Abstract
Many countries in Africa provide ethnobiological resources (more especially ethnomedicinal plants), which are converted by companies and users from developed countries into biopharmaceutical products without any monetary benefits to the countries of origin. To mitigate the lack of benefits, African countries are beginning to enact access and benefit-sharing (ABS) legislation, though their wheels turn very slowly. Since many African ABS laws have not been appraised for their feasibility, this paper presents a contextual analysis of Namibia’s new ABS law: The Access to Biological and Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge Act No. 2 of 27 June 2017. Even if several international conventions on ABS and local institutional structures guided the evolution of the 2017 Act, the main drivers for the enactment of the ABS legislation in Namibia are: Inequitable sharing of monetary benefits from the green economy, putative, but unproven cases of biopiracy, and political power contestations over ethnobiological resources. A critical analysis of important challenges faced by Namibia’s new ABS law include: Lack of adequate participatory consultations and technical capacity at the local level, discount of the non-commodity cultural value of TK, ambiguous and narrow definition of the term ‘community’, lack of a clause on confidentiality, and assertions that the new ABS law negatively impacts research in Namibian universities and botanic gardens. In contrast to South Africa’s ABS law, Namibia’s law is more onerous because it does not differentiate between commercial and non-commercial research.
Highlights
Knowledge, not capital, is the most critical resource for sustainable socioeconomic development [1], and traditional knowledge (TK) is an important foundation for innovative interventions in education, health, agriculture, and biotechnology [2]
ABS, national biodiversity strategy and action plans, and the incipient national Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) policy, which acknowledges that a TK-based innovation system is a critical pillar of the Namibian nation and economy
Based on the San people’s TK of the appetite suppressant properties of Hoodia [55], the Council for scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) set out to isolate the active ingredients from the plant, which it did not conclude due to limitations in technology [58]
Summary
Not capital, is the most critical resource for sustainable socioeconomic development [1], and traditional knowledge (TK) is an important foundation for innovative interventions in education, health, agriculture, and biotechnology [2]. Intellectual property (IP) law readily recognizes these ‘innovations’ by industry, it often turns a blind eye to the incremental contributions of TK holders and citizen scientists who are some of the world’s poorest people [14] Within this unfair and inequitable pecuniary milieu, access to ethnobiological and genetic resources and documentation of TK of medicinal plants are viewed as entrepreneurial and profit-seeking activities taking place in highly politicized ecological and socioeconomic spaces [15]. This paper traces the evolution of Namibia’s ABS law within the context of various international agreements on ABS, national policy and institutional structures on environmental management and bioprospecting, and current perspectives or complexities in the country’s post-Apartheid bio-economy where inequitable sharing of benefits from phyto-trade and putative cases of biopiracy serve as key exemplars. This discourse is significant because it impacts and enriches stakeholder buy-in, public awareness, and enforcement, as well as future amendments
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