ECONOMIC BOTANY, CONSERVATION, AND DEVELOPMENT - WHATS THE CONNECTION

The frameworks commonly used for understanding the causes of biodiversity depletion are inadequate. This paper offers some alternative frameworks for understanding biodiversity depletion, conservation, and the roles of states, local communities, and economic botanists. Wild resources are economically important to many rural communities, and a wide range of common property tenurial systems for managing and allocating those resources have been developed. Economic botanists have documented wild plant resources, their uses, and their management. This information has primarily been used by people outside local communities who are interested in commercial enterprises and economic development. But by not paying attention to the question of tenurial rights over natural areas, wild resources, and knowledge about those resources, economic botanists indirectly participated in colonial expansion and the marginalization of indigenous peoples by neocolonial states. Today, economic botanists have opportunities to participate in efforts to recognize and document property rights to land and forest. They also have opportunities to recognize and support intellectual property rights over medicinal plant knowledge and crop varieties, although the potential application and conservation benefits of intellectual property rights are as yet unclear. Efforts to link conservation of biodiversity with development are stimulating collaborative partnerships among economic botanists, social scientists, ecologists, governments, and local communities.