Worldwide, bioeconomy is promoted as an ‘engine for sustainable development’. However, increasingly, the notion that ‘the bioeconomy’ will facilitate sustainable development per se is challenged. Based on the assumption that when leaving the relations between ‘nature’ and ‘society’ unquestioned, inherent inequalities are rather reproduced than overcome, we draw upon a social-ecological framework to analyse the societal relations to nature in the Namibian bioeconomy. In Namibia, with independence, an array of different benefit-sharing mechanisms have been developed to implement local participatory governance structure, which will be further streamlined under the newly introduced access and benefit-sharing law. Results show that despite efforts to facilitate a diversity-based bioeconomy, separating structures and trade-offs are persistent. Images of ‘nature’, like the ‘eternal Namibian landscape’, that draw upon colonial notions are frequently used to market indigenous natural products. Institutions to ‘nature’ that guarantee fair and equitable terms of trade are often only short-term and/or small-scale, e.g. as shown at the case of Devil’s claw, Hoodia and Namibian Myrrh. Even when perspectives cannot be assigned in a stereotypical way between user and provider, and instead, all actors refer to biodiversity and traditional knowledge as ‘welfare of the people’, ‘cultural heritage’, ‘input for R&D’, ‘community benefit’, and ‘marketing tool’, a rational-instrumental reasoning tends to be favoured of a normative-ethical one. A more diversified awareness towards the dialectics entailed in the conception, making, and management of ‘nature’ potentially inhibiting an inclusive sustainable development is relevant at any theory–practice interface, including development project-management and environmental policy-making.