About the authors

Janet Bell is a pharmacologist, writer and researcher based in the USA. She writes mainly on food security issues related to biodiversity.

Robert Chambers is a Fellow of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. His books include Rural Development: Putting the Last First (1983) and Challenging the Professions (1993). He works on concepts of poverty and participatory approaches in development.

Marcus Colchester is Director of the World Rainforest Movement and is the author of numerous books and reports on indigenous people and biodiversity.

Alan Goodman is Associate Professor of Biological Anthropy and Dean of the School of Natural Science, Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts. He teaches and writes on the interaction between biology, ideology and political economy.

Mark Johnston is International Projects Co-ordinator for The Body Shop International and co-ordinates all anthropological materials and fieldwork for the company. He previously worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and helped produce the television series Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World, a ten-hour documentary series.

Kelly Kennedy is a graduate student of the Harvard Business School and was a 1994 Summer Program Associate for the NRRP.

Jack Kloppenburg is an Associate Professor of Rural Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His current research focuses on the emergent social impacts of biotechnology and on the distinction between 'scientific' and 'local' knowledge. He is author of First the Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology, 1492-2000 (Cambridge University Press, 1988) and editor of Seeds and Sovereignty: Use and Control of Plant Genetic Resources (Duke University Press, 1988).

Regine Kollek is a molecular biologist at the Institute of Social Sciences, Hamburg, and co-author of Die ungeklarten Gefahrenpotential der Gentechnologie (1996) and Wissenschaft als Kontext-Kontexte der Wessenschaft ( 1993).

Pat Mooney is an NGO activist who has worked on international environment and development issues related to sustainable agriculture and biodiversity for more than 25 years. He has been the recipient of The Right Livelihood Award and the US' 'Giraffe Award' given to people 'who stick their necks out'.

Christine Noiville is a lecturer in law at the University of Paris. Her doctoral thesis was on the legal protection of marine genetic resources.

Michel Pimbert was formerly Director of WWF-lnternational's biodiversity programme and is currently Director of WWF-Switzerland. He is an agricultural ecologist with extensive experience of participatory approaches to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.

Vandana Shiva is a physicist, philosopher and feminist, and is Director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy in Dehra Dun, India. She is also the Science and Environmental advisor to the Third World Network.

Christine von Weiszer is a writer and biologist living in Bonn, Germany, where she also presides over a large family. She writes on the implications of technology and economics, and is particularly concerned about the marginalization of the domestic sphere in industrial society and the invasion of life's 'commons' by genetic engineering.

Charles Zerner is Director of the Natural Resources and Rights Program (NRRP) of the Rainforest Alliance in New York. He is a South-east Asia specialist and lawyer with extensive experience in the analysis of community environment relationships to law, culture and conservation.