**1. Introduction**

My research interest with biodiversity as a discursive phenomenon dates back in 1996 when I was working as a Junior Sociologist at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). I was involved with the Institute's flagship project on rice biodiversity- a multi-country component project interested in documenting the cultural dimension of rice genetic conservation at the community and farm levels. I was puzzled by the seemingly oxymoronic juxtaposition of rice and biodiversity. Soon, I discovered that my initial notion of biodiversity is as limited as my understanding of its origin as a concept.

When I was invited to write a paper about biodiversity for this volume, I was tempted to organize my key arguments around the politics of biodiversity (as it has been the original line of inquiry of my previous academic work on the topic). My reason was that the concept has been given birth by political claims of conservation biologists and evolved, henceforth as a form of political activism involving new sets of interest groups. However as an environmental sociologist who has been intrigued by the discursive nature of political claims, I decided to use a title that truly reflects the tricky nature this notion. Tricky because the conventional notion led many of us to believe that the politics of biodiversity was inaugurated by the way it has been used by the international community to promote common economic and political ethos (e.g., Convention on Biological Diversity). I disagree. My position was that the politics of this concept goes as far back as to the very day of its coinage. Tracing the genealogy of biodiversity as a discursive claim is a more strategic and encompassing way of reframing the issues it implicates. Phrased differently, it is my position that the discussion of the biography of the concept we call biodiversity is to highlight not only the politics that goes with it, but to call attention to the sociological relevance surrounding its current usage. Thus the thesis of my chapter is twofold: I submit that:


In order to amplify the major thesis of the chapter, I divided the discussion in two major parts. Part 1 elaborated on the scientific context that led to the naming of this concept. Part 2 highlighted the power play that goes with its current usage. Respectively, the former tackled the genealogy of biodiversity; its birth as a social construction to justify a call for collective

Biopolitics: Biodiversity as Discourse of Claims 5

As if to lighten the vagueness of the term and the confusion it generates among its scientific users, two complementary schemes have been proffered the hub of which are the issues of (i) pinning down a precise definition (i.e. *definitional problem*) and (ii) operationalization of its indices (i.e. *application problem*).4 These schemes are complementary in the sense that the first served as the take off point of the second. The second approach, on the other hand, did not abandon the optimism of the search for categorical definition. Rather, it fleshed out the

The first scheme has been advanced in a paper presented during the 2000 London 3rd Policies for Sustainable Technological Innovation in the 21st Century (POSTI) Conference on Policy Agendas for Sustainable Development. The approach divides biodiversity into two parts when analyzing its use in environmental policy namely: (i) biodiversity as a feature of nature (i.e. the variety of species, phenomena, and processes that exist in nature); (ii) biodiversity as a policy discourse (i.e. a concept and a discourse that is used to argue for the need of nature conservation, and in legitimating different conservation policies). As explicitly argued by Nieminen (2001: 2) "Biodiversity as the essential feature of nature is foremost the realm of scientists, it is the realm of scientific measuring, categorization and theorizing. Biodiversity as a discourse, on the one hand, is the realm of policy-making,

Biodiversity along the first divide refers to the pure objective status of the variety of living organisms, biological systems, and biological processes found on Earth. This bias is aptly captured by the following definition articulated by its staunchest supporter- Edward O.

"*Biodiversity…is all hereditary-based variation at all levels of organization, from genes within a single local population, to the species composing all or part of a local community, and finally to the communities themselves that compose the living parts of the multifarious ecosystems of the* 

As a policy initiative, biodiversity is embedded within the "rhetorical resources for identifying the responsibilities, characterizing social actors and groups, praising and blaming, criticizing conventional knowledge or accepting it, legitimizing courses of action or political strategies and for promoting the factuality of otherwise contestable claims" (Nieminen 2001: 3). In other words, biodiversity is a form of social standard that can be used to evaluate human actions in relation to utilization, conservation and management of the

to standardize or a result of a *compromise* between divergent but quite similar claims (i.e. the scientific

4 In relation to this, Sarkar (2002:132) inquires: "The term biodiversity has remained remarkably vague and its measurement equally capricious. Is allelic diversity part of biodiversity? Or only species? What about individual differences? Do we have to worry about community structures? Is the number of species appropriate measure? Do we have to take rarity and commonality into account? Or should we

**2.2 Biodiversity as feature of nature** 

ethics and practicality of such process.

administration and communication."

*world*." *(Wilson 1998: 1-3)*

worry about differences between places?"

benefits of biodiversity.

**2.3 Policy discourse** 

Wilson:

claims).

action; while the latter documented how biodiversity as a political *tool* has been appropriated by and forms part of, the discursive armory of three grassroots epistemic communities1 as they advanced their respective political agenda.
