INDUSTRIAL HEARTLANDS OF NATURE: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF BIOLOGICAL PROSPECTING IN MADAGASCAR B y BENJAMIN DAVID NEIMARK A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Geography written under the direction of Richard Schroeder and approved by _____________________________ _____________________________ _____________________________ _____________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey October 2009 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION INDUSTRIAL HEARTLANDS OF NATURE: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF BIOLOGICAL PROSPECTING IN MADAGASCAR B y BENJAMIN DAVID NEIMARK Dissertation Advisor: Richard Schroeder This dissertation centers on the 50 year history and politics of biological prospecting in Madagascar. I examine three case studies of drug discovery and development and analyze the politics of access to biogenetic resources used in bioprospecting. The three cases featured in the dissertation include the commodity chains centered on the medicinal plants, rosy periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus) and Prunus africana, and the contemporary bioprospecting project launched under the auspices of the International Cooperative Biodiversity Groups (ICBG). It involved 14 months of intensive ethnographic field surveys and participant observation carried out in 2005 and 2006. These were implemented in multiple sites in northern town of Antsiranana, the central region of Bealanana, and the southern regions of Anosy and Androy. It also included interviews with scientists in laboratories, state institutions, and NGOs in the capital of Antananarivo. I document how bioprospecting has changed over time in terms of technology, laws of access to resources, and the actors involved. I found that there has been a move towards a more mechanized and rationalized process by the industry, both ii spatially and economically. This move can be explained by the many attempts to control the “natural” and social barriers that impede production, and to overcome the place-based conditions of production. Rather than the full industrialization of the process, however, my analysis highlights countervailing instances where "nature" still holds sway. Results show that scientists and bioprospecting firms overcome these “natural” obstacles primarily by gaining and maintaining control over rural labor, negotiating access to endangered forests, and alienating thousands of plant specimens from their places of origin. This is explicitly seen in contemporary bioprospectors’ shift from collection based on place-based traditional knowledge towards rational collection, the de-skilling of the Malagasy labor force including bench scientists, and creating global storehouses of botanical knowledge, all of which are efforts used to speed up the production process and place it more firmly under industrialized control. These developments, in turn, cause some Malagasy scientists, researchers and administrators to question their participation in bioprospecting projects and reveal that current natural resource policies of extraction, commercialization and benefit-sharing face many challenges. iii Preface This project first began in 2003 as a graduate student at Rutgers University in New Jersey. It is a combination of my scholarly academic interests in political ecology and economy and professional experiences in international development and natural product commercialization in Madagascar, Africa, and in the U.S. This work was informed by seven months (September-November 1999 and May-July 2000) I spent working on my Master’s thesis, “Vegetative propagation strategies for agroforestry trees,” trees in the eastern rain forests of Madagascar. For my Master’s work I conducted a mixed-methods approach using quantitative propagation experiments and qualitative interviews with farmers about multipurpose fruit and high-value homegarden agroforestry systems, called tanimboly in Malagasy. The purpose of this work was to develop sustainable agricultural alternatives to swidden cultivation in Madagascar. While conducting my Master’s research, I came to the conclusion that the benefits derived from sustainable development schemes implemented by NGOs were shared unevenly by participants across the rural landscape in Madagascar. It was out of this work that I decided to investigate the effects of a large scale bioprospecting projects in Madagascar to see how bioprospecting policy was implemented and benefits shared among the participants of the practice. In particular, who was profiting most from the commercialization of Malagasy biodiversity, and why? This dissertation would not be possible without the outstanding support of Richard Schroeder. His dedication to mentoring and advising went above and beyond. I am indebted to his tireless encouragement and skillful editing. I would like to thank my tremendously supportive dissertation committee members, David Hughes, Kevin St. iv Martin, and James Simon, for their keen insights and thoughtful suggestions on previous drafts of the dissertation. I would also like to thank other faculty members at Rutgers University for their welcomed guidance, principally Barbara Cooper, Robin Leichenko, and Genese Sodikoff. Special thanks also go out to Teresa Delcorso for her support and friendship throughout the planning and writing stages of the dissertation and the Rutgers Department of Geography support staff, including Betty-Ann Abbatemarco, Teresa Kirby, Michelle Martel, and Mike Siegel for their help throughout. I would like to thank the Malagasy Government for providing me the opportunity to conduct this research. Special recognition must be attributed to the many scientists and researchers of CNARP (Centre National d'Applications et des Rescherches Pharmaceuticque), including Director Etienne Rakotobe, Rabodo Adriantsiferana, Vincent E. Rasamisona, Michel Ratsimbason, Richard Randrianaivo, and Stephan Rakotonandrasana, for providing me with a supportive institutional affiliation and a much needed location to conduct my work. I am grateful to the staff at MICET (Madagascar Institut pour la Conservations des Ecosystèmes Tropicaux), in particular Benji Randrianambina and Benjamin Andriamihaja, for their support and friendship. I would also like to thank Jean-Claude Ratsimivony and Philippe Rasoanaivo for helpful suggestions and research contacts in Madagascar. Lastly, I want to provide a special thanks to the m a n y bioprospecting researchers at the Missouri Botanical Gardens and rural inhabitants featured in this dissertation for their continued patience while I endlessly flooded them with my research questions. v Preliminary fieldwork and language training in Madagascar conducted in August of 2004 was funded by a Special Opportunity Grant for Pre-dissertation Research from the Rutgers University Graduate School. Research in Madagascar conducted from June 2005 through August 2005 was funded by a New Use Agriculture Natural Plant Products (NUANPP) and Chemonics International contract award and from September 2005 to October 2006 b y a Fulbright Institute for International Education Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship. Follow-up research and write-up conducted in September 2006 through August 2007 was generously funded by a Rutgers University Graduate School Lewis Bevier Fellowship. Portions of this work have been presented at annual meetings of the American Association of American Geographers and the African Studies Association in addition to conferences held at Rutgers University, and the University of Pennsylvania. I thank fellow participants and audience members for helpful comments and suggestions. M y family was supportive throughout the dissertation process, providing invaluable financial and moral support. I am particul a r l y grateful to my parents and family, Gloria and Nelson Neimark, Jessica and David Feldan, and Jason Neimark, for their patience and support thought this long journey of discovery. Finally, my academic colleagues, and close friends who were always there for me, Sharon Baskind, Chelsea Booth, Adam Diamond, Cynthia Gorman, Andrew Gerkey, Glenn, Torie, and Eli Lines, Dillon Mahoney, Emily McDonald, Rhonda Prenski, Debarati Sen, John Wing, and Bradley Wilson. L a st but not least, a gros bisous to m y loving wife Céline and baby boy Raphael, vi without their love and support my life wouldn’t be so enjoyable or complete. This dissertation is dedicated to my mother and in loving memory of my father. vii Table of Contents Page Abstract ii Preface iv List of Tables xii List of Maps xiii List of Figures xiv Chapter 1 The biological prospecting filière: Political economy 1 of access and extraction in Madagascar Problem and rationale 1 On the bioprospecting trail 5 Industrial heartlands of nature: The intersections of 7 bioprospecting and hotspot conservation in Madagascar Access and control of natural commodities 9 Theorizing the natural barriers to production and 12 agrarian change relating to bioprospecting Commodity chain analysis 15 Surveying the country 17 Madagascar’s political geography 20 Current economic indicators 23 Madagascar's "environmental" landscape: The 24 National Environmental Action Plan (NEAP) and the Durban Vision Surveying the dissertation 28 viii Chapter 2 The historical trajectory of the bioprospecting 36 industry Introduction 36 Background to bioprospecting 38 Modern bioprospecting under the INBio and ICBG 41 Why is “nature” so important for drug discovery? 44 The collection