Controversies over the commercial reappropriation of “Creole” ethnobotanical knowledge traditionalized

Résumé 0

On Reunion Island, controversy has arisen over the use of knowledge regarding medicinal plants to generate economic profit. This article begins by reviewing how use of this knowledge has evolved. It shows how the knowledge came to be preserved as a cultural heritage and celebrated as a token of a certain Creole identity. It then describes how a means of economic development based on this knowledge was introduced in the early 2000s. It grew into an agricultural value chain of aromatic and medicinal plants that mainly produces standardized herbal tea bags. The article describes the complaints that arose when those who had until then shown no interest for this knowledge and had even condemned it, took a certain ownership of it by commercializing it. The fact that traditional practitioners use an accusatory tone to qualify the situation as a usurpation questions the legitimacy of those who seem to benefit the most from these developments. Whether downstream of the value chain in pharmacies or upstream in industrial companies, it has become apparent that people in privileged socio-racial positions are at the top of the economic chain commercializing this knowledge. This confirms that the development trajectory chosen reinforces structural inequalities, and it opens the debate on how to find fair economic prospects.