Abstract

BETANCOURT POSADA, Alberto  and  CRUZ MARIN, Efraín. The controversy between colonial science and knowledge dialogue at the Convention on Biological Diversity: The summit of Sharm el-Sheikh. Cultura representaciones soc [online]. 2020, vol.14, n.28, 00006.  Epub Feb 21, 2022. ISSN 2007-8110.

At present there is a broad consensus on the importance of preserving biodiversity, at its different scales (biosphere, landscapes, ecosystems, species, populations and genes), however, there is a hot debate about what to conserve ?, how? And for whom? In this article we show the existence of an intense controversy within the Convention on Biological Diversity, specifically XIV Conference of the Parties, held in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt (November 2018), regarding the epistemological status that the UN should assign to indigenous peoples and their knowledge systems in the design and management of global biodiversity conservation policies. On the one hand, there is a paradigm that we could call “from above” and another that we will designate as “from below.” The first, driven by supranational organizations such as the World Bank Group and transnational conservation organizations such as Conservation International or World Wide Foundation, sustains the superiority of science over traditional knowledge and intends to impose “from above” and “from outside” the creation of protected natural areas without settlers. In contrast, the canon “from below”, driven by an alliance formed by indigenous peoples themselves, activists and academics in favor of knowledge dialogue, aspires to the conservation of biocultural diversity, promotes a horizontal dialogue between science and traditional knowledge and proposes creation of indigenous conservation territories. This research included the consultation of a large bibliographic corpus, UN documents, attendance at the 13th and 14th Conferences of the Parties to the CBD held in Cancun, Mexico and Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt and the conduct of numerous interviews. Our research outlines some of the ecological, epistemological, ethical, political and ontological consequences produced by both paradigms.

Keywords : paradigms; biodiversity conservation; Convention on Biological Diversity; traditional knowledge; knowledge dialogue.

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