THE SCIENCE FACULTY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN INVITES YOU TO THE 2024 SEMINAR SERIES

This seminar series is organised by the Science Faculty Research Committee. Everyone interested is welcome to attend.

Speaker: Prof Rachel Wynberg -
Environmental & Geographical Science Department
Title: Rethinking biodiversity-based economies for justice and conservation.

Abstract:
Biodiversity-based economies have attracted much attention over the past three decades as an approach to leverage benefits for conservation, bring equity and justice to local stewards of biodiversity and those holding associated traditional knowledge, and generate revenues for biodiversity-rich countries of the Global South. Multiple laws and policies are now in place across the world to implement so-called access and benefit sharing (ABS) - a policy approach that links access to genetic resources and traditional knowledge to the sharing of monetary and non-monetary benefits. While this might signal progress, questions remain about their efficacy. Moreover, while science and technology have transformed dramatically over the lifetime of ABS, the approaches have remained largely static and narrowed to a transactional effort to channel financial benefits, with few addressing the relationship between benefit sharing, social justice, poverty alleviation, and biodiversity conservation.

Despite a substantial investment of funding, capacity and resources, and a plethora of laws and studies, ABS has met with surprisingly little analysis as an approach to promote equity in science, remedy past and current injustices, and conserve biodiversity. This presentation aims to take a step back, and to think anew about models of development that underpin ABS and more transformative approaches to achieve justice and conservation in biodiversity-based economies. Through case studies from South Africa, I will address the limitations of “benefit sharing” and its lack of attention to power imbalances and inequities - and ask how we can think in more innovative ways about paradigms that de-emphasize scale and global markets, measure impact differently, and enable long-overdue recognition for other ways of knowing and being.

Prof Rachel Wynberg
Rachel Wynberg is a Professor in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Science where she holds a SARChI Research Chair focused on Environmental and Social Dimensions of the Bio-economy. With a background in both the natural and social sciences, her interdisciplinary research spans topics relating to agroecology and food sovereignty; seeds, farmers’ rights and agrobiodiversity; the governance of wild species; access and benefit sharing; and emerging technologies and equity in science. As a scholar-activist and policy analyst, she advises international agencies, governments, NGOs and communities on these issues and is actively involved with civil society movements across the southern Africa region.