The Dictionary of Human Geography

law has served to make bioprospecting legal. In
two major multilateral agreements – the 1992
Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) and
the 1994 Agreement on Trade-related Aspects
of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) –
much of the world’s biological material has
been designated as ownable in various senses,
and thus a legitimate object for transaction
and exchange.
The situation that has emerged from these
three developments is profoundly politicized
(Dutfield, 2004). For advocates, bioprospect-
ing can deliver assistance ranging from the
financial to the educational to those commu-
nities in which it takes place, as well
as contributing to the production of new
pharmaceutical and other products. For critics,
bioprospecting is biopiracy (Shiva, 1998
[1997]), in that it fails to adequately recognize
or reward the traditional knowledge of the
peoples who have cultivated of modified the
properties that make a given organism valu-
able. Questions of what should be ownable
(even in a temporary form) are another matter.
Only by tracing the sorts of benefit-sharing
agreements in a particular case is one likely
to get beyond the terms of this increasingly
polarized debate (Castree, 2003a). nb

bioregionalism An ecological philosophy
and movement advocating the new ecological
politics of place, born in San Francisco in the
1970s. Bioregions are defined by two kinds of
mapping. First, the tools of climatology, geo-
morphology and natural history are used to
map ‘geographic terrains’ with distinctive eco-
logical characteristics. Second, descriptions of
sense of placeor ‘terrains of consciousness’
by those who live within them refine the
boundaries of these bioregions. Both the
approach and practice of bioregionalism
have been widely criticized as analytically and
politically misconceived in the context of
global social and environmental problems
and processes. sw

Suggested reading
List (1993); Sale (1991).

biosecurity Biosecurity is astateand intra-
state response to the cross-boundary move-
ments of non-human living things, particularly
those organisms that are considered a threat to
human, ecological and economic welfare. It
has at least three elements. First, there is the
attempt to manage the movements of pests
and diseases (cf. disease, diffusion of).

Attention is focused on nation-states and

their disease statuses. These regional disease

zones sometimes map on to other distinctions

between North and South or Rich and Poor,

mappings that are far from accidental and not

without consequence (Davis, 2005). Within

the state, specific sites are earmarked for bio-

security measures: these include airports,

seaports and increasingly farms (Donaldson

and Wood, 2004). Second, there are the

attempts to reduce the effects of invasive

species on so-called indigenous flora and

fauna (Bright, 1999). Third, there are the at-

tempts to reduce the risks of microbiological

materials being used as weapons. All three

practices link togethergeopoliticsandbio-

geography, throwing up real tensions be-

tween movement and stasis, nations and

natures (Clark, 2002). sjh

biotechnology The term is perhaps most

usefully defined by a phrase as simple as ‘the

uses of life’ (to quote the title of one history

of the concept: see Bud, 1993). Those search-

ing for more technically precise versions

should refer to Bains’ (2003) A–Z on the sub-

ject. Although vague, this formulation has the

virtue of getting across two of the more im-

portant things about biotechnology; namely,

that it is both a very broad term and one

that is confused and contested. Starting with

the latter point, when one reviews the litera-

ture on the subject, it swiftly becomes appar-

ent that there is nothing like an agreed

definition of biotechnology. For some the

notion covers everything from the ancient art

of brewing through plant breeding and chem-

ical engineering all the way to modern tech-

niques of genetic manipulation, because all of

these activities result from a coming together

of human ingenuity, technical intervention

and biological materials. For others, biotech-

nology is a frontier technology that should

restrict the term to only the most recent

elements of this long history; namely the

proliferation of technical possibilities in

the late twentieth/early twenty-first century

around the convergence of an informational

biology, aneo-liberaleconomic context and

extensive legal protections onintellectual

property. What is perhaps most significant

about these competing positions is how they

are mobilized during the many debates per-

taining to biotechnology. One hears more of

the former if the aim is reassurance and when

long track records of safety are involved and

more of the latter if the aim is to boost

or debunk the technology by invoking its

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BIOTECHNOLOGY