colombia: monetarization of life: the
case of green markets
Important
national and international organizations
that advocate ecosystem preservation and
supposedly promote economic development for
local communities, have encouraged the idea
that the economic hope for poor countries
lies in their biological and cultural
resources. Based on research that aims to
quantify, determine and systematize
biological resources, these organizations
lobby governments and local communities,
pushing the need to implement trade
strategies and urgently design policies to
facilitate access to and exploitation of
these resources. Any consideration of the
consequences of turning life into a
commodity that can be bought and sold has
been pushed aside. The question of what is
the best bio-extractive system has become
their main focus.
Although yet to be clearly identified
and highlighted as a serious risk to the
equilibrium of the complicated forces that
generate life, the increasing
commodification of nature must be analyzed
and discussed. The issue of green markets
in Colombia and other countries should thus
be reviewed and assessed from a critical,
corrective and propositional
perspective.
On the basis of commercial feasibility
studies and biological diversity research,
organizations such as the Alexander von
Humboldt Institute and the Bolsa Amazonía
Colombiana, have made efforts to
demonstrate that since the potential of
biological resources in Colombia is so
immense, it is essential to develop a clear
policy regarding access to them,
encompassing a strong strategy of green
markets. This initiative for the
commodification of life is two pronged; on
the one hand it promotes legislation to
regulate access and extraction of
biological resources; and on the other, it
stimulates the exploitation and extraction
of those resources.
The concept of green markets promotes
the idea that products that are
manufactured in a special way (organic
products, community products, traditional
or indigenous products) can and should be
sold and paid for with a price
differential. There is no doubt that these
products, produced with extra merits, must
be specially valued. Yet trying to put into
monetary terms the complex web of values
contained in agricultural products that are
cultivated and processed in an organic and
communal way, or in handicrafts made by
indigenous communities, represents an
objective that is an offence to the
complexity of life.
To pretend that values such as
solidarity, respect, affection or
brotherhood that are imprinted on some
products can be measured in monetary terms
is to immediately destroy their quality,
and simplifies them to such an extent that
they lose all their real value. Money can
be a useful and proper way to measure the
value of some products quantitatively, but
it cannot measure other underlying values,
such as unique conditions of production
imbued with deep social and cultural
meanings. Trying to do so represents an
assault against the richness of life.
An example of the promotion of green
markets is the joint call for projects
issued in April 2003 by the Colombian
government through its Plan Colombia, and
the Fundacion Chemonics Colombia (part of
Chemonics International), a USAID
contractor. They provide financial support
for initiatives that involve the
alternative development of agricultural
products and fulfil the requirements of the
Alternative Development Program of the
Presidential Advisory for the Plan
Colombia. These requirements take into
consideration the economic potential and
sustainability of the resulting products.
The call received 175 requests for project
funding, all of which were related to
products such as cacao, rubber, forest
products and coffee.
Some of these projects, especially those
regarding oil palm and cacao, are now being
implemented with the help of the government
in some regions of Colombia, particularly
in the province of Norte de Santander,
ignoring the impacts this can have on the
biodiversity of the territories.
On the flip side of the coin is a blunt
initiative to formulate a national policy
to regulate access to a broad span of
biological resources. According to the
Alexander von Humboldt Institute and the
Bolsa Amazonía Colombiana, these resources
can range from forest seeds and Amazonian
fruits, ornamental butterflies and fish, to
endemic cooking products and unique
landscapes that can be exploited by means
of Eco-tourism. This approach is
illustrated by the projects which the
Alexander von Humboldt Institute develops
together with the Regional Autonomic
Corporations (CARs) and other government
bodies such as the National Environmental
System (SINA). These are aimed at
promoting, coordinating and carrying out
research on the impact of policies that
promote access to natural and cultural
diversity, and emphasise the need to
generate framework legislation on the
knowledge and uses of biodiversity.
The real objective of these initiatives
must be questioned when extractive policies
are already being promoted, and while at
the international level negotiations are
being undertaken to decide access to and
benefit sharing of biological resources.
Questions arise particularly when there
does not seem to be any justice prevailing
or an equitable distribution of the
benefits derived from the current trade in
biological resources in Colombia and other
Latin American countries.
Moreover, instead of advocating the need
to regulate access to biological and
genetic resources through a broad and
rigorous international agreement, these
initiatives legitimize attempts by private
companies and multinational corporations to
bilaterally negotiate access to what
historically belonged to indigenous and
local communities. This includes endless
amounts of plant and animal species, water
resources and traditional knowledge.
According to native and peasant peoples
around the world, the negotiations on
resources such as land, water and living
species are not representing their
interests, but those of the new “gangsters
of life”.
It is quite evident that the complexity
of biocultural relationships that sustain
the beliefs and social practices in which
many of the African-Colombian, indigenous
and peasant communities are living, are
necessarily simplified when those that
trade with life try to reduce them to
commodities that can be negotiated in
monetary terms. The privatization of life
puts at stake the legal rights of every
community to their own culture, diversity,
and their right to determine their own
living conditions in an autonomous and
sovereign way. The negotiations carried out
by the “gangsters of life” through bodies
such as the United Nations or the WTO are
threatening the production of handicrafts,
animal husbandry and food that communities
have traditionally developed only with the
objective of promoting solidarity
relationships among peoples and nations. In
contrast, production that is developed with
the exclusive objective of monetary
accumulation results in the destruction of
local markets and the undermining of the
social and cultural practices that sustain
the life of communities.
In contrast, what should be demanded is
that the peasant, family, or indigenous
farm units be given autonomy to identify
and prioritize their needs and problems, in
such a way that they can design solutions
according to the local communities’
potentials and rights. In the same way, it
is crucially important that the marketing
of products is undertaken directly by the
producing communities, using strategies and
methods according to their traditions, in
such a way that they can trade not only
through money but through barter, loans,
exchange and by collective production and
consumption.
This kind of strategy, resulting from
collective research and participatory
practices, can strengthen and enhance
values that are not measurable and cannot
be reduced to monetary terms. This consists
of the democratization of the conditions
for production and marketing achieved
through community and participatory
planning. It also includes the
strengthening of peasant and ethnic
organizational capacity through community
empowerment, as well as the generation of
communitarian links and social networks,
reinforcing solidarity and relationships of
mutual respect. Finally, it creates the
possibility of autonomously deciding the
future of the biophysical environment, how
surpluses should be allocated and what
purpose their physical spaces will be put
to.
more information
CENSAT Agua Viva / Friends of the
Earth Colombia
