The Historical Roots of the North-South Dynamic in Biodiversity Conservation and its Imprint on the Convention on Biological Diversity

The concept of biodiversity has been historically constituted by a series of North-South disputes over its meaning and application. The following chapter places the entry of biodiversity into international environmental law within its historical and political context and outlines the exposure and collisions with other discourses and rationalities that occurred around the adoption and early operation of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). While the concept of biodiversity emerged within Northern conservation practice, the reality of the South as the holder of the remaining biodiversity reserves has forced a continued and often contentious engagement with the political economy of Southern development. The chapter identifies a troubling orientalist pattern in this engagement that repeats throughout the decades: the North always proposes first and the South is expected to reacts and adapt.