reproduceepistemic selectivities as a crucial political mode topromote certain scientific and political self-evidence.In order to understand the underlying mechanismsof epistemic selectivities, it is important to refer tothe relational character of structure and agency, interalia, outlined in the strategic-relational-approach(SRA) developed by Bob Jessop.19 The SRA focuseson institutional and discursive strategic selectivitiesand aims to explain why ‘[p]articular forms of state

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16 Emanuel Adler and Peter M. Haas, ‘Conclusion:Epistemic Communities, World Order, and the Creationof a Reflective Research Program’ 46/1 InternationalOrganisation 367 (1992).

17 Peter M. Haas, ‘Science and International EnvironmentalGovernance’, in Peter Dauvergne ed, Handbook of GlobalEnvironnetal Politics 383, 386 (Cheltenham/UKNorthampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Pub, 2005).

18 E.g. Sheila Jasanoff, The Fifth Branch: Science Advisers asPolicymakers (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990).

19 Bob Jessop, State Theory: Putting the Capitalist State in itsPlace (Cambridge: Polity 1990) [hereafter Jessop] and BobJessop, State Power: A Strategic-Relational Approach(Cambridge: Polity 2007).

apparatus as capable of discerning all acceptablestatements from those that are available within aspecific field of scientificity. Discourses which aredesignated as strategically-coordinated apparatusesof power represent an accumulation of thesestatements under a specific logic that sets rules forexclusion, limitation, and prohibition.26

Our approach takes actors and their alliances intoaccount – like the epistemic communities literature– but it develops a more sophisticated understandingof how global economic paradigms of valorisationare reproduced at the intersection of science andpolicy. We embed the concept of epistemic selectivitieswithin a broader context of political economy – oreven cultural political economy27 in order to detectthe dominant driving forces of societal developmentsthat cause environmental problems and to relate themto the constitution of a contingent ‘corridor’ of thepossible and plausible making of policy. By analysingbiodiversity politics as means of dealing with theerosion of biodiversity, we cannot abstract from capitalistgrowth imperatives, industrial forms of production,and consumption as well as certain ‘modern’subjectivities.28 And we cannot overlook the fact thatthe state and international political institutions are

privilege some strategies over others, privilege theaccess of some forces over others, some interests overothers, some time horizons over others, somecoalition possibilities over others’.20 Hence, theconcept of strategic and epistemic selectivities is basedon the assumption that social, political, and economic‘structures are selective of strategy in the sense that,given a specific context, only certain courses of strategicaction are likely to see actors realise their intention’.21

They are spatially and temporally specific, facilitatingand challenging the success of strategic interests ofactors.22 The original concept of strategic selectivitylacked a notion that is captured by the concept ofdiscursive selectivity introduced by Colin Hay, whoargues that the context within which actors formtheir interests and strategies is discursively mediatedand further mediates the individual knowledge ofactors about the context within which they act.23

The specific understanding of a context determinesthe set of alternatives from which actors choose theirstrategies and can lead to a ‘systematic misinterpretationof the context in question’.24

Even though the latter is reflected in the concept ofepistemic selectivities, it is not congruent with whatour concept stands for, namely the attempt to assessthe political mode of promoting certain scientificand political self-evidence through the analysis ofinstitutional configurations and related discourses.It goes beyond the selectivity within a specificcontext of decision-making and addresses thehegemonic account inherent in the production andre-production of knowledge, problem perceptions,and narratives regarding specific objects to begoverned in their context. The concept of epistemicselectivity is linked to the definition of epistemë as astrategic apparatus that makes possible the separationof what may be characterised as scientific from thatwhich is not.25 More specifically, Foucault sees this

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20 See Jessop, id., at 20.21 Colin Hay, ‘Globalisation as a Problem of Political

Analysis: Restoring Agents to a ‘Process without a Subject’and Politics to a Logic of Economic Compulsion’ 15/3Cambridge Review of International Affairs 379, 380 (2002).

22 Id, at 381.23 Id, at 382.24 Id.25 Michel Foucault and Colin Gordon eds, Power/Knowledge:

Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977 187 (NewYork: Pantheon Books, 1980).

26 Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History ofInsanity in the Age of Reason 183 (New York: PantheonBooks, 1988/1964).

27 Bob Jessop, ‘Critical Semiotic Analysis and CulturalPolitical Economy’ 1/2 Critical Discourse Studies 159 (2004)and Ngai-Ling Sum, ‘The Production of Hegemonic PolicyDiscourses: ‘Competitiveness’ as a Knowledge Brand andIts (Re-)contextualizations’ 3/2 Critical Policy Studies184 (2009).

28 See on this perspective in the context of political ecology,e.g. Peter Newell, ‘The Political Economy of GlobalEnvironmental Governance’ 34/2 Review of InternationalStudies 507 (2008); Richard Peet and Michael Watts eds,Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, SocialMovements (London/New York: Routledge, 2004);Timothy W. Luke, ‘Situating Knowledges, SpatializingCommunities, Sizing Contradictions: Globality, Localityand Green Statism’, in Gabriela G. Kütting and RonnieD. Lipschutz eds, Environmental Governance, Power andKnowledge in a Local-global World 13 (London/ New York:Routledge, 2009) and Ulrich Brand and Christoph Görg,‘Sustainability and Globalisation: A TheoreticalPerspective’, in Ken Conca, Mathias Finger and Jacob Parkeds, The Crisis of Global Environmental Governance.Towards A New Political Economy of Sustainability 13(London/New York: Routledge, 2008).

not neutral entities above or beside (world-) societybut reproduce manifold unsustainable practices,related discourses, and scientific tools.

The internationalised state – understood as a multi-scalar constellation – is more or less part ofhegemonic societal relations, i.e. broadly acceptedforms of societal development, production andconsumption patterns, and manifold forms ofdomination. At the same time, the internationalisedstate is key for managing the tensions and conflictsarising out of the appropriation of nature and theecological crisis. Such a perspective enables us todevelop an understanding of the transformation ofglobal (environmental) politics over the last threedecades. In other studies we have shown that thecurrent phase of capitalist development since the1980s is characterised by an intensification of a‘valorisation paradigm’, i.e. a growing politicaleconomic interest in the appropriation of nature forits marketing.29 This was not entirely new but gainedan enormous dynamic and articulated itself with thebeginning of explicit international environmentalgovernance. This is the case for not only watersupply, timber production, and climate changepolitics through the invention of so-called flexiblemechanisms but also and especially for geneticresources.30 It is not a mere economic process becausethe rules for the appropriation of nature have to beset politically, e.g. the protection of intellectualproperty rights from the use of genetic resources.

Therefore, we talk about a ‘post-Fordist governanceof nature’.31 Biodiversity markets are growing in avariety of areas, encompassing, for example, offsetand compensation programs.32 As we tried to showin the previous section, payments for ecosystemservices might become a cornerstone of internationalbiodiversity politics. In its internal provisions, the CBDis shaped by a tendency towards commercialisationand creates respective selectivities. The NagoyaProtocol can be interpreted as the institutionalisationof the free exchange of genetic resources (which doesnot mean free of charge). Like other forms of globalenvironmental governance, the CBD and the NagoyaProtocol serve as political-institutional frameworksfor emerging global markets and articulate local,national, and international forms of domination.

The CBD as an apparatus of the internationalisedstate is an unstable compromise to deal with theproblem of biodiversity loss and is ratherasymmetrically structured.33 According to Poulantzas,it can be argued that the (internationalised) state givescertain balances of forces a form (i.e. it gives therelationship among states, private corporations, andlocal actors, like indigenous peoples, continuitythrough the structured political terrain). As we aimto underline with the approach towards epistemicselectivities, such processes are not thinkable withoutthe development, recognition, and regulation ofscientific knowledge. Michel Foucault argued that itis impossible to understand the development ofscientific knowledge without taking into account thetransformation of power mechanisms. For him thetypical case would be that of the economy, butaccording to him biology has also developed fromcomplex elements such as the development ofagriculture, relations with foreign countries, and thesubjugation of colonies. Reflecting on the progress

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29 See Brand et al., note 11 above; Ulrich Brand and ChristophGörg, ‘Post-Fordist Governance of Nature: TheInternationalization of the State and the Case of GeneticResources: A Neo-Poulantzian Perspective’ 15/4 Reviewof International Political Economy 567 (2008) and Alice B.M. Vadrot, ‘Biodiversity and Society: Why should SocialSciences Have A Say’ 24/3 Innovation-The EuropeanJournal for Social Science Research 211 (2011).

30 See e.g. Brand et al., note 11 above in general and on geneticresources; on forests, see Peter Dauvergne and Jane Lister,‘The Power of Big Box Retail in Global EnvironmentalGovernance: Bringing Commodity Chains Back into IR’39/1 Millennium 145 (2010) and on carbon dioxideemissions and climate politics, see Larry Lohmann ed,Carbon Trading- A Critical Conversation on Climate Change,Privatisation and Power (Uppsala: Dag-Hammarskjöld-Foundation, 2006) and Achim Brunnengräber, ‘ThePolitical Economy of the Kyoto Protocol’, in Leo Panitchand Colin Leys eds, Socialist Register 2007: Coming to Termswith Nature 213 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2006).

31 See Brand and Görg, note 29 above.32 E.g. Becca Madsen, Nathaniel Carroll and Kelly Moore

Brands, ‘State of Biodiversity Markets Report: Offset andCompensation Programs Worldwide’ (2010), available athttp://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/documents/acrobat/sbdmr.pdf.

33 Ulrich Brand, Christoph Görg and Markus Wissen,‘Second-Order Condensations of Societal PowerRelations: Environmental Politics and theInternationalization of the State from a Neo-PoulantzianPerspective’ 43/1 Antipode 149 (2011).

of scientific knowledge is not possible withoutreflecting on mechanisms of power.34

3TRUTH AND POWER IN SELECTIVEBIODIVERSITY POLITICS

In the following section we will identify and analysethe epistemic selectivities within and throughout thedevelopment of biodiversity knowledge and relatedresearch. Then, we will show that the making of ascience-policy interface for biodiversity and ecosystemservices contributes to sustain these epistemic selectivities.We argue that epistemic selectivities shape the negotiationson whether and how to institutionalise the IPBESstrengthening the global economic paradigm inbiodiversity science and policy, i.e. ‘the pay toconserve logic’. We then examine how this paradigmshapes negotiations in the framework of the CBD ingeneral and the Nagoya Protocol in particular toexplain why the analysis of causal mechanisms likethe political economy of biodiversity remains importantfor understanding the dynamics and problems ofglobal (environmental) politics in recent decades.

3.1 Biodiversity Knowledge andthe ‘Pay to Conserve Logic’

Gaps in biodiversity knowledge and missingcommunication between science and policy inbiodiversity politics are increasingly conceived tochallenge the implementation of the CBD.35 One

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difficulty is that ‘in the field of biological diversitywidely varying concepts of nature meet (dependingon the viewpoints on ecosystems, species or geneticresources; from untouched nature or the ‘naturalwealth of the tropics’ to the utility of geneticresources), but also widely varying societal naturerelations (above all diverging forms of use)’.36 Therecognition of biodiversity as a valuable resource forhuman well-being seems obvious, even though thecontribution of biological diversity to functioningecosystems is sometimes difficult to prove, as is therole of some species in the maintenance of ecosystemservices. Recently, the Millennium EcosystemAssessment has provided more insight and evidencein this respect. Since the beginning of the scientificdebate on the biodiversity issue, economic questionshave been considered in political and scientificprogrammes. A case in point is the early literatureon the economic value of biodiversity and theconcept of ecosystem services.37

The assessment of the value of biodiversity has manydifferent dimensions and is hence difficult to carryout in a proper manner, especially with regard tothe impact of new technologies, such as that ofbiotechnology. Iltis already showed this in 1988 withhis estimate of the value of wild tomatoes, thediscovery of a new species of wild maize, and therole of related research.

The benefits of even the most unimportantresearch are often quite unexpected. Who wouldhave predicted that these tiny, slimy seeds ofa useless, ugly weed, stuck to an old newspapercosting no more than a few dollars and 30

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34 Michel Foucault, ‘Diskussion vom 20. Mai 1978’, inDaniel Defert and François Ewald eds, Schriften in vierBänden. Dits et Ecrits, Bd 4: 1980-1988 146 (Frankfurt amMain: Suhrkamp, 2005).

35 Science-policy interface on biodiversity and ecosystemservices: gap analysis, 3 August 2009, UN Doc. UNEP/IPBES/2/2 3 (2009) [hereafter Gap Analysis]; Alice B.M.Vadrot, Understanding the Establishment of theIntergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity andEcosystem Services (IPBES): Epistemic Selectivities inInternational Biodiversity Politics (Ph.D. Thesispresented at the University of Vienna 2013) and AliceB.M. Vadrot, The Politics of Knowledge and GlobalBiodiversity (London: Routledge, 2014) [forthcoming].

36 Christoph Görg and Ulrich Brand,‘Global EnvironmentalPolitics and Competition Between Nation-states: On theRegulation of Biological Diversity’ 7/3 Review of InternationalPolitical Economy 378 (2000). See also Vadrot, note 29 above.

37 Michael Flitner, ‘Biodiversität: oder das Öl, das Meer unddie ‘Tragödie der Gemeingüter’, in Christoph Görg et al.eds, Zugänge zur Biodiversität. Disziplinäre Thematisierungenund Möglichkeiten integrierender Ansätze 53, 59 (Marburg:Metropolis-Verlag, 1996). For examples see Herman E.Daly and Kenneth N. Townsend, Valuing Earth - Economics,Ecology, Ethics (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993); Brian G.Norton, Why Preserve Natural Variety? (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1987); David W. Pearce,Economic Values and the Natural World (London: MIT Press,1993) and David W. Pearce and Dominic Moran, TheEconomic Value of Biodiversity (London: Earthscan, 1994).

minutes of our time, might enrich the U.S.economy by tens of millions of dollars [...].38

He points to both the fact that species can have avalue as commodities and to the role of research indiscovering and revealing this value. Whilst earlyattempts to estimate the value of biodiversity wererather calculative experiments than applicableapproaches, more recently economic valuation ofbiodiversity - most notably in the framework of TheEconomics Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) - hasshifted towards more pragmatic and applicableapproaches, including the recognition of the needsof local policymakers and local communities as wellas the business and financial sectors. One importantstep in this direction was to strengthen the link betweenbiodiversity and ecosystem services, i.e. the attempt toprovide evidence that the conservation of biodiversitycontributes to the stable provision of ecosystemservices that promote human well-being or thepresentation of biodiversity as an ecosystem service.

The current shift towards the economic valuation ofbiodiversity and the concept of ecosystem services isrelated to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessmentfrom 2005. This conceptual shift has underpinnedthe relationship between biodiversity and ecosystemservices, the coupling of conservation and use, andthe role of ecosystem services in the development ofmarked-based environmental policy instruments forbiodiversity and the development of markets for non-traditional natural resources.39 It is important to notethat the concept of ecosystem services is assessed, usedand employed differently. Whilst the MillenniumEcosystem Assessment uses a very broad definitionof ecosystem services,40 figuring as a heuristic conceptfor showing and communicating the value of theelements of nature that are not yet monetised,scholars such as Costanza et al. and the TEEB

study41 inter alia perceive the concept to serve as apolicy instrument for integrating non-traditionalresources into GDP and cost-benefit analyses throughrationalised and evidence-based policy decisions. Yet,some scholars aim to operationalise the concept ascommodities for new markets obscuring the potentialrole of ecosystem services as policy or conservationinstruments.42 But, the development andoperationalisation of the concept of ecosystemservices is both debated and scientifically questioned.Nahlik et al. point to the inconsistency of terms,definitions, and classifications within approachesaiming at the development of a conceptualframework for the application of ecosystemservices.43 Along the same lines, Kontogianni et al.argue that ‘[d]espite the burgeoning interest inecosystem services, there are currently no widelyaccepted methods to include services in conservationassessments’.44 Nevertheless, the shift towards ananthropocentric approach to biodiversity and thedevelopment of market-based environmental policyinstruments are often conceived as communicationmetaphors and tools to raise awareness about theerosion of biodiversity, to increase theimplementation of biodiversity politics, and to finallytackle environmental problems. This claim andrelated conflicts are reflected in the negotiationsleading to the establishment of the IPBES and itsinstitutional configuration.

3.2 Science-policy Interface forSustaining the ‘Pay to ConserveLogic’

The development of arguments for why science andscientists should play a major role in biodiversitypolitics coincided with the birth of the term‘biodiversity’ in preparation for the National Forum

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38 Hugh H. Iltis, ‘Serendipity in the Exploration ofBiodiversity: What Good Are Weedy Tomatoes?’, inEdward O. Wilson, Biodiversity 98, 103 (Washington DC:National Academy Press, 1988)

39 MA 2005, note 1 above.40 The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment’s classification

considers four different categories: Provision services(e.g., water and food); regulatory services (pollination andwater regulation), cultural services (e.g., aesthetics andrecreation), and services required for the production ofall other services. See MA 2005, note 1 above.

41 See TEEB Report, note 1 above.42 James Boyd and Spencer Banzhaf, ‘What are Ecosystem

Services? The Need for Standardized EnvironmentalAccounting Unit’ 63 Ecological Economics 616 (2007).

43 Amanda M. Nahlik et al., ‘Where is the Consensus? AProposed Foundation for Moving Ecosystem ServiceConcepts Into Practice’ 77 Ecological Economics 27 (2012).

44 Areti Kontogianni, Gary W. Luck and Michalis Skourtos,‘Valuing Ecosystem Services on the Basis of Service-providing Units: A Potential Approach to Address the‘Endpoint Problem’ and Improve Stated PreferenceMethods’ 69/7 Ecological Economics 1479, 1480 (2010).

on Biodiversity. Biologists such as Edward O. Wilson,Paul R. Ehrlich, Harold A. Mooney, and others arguethat scientists have a specific responsibility for raisingawareness on the implications of deforestation, theextension of species, and the application of newscientific tools such as those of biotechnology.45 Sincethe CBD was established in 1992, improving therelationship between science and policy has oftenbeen conceived as an important way to strengthenthe mandate of the CBD and its implementation.46

Jane Lubchenco has expressed the necessity tointegrate science and scientists in the developmentof a biodiversity strategy, arguing that the best policyand management are based on the ‘best science’.47

Later on and given the obvious problems concerningeffective biodiversity politics, the argument wasstrengthened that the CBD, in contrast to the UnitedNation Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC), ‘does not have the structural means tomobilise expertise of a large scientific community toinform governments’ has contributed to the idea ofdeveloping an ‘IPCC for biodiversity’ that ‘hasfloated around for some years’.48 The idea to establishan international panel for biodiversity was clearlyand openly presented at the conference ‘BiodiversityScience and Governance’ held in Paris in 2005, whichwas attended by 2000 scientists, policyrepresentatives, and non-governmental stakeholders.Leduc et al. argued that:

In order to ensure coordinated actionsinternationally and appropriate transfer ofknowledge between science and policy, it istime to establish an international orintergovernmental mechanism playing a roleakin to that of the IPCC for climate changeon all aspects of biodiversity.49

This was also made explicit at the 56th annualmeeting of the American Institute of BiologicalSciences (AIBS) in 2006 in Washington DC that inturn focused on the need to strengthen the linkbetween ecology and economy.50

Since then attempts have been intensified to createa formalised intergovernmental science-policyinterface (SPI) to ‘generate readily accessibleinformation about the status and trends ofbiodiversity, projections of future changes inbiodiversity and the ecosystem services that dependon it, and options to conserve biodiversity andecosystem services and mitigate adverse impacts ofbiodiversity changes’.51 After a three-yearconsultative process from 2005 to 2008,52 and threemulti-stakeholder meetings from 2008 to 2010 underthe auspices of the United Nations EnvironmentProgramme (UNEP), representatives ofgovernments agreed ‘[…] that no intergovernmentalmechanism currently existed to meet all the sciencepolicy needs of the multiple multilateralenvironmental agreements and processes in the fieldof biodiversity and ecosystem services’.53 A gapanalysis produced for the second meeting hadpreviously shown that ‘[…] shared frameworks,methodologies and basic understandings to respondto the complex nature of biodiversity and ecosystem

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45 See Wilson, note 7 above.46 Kal Raustiala and David G. Victor, ‘Biodiversity Since

Rio: The Future of the Convention on BiologicalDiversity’ 38/4 Environment 16, 17-18 (1996).

47 Jane Lubchenco, ‘The Role of Science in Formulating aBiodiversity Strategy’ 45 BioScience Supplement Scienceand Biodiversity Policy 7, 8 (1995).

48 Michel Loreau et al., ‘Diversity Without Representation’442 Nature 245, 246 (2006).

49 Robert Barbault and Jean-Patrick Leduc, ‘Proceedings ofthe International Conference on Biodiversity, Science andGovernance for Sustainable Development, 23-28 January2005, 56 (Paris: UNESCO, 2005).

50 At the 56th annual meeting of the American Institute ofBiological Sciences (AIBS), attendees discussed how toshow that conservation of biodiversity ensures ecosystemservices for human well-being and by what means. Onescientist argued that the investigation of these causalitiesprovides a chance ‘to rethink how ecologists do scienceand communicate it to the rest of the world’ and how‘we can speak to decisionmakers and policy-makers a lotmore clearly than we have been able to in the past’. ShahidNaeem quoted in Dybas, note 8 above, at 795.

51 E.g. Loreau et al., note 48 above, at 245-246 and AnneLarigauderie and Harold A. Mooney, ‘TheIntergovernmental Science-Policy Platform onBiodiversity and Ecosystem Services: Moving A StepCloser to an IPCC- Like Mechanism for Biodiversity’ 2Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 1 (2010).

52 This refers to the consultative process towards anInternational Mechanism of Scientific Expertise onBiodiversity, IMoSEB.

53 Report of the third ad hoc intergovernmental and multistakeholder meeting on an intergovernmental science-policy platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services,11 June 2010, UN Doc. UNEP/IPBES/3/3 (2010)[hereafter Busan Outcome].

communities that contribute to the promotion of‘IPCC for biodiversity’. Indeed, ‘the internationalscience community, which is rather naive aboutthese issues, basically wants to get better prestigeabout their biodiversity knowledge and theirbiodiversity advice to policymakers. And they thinkif they have an IPCC-like structure, thenautomatically policymakers will take it up’.58

However, there are discrepancies within scientificcommunities on what such a body should look likeand what knowledge it should generate.DIVERSITAS and IUCN stressed the role of globalscientific assessments in the tradition of theMillennium Ecosystem Assessment and referred tothe need to ensure scientific credibility and saliency.More recently, DIVERSITAS has shifted its agendatowards policy relevance and enlarged the scope ofresearch of biodiversity through its relationship withecosystem services and human well-being.59 In turn,Briggs and Knight, for example, argue ‘that scientificinput actually plays only a small role’ compared tothe broad range of biodiversity knowledge ofindigenous and local communities.60 In conjunctionwith this, Hulme et al. refer to the feasibility ofbottom-up processes and the necessity of capacitybuilding to ensure a broad scope and acceptance ofknowledge on biodiversity and ecosystem services.61

IPBES was officially established at the end of thesecond plenary session of the IPBES in PanamaCity.62 The chair, Robert Watson, commented that‘Today, biodiversity won’. He stated that biodiversityand ecosystem services were essential for human well-being and that the IPBES ‘[...] will generate theknowledge and build the capacity to protect them

services issues remain missing or incompletelyimplemented’.54 One important argumentsupporting this process was the ‘evidence of the lackof a process providing common and regularlyreviewed guidance on a strategic approach toresearch, designed to ensure that the most importantneeds in terms of knowledge to support moreeffective governance at all levels are being identifiedand responded to in a coordinated manner’.55 Thisimplies that a ‘uniform’ and ‘consistent’ frameworkfor generating policy-relevant information and acommon knowledge are conceived as being centralfor mainstreaming and conserving biodiversity.56

Scientific communities, i.e. programmes,institutions, and groups such as DIVERSITAS andIUCN, or those connected to TEEB, played animportant role in promoting the idea that an IPBESwas needed inter alia through expert workshops,dissemination of informational material, scientificarticles, and commentaries. The arguments raisedwere that science has a major role to play inbiodiversity governance as science providesknowledge, assessments, and tools.57 The interestof the scientific communities was also to promotebiodiversity research as relevant and to ensureresearch funding. It was often argued that climatechange-related research is getting (more than)sufficient funding, whilst biodiversity research wasunderfunded. Access to research objects and researchfunding are two important interests of research

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54 See Gap Analysis, note 35 above.55 Options for improving the science-policy interface for

biodiversity and ecosystem services, 13 April 2010, UNDoc. UNEP/IPBES/2/3:2 (2010) [hereafter IPBES BusanOptions].

56 Report of the second session of the plenary meeting todetermine modalities and institutional arrangements foran intergovernmental science-policy platform onbiodiversity and ecosystem services, 18 May 2012, UN Doc.UNEP/IPNES/2/3 7 (2012).

57 E.g. Christoph Görg et al., ‘International Science-PolicyInterfaces for Biodiversity Governance - Needs, Challenges,Experiences; A Contribution to the IMoSEB ConsultativeProcess’, Report of a Workshop held in October 2-4, 2006,Leipzig, Germany; Sybille van den Hove,‘A Rationale forScience-Policy Interfaces’ 39/7 Futures 807 (2007) andThomas Koetz et al., ‘Building Better Science-PolicyInterfaces for International Environmental Governance:Assessing Potential Within the IntergovernmentalPlatform For Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services’12/1International Environmental Agreements 1 (2011).

58 See Vadrot, IPBES, note 35 above (quote from aninterview with a representative of IUCN).

59 See Larigauderie and Mooney, note 51 above.60 Susan Briggs and Andrew T. Knight, ‘Science-Policy Interface:

Scientific Input Limited’ 333/6043 Science 696 (2011).61 Martin Hulme et al., ‘Science-Policy Interface: Beyond

Assessments’ 333/6043 Science 697 (2011).62 Key achievements include 1) a work programme with 16

potential activities 2) establishment of two subsidiarybodies, a Bureau and a Multidisciplinary Expert Panel 3)some propositions for rules and procedures 4) the decisionto physically locate the platform’s secretariat in Bonn,Germany. No agreement was found on the budget andthe question whether FAO, UNDP, UNEP, andUNESCO should jointly hosed IPBES.

for this and future generations’.63 Mauz and Granjoustressed that the IPBES was one of the most important‘new institutions of biodiversity’ taking part in theprocess in which ‘biodiversity defined itself as a publicproblem’.64 We argue that the current science-policyinterface and the establishment of the IPBES actuallycomplement and substantiate the ‘pay to conservelogic’ at the expense of non-commercial views onnature. Related conflicts are often neglected in publicrepresentations of the establishment of the new body.Especially towards the end of the negotiation processof the IPBES65 positions, ‘avoiding perverse market-mechanisms of services provided by nature’66 becamemore visible.

During the negotiations on the IPBES in Nairobi in2011, the representative of the Plurinational Stateof Bolivia raised concerns about the unquestionedinclusion of the concept of ecosystem services. Thedelegate argued that he could not agree on the texton behalf of his government as long as the documentrests upon a strong and unquestioned emphasis onecosystem services. This statement was notdocumented in the first draft of the final report.67

The government of the Plurinational State of Boliviadid not want to agree on the text of the report beforethe following formulation was included:

The representatives of the Plurinational Stateof Bolivia and the Bolivarian Republic ofVenezuela said that the concept of ecosystemservices did not reflect adequately their vision

of the relationship between human beingsand nature and would limit the focus of theplatform’s work.68

The understanding of nature differs insofar as it isnot anthropocentric and nature is seen to have aninherent value as such that needs to be respected andnot equated with the benefits resulting from the useof natural resources. At the second plenary meetingof the IPBES in Panama, the representative of Boliviapresented a document dealing inter alia with issuesof ‘[…] respect for human rights, including the rightsof indigenous peoples, and equity in the developmentof approaches to non-commoditisation of ecosystemservices and functions’.69 As the latter point was nottaken up sufficiently in the final document, therepresentatives of Bolivia, Egypt, and Venezuelaindicated ‘that they should not be listed among theGovernments consenting to the resolution’.70

The explicit dimension of the conflict linebetween Bolivia and other governments withregard to the concept of ecosystem servicesrevolved around the conception of nature,on the one hand as ‘service provider’, andon the other hand as Mother Earth(‘pachamama’) having its own rights as it isstated in the constitution of Bolivia. The‘conflict’ between Bolivia and the rest wasexplicit – not overwhelming and central, buttime-consuming – and the reasons for thisconflict were thus outspoken, namelydivergent approaches to societal andeconomic development, and their associatedpolicy instruments and regulations.71

This shows that epistemic selectivities withinbiodiversity knowledge relate to the way in whichscience and policy interrelate and to thehegemonically structured fields within which they

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63 IPBES, ‘New Intergovernmental Body Established toAccelerate Global Response towards Sustainable Managementof World’s Biodiversity and Ecosystems,’ 23 April 2012,available at http://www.ipbes.net/news-centre11/229-ipbes-established-today-biodiversity-won.html.

64 Isabelle Mauz and Céline Granjou, ‘The Construction ofBiodiversity as a Political and Scientific Problem. InitialResults from an Ongoing Survey’ 3-bis Sciences Eaux &Territoires 10 (2011).

65 This refers more specifically to the first plenary sessionof the IPBES in October 2011 in Nairobi/Kenya and thesecond plenary session in April 2012 in Panama.

66 Bolivia raised this point at the negotiations in Panama on17 April 2012. See IPBES-2#1, 16/99 Earth NegotiationsBulletin 2 (2012), available at http://www.iisd.ca/ipbes/sop2/.

67 Report of the first session of the plenary meeting todetermine modalities and institutional arrangements foran intergovernmental science policy platform on biodiversityand ecosystem services, 10 October 2011, UN Doc.UNEP/IPBES.MI/1/8 (2011) [hereafter Nairobi Outcome].

68 Id., at 5.69 See Panama Outcome, note 9 above, at 4.70 Similar developments characterised the negotiations at

the Rio conference in June 2012. Whilst the draftdocument included the concept of ecosystem services,the resistance of the ALBA countries has led to thedeletion of the term throughout the document. It isimportant to note that in the meantime Bolivia joinedthe platform.

71 See Vadrot, IPBES, note 35 above, at 248.

operate. Science-policy interfaces need to beconceived as mechanisms within the strategicallycoordinated (state) apparatus of power throughwhich rules for exclusion, limitation, andprohibition are introduced and incorporated indiscursive and institutional terms. Not surprisingly,‘the politicised nature of biodiversity (knowledge)is widely recognised, but not openly’.72 In thefollowing section, the implicitness of these processesis presented with regard to the way in which the‘pay to conserve logic’ is politically, institutionally,and discursively mediated within negotiationsrelated to CBD processes.

3.3 The Implementation of the ‘Payto Conserve Logic’ Through andBeyond Markets for EcosystemServices

At the 10th Conference of the Parties of the CBD inNagoya in October 2010, the establishment of theIPBES was debated with respect to its relation tothe CBD and its impact on related policies andpolitics. Venezuela raised concerns that the platformcould be easily instrumentalised as it might excludenon-Western science. Brazil responded that the‘platform [...] gives developing countries theopportunities to develop their own scientific andtechnical capacity to produce real knowledge onbiodiversity’.73 The latter argument suggests that‘real’ knowledge on biodiversity can ultimately andexclusively be produced scientifically and implicitlyrejects the contribution of traditional and localknowledge for understanding biodiversity.Furthermore, the Brazilian statement suggests thatthe IPBES could empower developing countries tocommodify biodiversity through both access to newtechnologies and the instrument of capacity-building. Furthermore, this could help developingcountries to implement the CBD in the sense thatone major challenge has been to identify the knowledgeand the resources that need to be protected.74 Hence,

the expectation is that the IPBES creates aninstitutional framework for ensuring the equitablesharing of knowledge and science as someprecondition for the equitable sharing of the benefitsresulting from the commodification of biodiversity.The issue of ‘tools’ and ‘concepts’ is seen to increasethe accessibility and degree of commodification ofbiodiversity and raises important questionsconcerning the appropriation of nature and relatedepistemic selectivities.

Interestingly, similar debates and conflictscharacterised the establishment of the SubsidiaryBody on Scientific, Technical, and TechnologicalAdvice (SBSTTA) by the Parties to the CBD underArticle 25 twenty years earlier. This was not becauseof the way it works but because of a more generalconcern, namely the potential to exert a dominantinfluence on the negotiations within the scope ofthe CBD.75 There were many different reasons forthe reluctance towards the establishment of theSBSTTA of which the most significant were thepossible implication for national sovereignty andaccess to biodiversity and potential productsresulting from biodiversity. ‘The block of developingcountries’ opposed the establishment of the SBSTTAbecause they felt disadvantaged due to the fact thatthey could not provide as much scientific knowledgeas developed countries. In turn, developed countrieslimited the scope of relevant knowledge toconservation issues and traditional natural scienceperspectives on nature inter alia aiming to avoid thefact that development of biotechnology falls underthe scope of the CBD. The focus on conservationissues and natural science perspectives in turn hascontributed to further convincing ‘the block ofdeveloping countries’ that the establishment of theSBSTTA could impede their perspectives andinterests with regard to biodiversity.76 Hence, it isnot surprising that scholars increasingly criticisedthe SBSTTA for its selective treatment of issues andthe systematic ignorance of issues related tointellectual property rights, the access and benefit-

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72 Id., at 335.73 This is based on participant observation conducted at the

10th COP of the CBD in October 2010.74 Simon West, ‘Institutionalised Exclusion: The Political

Economy of Benefit Sharing and Intellectual Property’8/1 Law, Environment and Development Journal 19, 31(2012).

75 Thomas Koetz et al., ‘The role of the Subsidiary Bodyon Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice to theConvention on Biological Diversity as science-policyinterface’ 11 Environmental Science and Policy 505, 511(2008).

76 Id., at 511.

sharing regime, and Article 8(j) of the CBD ontraditional knowledge, innovations, and practices.

Similar issues were raised during the negotiations ofthe IPBES. There has been a growing debate on therole of indigenous knowledge and the inclusion ofindigenous people in the process, as they are,according to the argument raised by therepresentative of the United States, ‘not stakeholdersbut rights-holders’.77 But, when the representativeof the Argentinean government raised the questionof how to ensure that the IPBES will not competewith the rules set by the Nagoya Protocol, the chairsimply argued that there were no points of contact.In this respect, the discourse concerning a commonknowledge base on biodiversity and ecosystemservices contributes to the prearrangement of anepistemic framework for the economic valuation andcommodification of biodiversity based upon andreproduced by epistemic selectivities creating politicaland scientific implicitness about governingbiodiversity. Accordingly, epistemic selectivities havean institutional dimension in the sense that politicalinstitutions at different levels condense differentforms of knowledge in selective ways and thatparticular forms of knowledge do not existindependently from social and economic interests(albeit they cannot be reduced to them, e.g. theknowledge about the adequate legal appropriation ofgenetic resources cannot exclusively be explained bythe interests of the seed and pharmaceutical industrybecause other interests might also be considered).

According to Vadrot, many national delegatesstressed the role of economic concepts as evidencefor policymakers to act and to acknowledge theimportance of the biodiversity issue and referred tothe possible impact of the IPBES on theimplementation of the CBD and the understandingof biodiversity simultaneously: ‘Well, what’s newis that it is a common knowledge base, a commonplatform for information […]. I guess it may provideways of thinking about issues, frameworks andapproaches we are thinking about valuing ecosystemservices’.78 In this regard the concept of ecosystem

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services ‘is often perceived as a way to provide thebiodiversity community in the widest sense withstrong scientific concepts and tools. Most of thesesaw ecosystem services as the long expected way outof conceptual uncertainty and fuzzy approaches’.This coincides with the observation thatrepresentatives of developing countries welcome theconcept of ecosystem services by means of having astrong tool to prove the value of their environment.The latter is of utmost importance for the followingsection as it shows how epistemic selectivitiescontribute to the structuring of political terrains andhow, in turn, institutional configurations inhibitedby epistemic selectivities shape knowledge andrelated problem perceptions and narratives in lightof an interplay between biodiversity science, policy,and valuation.79

Throughout the negotiations of the Nagoya Protocol– and even those of the Bonn Guidelines a decadeearlier80 – we saw serious divergences on how tounderstand, utilise, and share the benefits resultingfrom genetic resources and on how to develop acommon terminology to set the basis for a legalframework on access and benefit sharing. This isespecially important with regard to two questions:first, what is meant by access and, second, that ofassociated traditional knowledge. According toBavikatte and Robinson, the ‘Nagoya Protocol isthe result of an ongoing struggle to assert the rightsof indigenous peoples and local communities to theirnatural resources’, as well as how to secure theserights in the light of competing views on nature andproperty.81 The problem starts with the definitionof access, especially when we deal with naturalresources that seem to be freely accessible. But theNagoya Protocol explicitly deals with access togenetic resources, i.e. the access to a source composedof the molecular units of heredity of living

77 International Institute for Sustainable Development,IPBES-2#2 16/100 Earth Negotiations Bulletin 1 (2012),available at http://www.iisd.ca/download/pdf/enb16100e.pdf.

78 See Vadrot, IPBES, note 35 above, at 330.

79 Robert Costanza et al., ‘The Value of the World´sEcosystem Services and Natural Capital’ 387 Nature 253(1997) and David W. Pearce, Economic Values and theNatural World (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MITPress, 1993). For an overview over the commoditizationof ecosystem services see Eric Gómez-Baggethun andManuel Ruiz Pérez, ‘Ecosystem Services Valuation,Market-based Instruments and the Commodification ofNature’ 35/5 Progress in Physical Geography 613 (2012).

80 See Brand et al., note 11 above, chapter 2.5.81 See Bavikatte & Robinson, note 15 above.

organisms. In this respect access to genetic resourcesautomatically implies the application of science andtechnology ranging from law to biotechnology. But,‘many patented biotechnologies do not accessmaterial with functional units of heredity and patentholders can thereby refuse to share benefits’.82 Thisis why Vogel et al. suggest turning to the economicsof information and recognising genetic resources andrelated traditional knowledge as ‘natural andartificial information’.83 West notes that ‘it isdifficult to distinguish between use of geneticresources (which is independent of knowledge aboutthem) and TK [traditional knowledge] (which isdeveloped from the use of resources)’.84

In the logic and language of the Nagoya Protocol,access indeed means utilisation and is restricted dueto the fact that the molecular units of heredity ofliving organisms, after the CBD came into force, arenot freely accessible. Article 1 of the NagoyaProtocol on access to genetic resources clearlyaddresses access ‘to genetic resources for theirutilisation’.85 This implies access in line with thelegal framework of the Protocol, i.e. prior informedconsent of the country of origin is required if andonly if the purpose of access is its utilisation. But,the utilisation that is of utmost importance for theregulation of benefit sharing is not legally definedwithin the Protocol and is highly debated amonglegal experts.86 What does this mean for benefitsharing and understanding Article 5 (1) of theProtocol that states that ‘established rights of localand indigenous communities on genetic resources’

need to be respected? If access to genetic resourcesmeans utilisation and if such access requires theapplication of technology then it is a problem ofanalytically assessing and technically accessingnature.

Against this background, Ruiz and Vernooy arguethat the negotiations towards an ABS regime areaccompanied by a ‘disregard for new technologicaladvances’ and ‘a misunderstanding of scientificprocesses’ that do in fact influence biodiversityconservation practices.87 Hence, it is not surprisingthat the Nagoya Protocol is still lacking a cleardefinition of what is actually meant by access whilst‘utilisation’ is referred to as ‘[...] research anddevelopment on the genetic and/or biochemicalcomposition of genetic resources, including throughthe application of biotechnology [...]’.88 A criticalpoint in the negotiation process in Nagoya in 2010was the provision on derivatives, finally defined as‘[…] a naturally occurring biochemical compoundresulting from the genetic expression or metabolismof biological or genetic resources, even if it does notcontain functional units of heredity’.89 Derivativesconstitute a material that can be made ortransformed by biotechnology. To a certain extent,one could name this element an ecosystem service,i.e. human benefits derived from the natural world,but within the ‘ABS-community’ and, as the NagoyaProtocol has shown, nobody is explicitly referringto ecosystem services, even though, according tosome scholars,90 the molecular units of heredity ofliving organisms may be framed as services in thesense that the process contributes to sustaining lifeand to human well-being. Where do we draw theline? In the end its identification is the first steptowards commodification. From anotherperspective, one could say that in the case of thegenetic dimension of biodiversity no ‘new’ conceptswere needed, as the challenge of how to commodifyplant genetic resources is rather a technical than aneconomic and political one, insofar as in the case ofgenetic resources there is a well-established and pre-

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82 Joseph H. Vogel et al., ‘The Economics of Information,Studiously Ignored in the Nagoya Protocol on Access toGenetic Resources and Benefit Sharing’ 7/1 Law,Environment and Development Journal 52, 54 (2011).

83 Id.84 See West, note 74 above.85 Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and

the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising fromTheir Utilization to the Convention on BiologicalDiversity, Nagoya, 29 October 2010, available at http://www.cbd.int/abs/doc/protocol/nagoya-protocol-en.pdf, Article 1.

86 Evanson Chege Kamau, Bevis Fedder and Gerd Winter,‘The Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resourcesand Benefit Sharing: What is New and What are theImplications for Provider and User Countries and theScientific Community?’ 6/3 Law, Environment andDevelopment Journal 246, 250 (2010).

87 Ronnie Vernooy and Manuel Ruiz, The Custodians ofBiodiversity: Sharing Access and Benefits to GeneticResources (Abingdon: Taylor and Francis, 2012).

88 See, Nagoya Protocol, note 85 above, Article 2.89 Id., Article 4.90 See Dempsey and Robertson, note 14 above.

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structured market, which is not the case for thoseecosystem services that are not yet measured andcommodified.

Hence, the overall debate among biodiversityscientists and policymakers, which is visible in thearguments used to support the establishment of theIPBES and the Nagoya Protocol, reproduces thecommodification logic. One point in case is theclarification of property rights framed as both arequirement for ensuring access and benefit sharing,and a basis for the sustainable use and conservationof biodiversity. This is why we argue that the globalparadigm of valorisation constitutes a strong drivingforce in international biodiversity politics. This forceis however only assessable if the dialectical causalitiesin the development of biodiversity science andpolitics are recognised and accordinglyconceptualised. In this regard the inequalities in theappropriation of nature are also sustained by thesuccess of certain scientific and political self-evidences in how to govern and conceptualisebiodiversity.

4CONCLUSION: THE MAKING OFEPISTEMIC SELECTIVITIES ANDBIODIVERSITY KNOWLEDGE

The aim of this article was to show the means bywhich the ‘pay to conserve logic’ is sustained andimplemented through and beyond science-policyinterfaces and the establishment of global marketsfor ecosystem services. Epistemic selectivities weredefined as those mechanisms of political institutionsthat privilege particular forms of knowledge,problem perceptions, and narratives over others. Inthis respect, the development, recognition, andregulation of biodiversity knowledge relate to theway in which science and policy interrelate. Byreferring to the struggles over the institutionalarrangement of the IPBES, we could show thatscience-policy interfaces operate in hegemonically(pre-)structured fields. The argument was predicatedon the idea that science-policy interfaces need to be

conceived as mechanisms within strategicallycoordinated (state) apparatuses of power throughwhich rules for exclusion, limitation, andprohibition are introduced and incorporated indiscursive and institutional terms.

The heightened emphasis on the concept ofecosystem services in the context of biodiversitypolitics and science simultaneously hides and mirrorsconflicts and hegemonic constellations ininternational biodiversity politics. The establishmentof the IPBES sustains and reproduces relatedepistemic selectivities, inherent in and beyond theregulative framework of the CBD and the NagoyaProtocol. The manifestation of similar epistemicselectivities in the making of the IPBES and the textof the Nagoya Protocol is interesting for tworeasons: firstly, the IPBES was purposely notestablished under the CBD and designed as anintergovernmental and independent body to interalia avoid potential conflict with Article 8(j) of theCBD on the protection of indigenous and localknowledge; secondly, the objective regarding theknowledge to be synthesised by the IPBES implicitlyprivileges the diversity of species and ecosystemsover the genetic diversity between species. In turn,the objective of the Nagoya Protocol is ‘to promoteand safeguard the fair and equitable sharing ofbenefits arising from the utilisation of geneticresources’, stressing the importance of research,innovation, and traditional knowledge related togenetic resources and the link to sustainabledevelopment.91 As such, the Nagoya Protocol perse rests upon a neoclassical economic perspective ofbiological diversity coupled with the argument ofthe ‘tragedy of the commons’, and the idea thatnatural resources can only be conserved if propertyrights are clearly defined.92 Current developments,such as the increased reference to the concept ofecosystem services and Payment for EcosystemServices (PES) introduce a similar logic to the areaof biodiversity conservation, based on theassumption that the acceptance of measures for theconservation of biodiversity is higher if its(monetary) value is defined and business andinvestment opportunities promoted. Whilst theconcept of ecosystem services is often understood

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91 Nagoya Protocol, note 85 above, Preamble.92 See Flitner, note 37 above, at 56.

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to reduce complexity in the development ofbiodiversity science and policy the underlying ‘payto conserve logic’ is conceived as attractive to policy-makers93 and, as we have shown, to some groupswithin the scientific community, for differentreasons, all of which contribute however, to createcertain scientific and political self-evidences on howto govern biodiversity.

Accordingly, we came to the conclusion that themaking of a science-policy interface in order tobroaden the knowledge base of the CBD does notmerely bundle existing knowledge but is based upon,fosters, and creates new epistemic selectivities. Thisis also the case for the Nagoya Protocol and the ‘payto conserve logic’ inherent in the text and thelanguage used to set a legal basis for access and benefitsharing. The notion of the ‘pay to conserve logic’within the Nagoya Protocol is also embedded withinthe argumentation for the application of ecosystemservices that gives a presumed self-evidence moreduration. And indeed, the emphasis on ecosystemservices was not an issue of major debate throughoutthe negotiations on the IPBES. It only becamerelevant when the representative of Bolivia raisedconcern about the appropriateness of the conceptthat is besides its immaturity accepted insofar as itprovides a great argument for protectingbiodiversity. Furthermore, it is used as a connectingpoint by developing countries that use the conceptas a valuable tool to show that they are actually veryrich countries, having something to sell; acontribution to make to global markets. Thisobservation points to the dominance of aninstrumental and utilitarian logic that contributesto the privileging of economic values associated withbiodiversity over others. To a certain extent, theecosystem services approach contributes to thedesignation of what actually can be appropriated andit increases the number and range of ‘products’developing countries can trade and sell. In thisrespect it enlarges the scope of the access and benefit-sharing regime that is limited to the benefits resultingfrom the use of the genetic resources derived frombiodiversity. But, again, it is knowledge thatexcludes, limits, and prohibits the technical,analytical, and epistemic access to biodiversitythrough institutional configurations.

By linking biodiversity politics to the broadercontext, it was possible to show that the epistemicpower of commodifying tendencies to deal withbiodiversity erosion is not predominant by chance.We argue that those economic and political forcesthat seek to successfully develop crisis strategies (andmaintain their hegemony) – or at least create theimage that they can be successful in the future – needan ‘ethical’ moment of hegemony in this,94 i.e. aperspective in which political, technical-scientific,economic, and ideational aspects come together andcreate an attractive and realisable world vision. Asshown above, this mechanism is sustained by the(internationalised) state that gives the relationshipamong governments, private corporations, and localactors like indigenous peoples continuity throughoutthe structured political terrain.

Epistemic selectivities, such as the designation of theIPBES as an instrument for enhancing compliancein environmental governance and the use of theconcept of ecosystem services as an impetus forpolicy-making, suggest that these contribute to theprearrangement of an epistemic and institutionalframework for strengthening concepts relating tothe economic valuation of biodiversity and henceits potential valorisation. From this we can concludethat the currently used concepts and approaches,even though they might be contested within certaincommunities (e.g. the increasing reference to theconcept of ecosystem services), anticipate a certainform of governance by framing and discerning theobjects that need to be governed. As shown above,science is not always perceived as a neutral sourceof information. It incorporates ethical principles intothe production of scientific knowledge to separatefacts from non-facts and science from non-science,95

i.e. it frames the issues under consideration.However, this process strengthens the diffusion ofnarrow concepts that may be misunderstood andmisused. As such, the concept of epistemicselectivities helps us to assess both the hegemonicaccount inherent in the production and re-production of knowledge, problem perceptions, andnarratives regarding specific things to be governedin their socio-economic, political, and cultural

Epistemic Selectivities and Valorisation of Nature: NP and IPBES

93 McAfee, Selling Nature to Save It, note 6 above, 151.

94 Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks. Vol. 7, 1569(Hamburg/Berlin Argument, German edition, 1996).

95 See Jasanoff, note 18 above.

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context as well as the impacts of processes based onmisunderstandings and narrow concepts paired withstrategic blindness and competing interests. Fromthis we can conclude that institutions and discoursesof international biodiversity politics form a strategicapparatus which makes the separation of what maybe characterised as scientific and non-scientific, andnot of what is true from what is false, possible. Inthis respect, the discourse on the IPBES and thenotion of knowledge and the language of the NagoyaProtocol contribute to the process of discerning allpotential statements from the ones acceptable withina specific field of scientificity.

We have shown the extent to which acceptability isrelated to commodification issues and the ‘pay toconserve logic’ that sets the basis for setting rulesfor exclusion, limitation, and prohibition withinknowledge production on biodiversity andunderlying epistemic selectivities. Both processesshare, however, the question of how to deal withtraditional knowledge and how to cope with thedifferent potential degrees of knowledge in the senseof both the creation of unquestioned self-evidenceand as a powerful tool to assess and accessbiodiversity. We have argued that it is necessary totake into account the underlying political economyof biodiversity of which the analysis points to a‘grammar’ of driving force of dominantdevelopments, i.e. the strong tendency for both itscommercialisation and the related politico-institutional processes. However, this tendency isnot realised on its own. Other objectives andstrategies play a role as well and they are inscribedin the political economy of biodiversity. Analysesare required on possible forms, sites, and modes ofnon-hegemonic selectivities.

Indeed and as we have shown, the CBD remains acontested terrain and the Conferences of the Parties,which take place every other year, are a clearexample of this. The concretisation of access rules,the acknowledgement of best practices ofbiodiversity conservation, the financing of projects,the introduction of new issues like the possibledevelopment of a science-policy interface, and therelationship to other terrains are areas subject tointense debate at international gatherings. To thisextent, the CBD itself, like other internationalpolitical institutions and networks, has developed

into an important terrain where relevant actors,especially national governments, can articulate theirinterests and values.

By taking into account the two-fold position ofinternational institutions as regulating authoritiesand as expressions of global relationships of forcesand power as well as of discourses, the role of theCBD can be appraised in a more precise manner.The central issue concerns the specific relationshipbetween conservation and use. Very specific ideasand practices exist which we call different societalnature relations – each representing differentmixtures of protection and use of biodiversity: fromindigenous peoples and subsistence farming incontrast to industrialised agriculture to protectedareas and the use of genetic resources by the life-science industry. The real outcome of suchinternational institutions cannot be narrowed downto their effectiveness in terms of environmentalprotection, but how it affects societal naturerelations and the manifold interests involved.

The reason for our sceptical judgement ofinternational biodiversity politics is that thechallenge of valuation, commodification andvalorisation lies not only between internationalagreements with different goals and subjects but alsowithin these agreements. Not even the CBD canescape the valorisation paradigm, which is centralto actual societal nature relations. At the same time,the commodification of nature is not a linear processbut rather one that is characterised by social strugglesand contradictions. This may allow weaker actors(e.g. sensitive Southern governments, NGOs ororganisations of indigenous peoples) to bring theirinterests to bear in the negotiations and to be at leastpartially considered in the compromises. However,how this occurs exactly as well as how this processallows a degree of manoeuvrability for certaininterests must be examined. The making andworking of epistemic selectivities can help tounderstand this better.

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