How Access and Benefit Sharing Entrenches Inequity: The Case of Rooibos

Rachel Wynberg, Sarah Ives and June Bam

Journal of Southern African Studies, 2023, vol. 49, issue 4, 589-610

Abstract: Benefit-sharing agreements are a new, prescriptive way of treating trade, biodiversity and the commercial use of traditional knowledge. However, these agreements have met with surprisingly little critique as a development paradigm. Through the lens of the industry around rooibos, a plant native to South Africa, we offer new, critical perspectives on the potential pitfalls of so-called access and benefit sharing (ABS) agreements. Rooibos underpins a well-established tea industry and was central to a much-lauded benefit-sharing agreement with Indigenous San and Khoi communities. We argue, however, that ABS as a model not only fails to challenge the engrained powers of state, capital, race and patriarchy, but even appears to legitimise (falsely) these powers because of its inability to grapple with local contexts and struggles over identity, representation and land. Despite its guise as an apolitical regulatory instrument, ABS entrenches existing marginalities, exclusions and structural inequities. Using a mixed methods approach that focuses on deep listening and draws from decades of research in the region, we demonstrate what happens when the depoliticising ABS framework collides with the complex and contentious politics of communities fractured by colonialism and apartheid. We conclude that ABS remains disconnected from, and structurally ignorant of, the wider political and economic struggles faced by marginalised communities. Aided by an intervening and complicit state, the agreements instead serve as legal compliance mechanisms that perpetuate epistemic injustices by maintaining a ‘business as usual’ approach without fundamentally shifting power relations or economic disparities.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03057070.2023.2301640 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cjssxx:v:49:y:2023:i:4:p:589-610

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cjss20

DOI: 10.1080/03057070.2023.2301640

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Southern African Studies is currently edited by Ralph Smith

More articles in Journal of Southern African Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().