Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge

Patrick Colgan is the former executive director of the Canadian Museum
of Nature.

In this book, imperialism is viewed historically, from Columbus through
military and industrial hegemony to legal piracy by such means as
bio-patents and intellectual property rights. The author, a prominent
Indian critic and activist, maintains that the developed world and
multinational corporations are blocking competition, warping scientific
priorities, and enclosing the intellectual commons via reductionistic
engineering, econo-mic commodification, and legal strictures. Non-
sustainable exploitation of the natural world is leading to
impoverishment, pollution, and introduced pests.

Shiva skilfully interweaves environmental, economic, and feminist
criticism in addressing such issues as the consequences of hybrid crop
seed and of human reproductive technologies. Particularly pointed are
the evaluations of the Green Revolution and of bio- prospecting, the
discussion of alienation (both natural and cultural), and the comparison
of agricultural monocultures to ethnic cleansing. Shiva makes an
eloquent plea for diversity, local freedom, and reconnecting elements of
an intrinsically holistic web. While her opinions are occasionally
questionable (why is it necessarily the case that “stresses and
diseases are bound to increase with genetic engineer- ing”?), her
arguments merit serious attention and constitute a stiff challenge to
the paradigms with-in which the West deals with nature.