Abstract
This article addresses the intertwining and co-production of normative and technological strands in the politics of natural resource extraction. It explores how the integration of a forest resource in the global economy by means of normative and technological appropriation is associated with the delegation of responsibility for its conservation and the sustainability of its extraction management to local-use rights holders. In the process, such entanglements involve the commodification of a local staple as a niche product exploitable on a global scale. The transformation of the access rights of local people into responsibilities is addressed as an implicit form of ‘de facto soft land and resource grabbing’ (e.g. Zoomers 2010; Sassen 2013; Seufert 2013). This article aims to contribute to the ongoing debate around forms of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (Harvey 2003; Kelly 2011; Corson 2011). The specific case study involves the emergence of argan oil on the world market.
Highlights
Argan oil is the world’s most expensive nutritional oil
With regard to the politics of reforestation, this article analyzes how configurations of inventories of knowledge, legal repertoires and technologies have combined in response to a variety of requirements necessary for a profitable global commodification: the divestment of rights of the local population; the securing of a continuous provision of the base product from its source; and the association of argan oil with the economy of solidarity and equity as a fair-traded, certified and protected eco-organic niche and health product
The argan tree and its oil are endowed with a normative framework that includes, in addition to other regulations: (a) the legal protection of the resource as a unique ecosystem, and its sustainable development in the form of a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve; (b) a legal concept that allows for a specific model of production of the premium product required by the world market; (c) the backing of property claims that derive from industrial research on marketable properties (Intellectual Property Rights; IPR); and (d) the legal labels of a fair-traded, eco or organic product with certifications and protected geographical indication (PGI)
Summary
This article addresses the intertwining and co-production of normative and technological strands in the politics of natural resource extraction It explores how the integration of a forest resource in the global economy by means of normative and technological appropriation is associated with the delegation of responsibility for its conservation and the sustainability of its extraction management to local-use rights holders. In the process, such entanglements involve the commodification of a local staple as a niche product exploitable on a global scale.
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