Intellectual property rights in common bean breeding : opportunities and constraints for local and participatory breeding in Nicaragua

If intellectual property rights (IPR) are incentives for plant research, how do they affect plant development for the benefit of the resource-poor? This thesis analyses the implications of IPR from the perspective of small-scale users, providers and developers of seed. Special attention is given participatory plant breeding, i.e. the approach that joins farmers and professional breeders, local and formal conditions and the knowledge and visions held by rural communities, civil society and State. The thesis brings on a discussion on intellectual contributions, claims and preferences in a case of participatory breeding and as such, it explores the opportunities and constraints of IPR when breeding is done in collaboration between different actors. The legal requirements for plant breeders' rights of distinctness and uniformity are observed in the field as well as genetically analysed. In general, the thesis illustrates how international trade regulations translate into national law and onto the field of local and participatory breeding. In focus is the common bean and legislative system of Nicaragua, a developing country that recently adopted plant breeders' rights that go beyond world trade agreements and against farmers' rights to exchange and informally sell seed. The thesis also analyses the possible impacts of rights in counterbalance, i.e. community intellectual rights in draft

Seeing like a standard: EU, sustainable biofuels, and land use change in Africa

Biofuels have expanded across the globe, generating a range of concerns in the places of production. One approach to controlling the effects of biofuel production has been sustainability standards. This article takes a ‘seeing like’ approach to analyse how the EU Sustainability standard contributes to narrowing the vision of what sustainable biofuels are. Six biofuel cases in Africa are examined through the lens of the standard, using remote sensing to investigate the criteria on land use and canopy cover change. The standard view is also compared to on ground views regarding the sustainability of the projects. The effects of seeing like the EU standard are two: 1) diluted seeing, which prioritises global environmental problems over more nuanced social and institutional aspects; and 2) distributed seeing, which transforms standardised sustainable biofuels into multiple, uncertain forms because of hybrid governance. High carbon losses due to biofuel projects were detected, but at the same time, the standard simplifies and skips over wider problems related to unsustainable biofuel projects

Becoming Biofuels. The messy assembling of resources, sustainability, poverty, land use, and nation-states

Biofuels have come to represent the will to mitigate climate change by replacing fossil fuels with so-called climate-friendly and renewable plant sources, and to improve rural and poor conditions in the South through biofuel crop production, farm job creation, and smallholder cash cropping. The expansion of biofuels in countries in the South largely pivoted upon ‘the will to develop’, specifically through the oil shrub Jatropha curcas L. However, these ‘wills’ have intertwined with other intentions, processes, and relations, and have created new problems, including land grabbing, food competition, displacement of local people, and deforestation. Thus for critics, biofuels produce not simply wins but also losses, and losers. The purpose of this thesis is not to take sides in this polarised debate but to cut through the debate with an assemblage and governmentality analytics, investigating how overlapping and competing discourses, materialities, technologies, and relationships shape biofuels. Taking an ethnographic and multi-sited approach, it looks at biofuels as a project-in-the-making going on in, and across, various sites, including Zambia, sub-Saharan Africa, the European Union, and the so-called global space. It primarily uses biofuels’ novelty and ‘becomingness’ to render strange more familiar notions, to generate an analytics of how political ecologies and political economies are becoming, and to provide deeper insights into what resources, sustainability, poverty, land, and nation-states actually are. This approach suggests that the production of biofuels is complex and ‘messy’, and that outcomes for societies and ecologies are of an uncertain and ambiguous nature

Sweden´s conflicting green leadership in the European Union

This article examines the nuanced dynamics of green leadership within the European Union (EU), focusing on Sweden. Sweden has long been heralded as an exemplar of environmental and climate leadership within the European Union as well as a frontrunner in the adoption of green policies, notably in the realms of bioenergy and biofuels. However, its leadership stance has come under scrutiny due to the inherent conflicts within green initiatives, often referred to as ‘green-green dilemmas’ that arise when environmental actions, despite their sustainable intentions, clash over competing interests. Drawing on a variety of sources we delve into the complexities surrounding Sweden's green leadership. The article highlights how Sweden’s enthusiastic endorsement of bioenergy and biofuels, integral to its climate action strategy, has sparked debates and raised questions about Sweden´s perceived green leadership within the European Union. Sweden's approach to navigating these conflicts, alongside its efforts to negotiate and balance economic interests with environmental ambitions, offers a compelling insight into the challenges of maintaining green leadership in the face of conflicting green agendas