From Biopiracy to Sustainable Knowledge Governance: Epistemic Justice and the Reconstruction of Resource Sovereignty in the Global South

Description

Dong, in a 2026 article, argues that biopiracy is better understood as epistemic colonialism. Biopiracy means companies taking indigenous plants and knowledge without fair payment. The theft, Dong says, is of knowledge systems, not just seeds. Building on Fricker's theory of knowledge injustice, Kuokkanen's idea of relational sovereignty, and Santos's call for Southern knowledge systems, the article proposes a three-stage story. It runs from biopiracy through epistemicide, killing knowledge traditions, toward rebuilt knowledge sovereignty.

Experiments in India, Brazil, and South Africa show how Western property law pushes aside communal, orally held knowledge. Benefit-sharing under the Convention on Biological Diversity still assumes Western rules. The TRIPS trade agreement comes in for sharp criticism as embedding that hegemony. Dong's remedy is plural: restore communities' control over their own knowledge, treat sovereignty as a web of ties rather than a fence, and build many-centred knowledge systems instead of one world centre.

Catalog record

Source: https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC13500425