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Introduction: The association of biodiversity conservation with indigenous peoples at the so-called periphery of the global system is well illustrated by the Melaban Kantu, a tribal people of West Kalimantan, Indonesia. They cultivate not irrigated rice fields, which have been the subject of extensive government interventions throughout Asia focusing on the introduction of high-yielding varieties of rice, but dryland (and some swampland) swiddens, which have received virtually no extension inputs, and which contain exclusively traditional upland rice varieties. They still retain many so-called animistic beliefs regarding the spirit of the rice, which along with a subsistence pattern that emphasizes diversification contributes to their planting more than one dozen different varieties of rice per household. Each household also plants an average of nearly two dozen different nonrice relishes. This emphasis on diversification also is reflected in the fact that each household makes two to three separate swiddens each year, each located in a different microenvironment. In addition to their swiddens, the Kantu cultivate Para rubber (<i>Hevea brasiliensis</i>): most households own four to five separate rubber gardens, each averaging less than one hectare and containing several hundred trees. The rubber trees are unselected varieties, descended directly, in many cases through self-propagation, from seeds imported from Brazil at the end of the nineteenth century. The rubber gardens are not clean weeded, and they contain, in addition to the rubber trees, a wide variety of noncultigens, many of economic use, such as edible bamboos and ferns. The productive mixture of plans in the gardens is an attraction to wild animals, and they are a prime hunting ground for the bearded pig (<i>Sus barbatus</i>), the most prized game animal of the Kantu. Swiddens and rubber gardens aside, the territory of the Kantu is comprised mostly of secondary forest but includes pockets and strips of primary forest. The reasons for protecting these remnants are variously economic (where valuable fruit, timber, or <i>illipe</i> nut [<i>Shorea</i> spp.] trees are present), ecological (narrow strips of forest are usually left standing along the banks of streams and rivers to protect the waterways from erosion and blockage), and ritual (e.g., burial grounds and areas known to be the abode of <i>antu</i>, spirits, always are protected). A variety of plants in these pockets and strips are exploited for food, craft, medicinal, and ritual purposes. The Kantu traditionally communicated with their principal deities through the medium of seven species of forest birds, all of whichalong with a number of other forest faunathey are ritually forbidden to kill. These are not atypical of the circumstances of biodiversity conservation by indigenous peoples in the Third World, circumstances that are the current focus of attention by scholars and activists in the international development and scientific community (Zerner 2000). There is anxiety in this community over the current nature of exploitation of biogenetic resources by indigenous communities in less developed countries and by business and academic communities in the more developed ones (Laird 2002). It is suggested that exploitation by the former is leading to degradation and that this is exacerbated by the latters failure to recognize and compensate these communities for their stewardship of these resources. It is further suggested that if due recognition and compensation were provided to these indigenous communities their purported degradation of these resources would diminish. One mechanism that has been proposed for this compensation and recognition is intellectual property rights (IPRs) (Greaves 1994).
I focus on a number of key questions. In particular, what is the role of marginality in biodiversity and what, thus, is the impact on biodiversity of the incorporation of marginal communities into broader political-economic systems? Can the same system that threatens biodiversity and indigenous rights also save them? Who supports the proposed use of intellectual property rights and why? And do resources flow into marginal communities as easily as they flow out of them? My thesis is that the use of intellectual property rights to address the issues of degradation and inequity faces two serious obstacles: first, compensation for them is likely to fail to reach the indigenous peoples responsible for biodiversity conservation
and second, if compensation does reach them, it is likely to change them and undermine the basis for biodiversity conservation in the process. I argue that a possible solution to this dilemma lies in problematizing the act of intervention and the relationship between elites and indigenous communities in the less developed countries. I begin with an outline of some of the implicit premises of the proposed use of intellectual property rights. I then discuss the impact on community resource rights and biodiversity conservation of, first, a more attenuated relationship with the world system and, second, a more intense relationship with the world system. Next I attempt to reframe the question of biodiversity conservation and community rights and conclude by suggesting some alternative means for coping with it.
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