Indigenous and Scientific Knowledge: Some Critical Comment

1. Whose knowledge, whose
nature

2.  Escobar believes that biodiversity does not exist
in an absolute sense. It is the unseen destruction
of ecological environment, and the discourse
between nature and society in the global context
of culture, science and economics. Post
Development scholars have historically been
against the new notions either in the economic or
political spheres of development

3.  Like Escobar, the scholars from third world
countries consider these notions just a reflection of
the personal, organizational and political
preference of global powers (LELE, 1991).

4.  Previously, modernization, globalization, sustainable
development and other discourses were criticized
and refused by the post development scholars such
as Escobar. Such notions are accounted as part of the
hegemonic approach towards the untapped
resources in the third world countries.

5.  Most often the World Bank, International Monetary
Fund, and the UN bodies are the political agencies
supporting all these notions. Besides such
challenges, institutionalization of these notions has
always been followed by the commitments of the
member countries around the world.

6.  In the sense of the biodiversity, the provision of
institutional arrangements helps the production of
systematic knowledge and concrete strategies among
and between the biodiversity networks known as
NGOs

7.  The main question is have they served the purpose
of biodiversity? If no, is it because of the local and
indigenous institutions misleading biodiversity
networks?
 LELE (1991) argues that new notions with political
or even financial supports are not always welcomed
in third world countries.
 He further adds that these notions carry a
weakness embodied with the characterization of
the poverty and environmental problems which is
incomplete and uncertain for local people.

8.  From the third world national perspective,
Biodiversity is considered an invasion of their
sovereignty; because to their end, Developed
Nations try to put the attention from south to
north for saving the biodiversity.
 According to Escobar, the notion of biodiversity
even sounds oxymoron to a number of local and
third world scholars.

9.  It is like saving the earth in your neighbor's house,
or simply telling them to ration their food because
you had already finished yours.
 Aalst et al (2008) states, in order to plant a new
phenomenon either in political, social or economic
aspects of the life of the people, there is a need for a
powerful means to encourage the recognition of
significance of threats against the livelihoods and
income of the communities

10.  Biodiversity like conservation requires protection of
the threatened resources either wildlife, forests and
pastures or fisheries and drinking water. Most
importantly, the local communities need these
resources for their own survival and if they are
supported they will be the best one to conserve them
in a better way (Agrawal, 1999).

11.  In Escobar’s analysis, most of the discussions refer
to the COPs decisions and the conventions, but
unlikely COPs do not fully represent the third
world countries consent in their decisions and they
have always been in favor of first world.
 The local people decisions are made by their access
to resources and status of their livelihoods.
 They better their wellbeing the effective
protections of biodiversity will be (Cannon, 2008).

12.  The third world scholars believe that biodiversity
network, cannot keep people hungry and sentence
them in a garden with full of fruits for punishment.
 A more effective measure is the empowerment of
the local actors to use and manage their own
natural resources.
 Additionally the developed states can provide
subsidies and lower the externalities (Agrawal,
1999).

13.  Escobar does not discuss any existing relationship
between the vulnerability of the poor people and
the biodiversity.
 Understanding the protection mechanism of the
biodiversity requires recognition of its significance
and identification of its correlation with other
social and economic problems.
 This can be a more similar to the recognition of the
relationships between inequality of wealth and
vulnerability to hazards in the disaster risk
reduction management (Cannon, 2008).

14.  Escobar concludes that participation of the local
community does not solve the problem, this
hegemonic construction refunctionalizes the local
knowledge to serve the interest of the western style
conservation.
 In most cases the internal imperfections of the
communities are compensated by the external
influences (Cannon, 2008), but in case of
biodiversity it is on the contrary

15.  The tensions of biodiversity and the third world
countries' resistance are mostly related to the overall
intensity of the development, capitalism and
modernity.