The Green Economy: Reconceptualizing the Natural Commons as Natural Capital (original) (raw)
Related papers
Grabbing “Green”: Markets, Environmental Governance and the Materialization of Natural Capital.
Over the past two decades, the incorporation of market logics into environment and conservation policy has led to a reconceptualization of “nature.” Resulting constructs like ecosystem services and biodiversity derivatives, as well as finance mechanisms like Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, species banking, and carbon trading, offer new avenues for accumulation and set the context for new enclosures. As these practices have become more apparent, geographers have been at the forefront of interdisciplinary research that has highlighted the effects of “green grabs”—in which ‘‘green credentials’‘ are used to justify expropriation of land and resources—in specific locales. While case studies have begun to reveal the social and ecological marginalization associated with green grabs and the implementation of market mechanisms in particular sites, less attention has been paid to the systemic dimensions and “logics” mobilizing these projects. Yet, the emergence of these constructs reflects a larger transformation in international environmental governance— one in which the discourse of global ecology has accommodated an ontology of natural capital, culminating in the production of what is taking shape as “The Green Economy.” The Green Economy is not a natural or coincidental development, but is contingent upon, and coordinated by, actors drawn together around familiar and emergent institutions of environmental governance. Indeed, the terrain for green grabbing is increasingly cultivated through relationships among international environmental policy institutions, organizations, activists, academics, and transnational capitalist and managerial classes.
Natural resource extraction is understood as existing within a singular capitalist economy that promotes primary production as a source for unimpeded economic growth and expansion. Due to the seeming hegemony of capitalism, the environmental movement has worked against the exploitation of resources by working against capitalism itself or, more recently, working with capitalism. In both cases environmental management, conservation, and environmentalism are practiced relative to a capitalist economy. This has led to, for example, ecological strategies such as "green capitalism" which advocate for protection and preservation of natural resources within the context of capitalist economic growth and profits. This "capitalocentric" approach reduces the possibilities for environmental management, conservation, and environmentalism because it ignores the non-capitalist economic activity that often coincides with resource use and extraction. In order to provide an alternate economic discourse by which we can understand the multiple economies of resource extraction, I rely upon the emerging "diverse economies" literature in economic geography and political ecology. This approach allows me to assess mushroom hunting as a distinctly non-capitalist class process. By recognizing the diversity of economy, activities such as mushroom hunting and the gathering of other non-timber forest products, typically ignored as either archaic or irrelevant relative to “the” economy, can be discussed in economic terms more suited to their positions independent of capitalism. This in turn produces openings for new forms of resource management previously unimaginable.
Over the past two decades, the incorporation of market logics into environment and conservation policy has led to a reconceptualization of "nature." Resulting constructs like ecosystem services and biodiversity derivatives, as well as finance mechanisms like Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, species banking, and carbon trading, offer new avenues for accumulation and set the context for new enclosures. As these practices have become more apparent, geographers have been at the forefront of interdisciplinary research that has highlighted the effects of "green grabs"-in which ''green credentials'' are used to justify expropriation of land and resources-in specific locales. While case studies have begun to reveal the social and ecological marginalization associated with green grabs and the implementation of market mechanisms in particular sites, less attention has been paid to the systemic dimensions and "logics" mobilizing these projects. Yet, the emergence of these constructs reflects a larger transformation in international environmental governance-one in which the discourse of global ecology has accommodated an ontology of natural capital, culminating in the production of what is taking shape as "The Green Economy." The Green Economy is not a natural or coincidental development, but is contingent upon, and coordinated by, actors drawn together around familiar and emergent institutions of environmental governance. Indeed, the terrain for green grabbing is increasingly cultivated through relation-
Re-Imaging the Commons as ‘The Green Economy’
International Environmental Communication Association 2013 conference
The United Nations’ green economy programme radically re-imagines the commons as a space where ecosystems services will be quantified, marketised and traded. This paper will examine issues with this version of the green economy for environmental communicators. It will review the etymology of the concept, examine contested ideas on what a green economy would entail and situate these proposals in relation to different economic approaches to the environment. It will suggest strategies for communicating the contested nature of the proposals and exposing obfuscations. This paper will argue that in stark opposition to green economics with its focus on participation and democratic processes, the UN’s GEP will close deliberations on the commons by privatizing ‘ecosystem services’ – thereby taking environmental decision-making out of a political sphere and into the marketplace.
Journal of Peasant Studies, 2018
This contribution addresses the growing global trend to promote ‘natural capital accounting’ (NCA) in support of environmental conservation. NCA seeks to harness the economic value of conserved nature to incentivize local resource users to forgo the opportunity costs of extractive activities. We suggest that this represents a form of neoliberal biopower/biopolitics seeking to defend life by demonstrating its ‘profitability’ and hence right to exist. While little finance actually reaches communities through this strategy, substantial funding still flows into the idea of ‘natural capital’ as the basis of improving rural livelihoods. Drawing on two cases in Southeast Asia, we show that NCA initiatives may compel some local people to value ecosystem services in financial terms, yet in most cases this perspective remains partial and fragmented in communities where such initiatives produce a range of unintended outcomes. When the envisioned environmental markets fail to develop and benefits remain largely intangible, NCA fails to meet the growing material aspirations of farmers while also offering little if any bulwark against their using forests more intensively and/or enrolling in lucrative extractive enterprise. We thus conclude that NCA in practice may become the antithesis of conservation by actually encouraging the resource extraction it intends to combat.
Ecological Political Economy: Towards a Strategic-Relational Approach
This paper identifies three distinct traditions in what might be described as 'ecological political economy'. First, a " Promethean " approach posits that capitalism has a relentless drive towards growth and bears responsibility for the wholesale transformation of nature. Second, critics of sustainable capitalism acknowledge the possibility of capitalist futures with a better management of natural resources and carbon emissions. The Strategic Relational Approach, developed by Bob Jessop and Ngai-Ling Sum, points to a unique third type of ecological political economy. Each approach is shown to have distinct views concerning the commodification of nature, the role of the state, and ways to understand ecological and social transitions. The Strategic Relational Approach points to the possibility of counter-hegemonic strategies and collective mobilization to transform the state and so redirect, control and contain capitalist relations with nature.
Journal of Political Philosophy, 2022
I. INTRODUCTION: COMMODIFICATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL GOODS S HOULD there be markets for environmental goods? For instance, should we trade carbon and biodiversity credits? The debate over markets and nature is often polarized. On the one hand, there is a position that assumes that 'all nature is for sale' or, more precisely, that there are no principled reasons for excluding certain environmental goods from commodification. Markets are seen as an important tool for dealing with environmental problems, precisely because these are market failures. A combination of existing markets, new markets (for example, carbon trading), and hypothetical markets (environmental valuation and costbenefit analyses) should allow for socially optimal outcomes. This approach can be found in several major reports, 1 and is adopted by many governments and international institutions. On the other hand, the opposite position argues that 'nature is not for sale' or, more precisely, that most environmental goods should not be commodified. For instance, Robert Goodin and Michael Sandel both argue that emissions trading is morally problematic (see below). 2 Sandel also criticizes other variants of nature commodification, such as trophy hunting and ticket resale for nature parks. 3 Moreover, markets are often seen as the cause of environmental problems, rather than being a solution. These scholars plead for limiting the scope of markets, both real and hypothetical. 4 A more radical interpretation considers these new environmental markets, such as emissions trading, as the newest stage of capitalism. The Green Economy, for instance, is seen as a discourse that legitimizes further capital accumulation, by turning environmental goods into commodities. 5
Natural capital – a narrow view of the values of nature and environmental policies
L. Monnoyer-Smith (dir.). Nature et richesse et des nations, 2015
The notion of natural capital is a metaphor derived from works carried out at the interface between economics and ecology, and has quickly spread to the political sphere. However, this metaphor fails to account for the complexity of the values of nature and the political challenges arising from their valuation. On the one hand, it only encapsulates a small proportion of the values of biodiversity and ecosystems and neglects to take account of essential values such as cultural values and non-anthropocentric values. On the other hand, it potentially gives a very poor view of public decision-making in which the specifically political issues relating to debate and power struggles give way to management based on expertise. Far from definitively discrediting the relevance of this metaphor, highlighting its limitations and the simplifications that it makes should allow it to be usefully employed when restricted to its field of legitimacy, but also and above all, it should encourage the adoption of other messages and other rationalities than an approach that is strictly inspired by standard economics in response to the major environmental challenges of our time.
Environmental Science and Policy, 2023
As old as industrialism or civilization itself, socio-ecological problems are nothing new. Despite all efforts to resolve environmental dilemmas, socio-ecological catastrophe has only intensified. Governments, in response, have unveiled the green economy to confront ecological and climate catastrophe. The green economy, however, has worsened socio-ecological conditions, invigorating the present trajectory of (techno)capitalist development. This article argues that the green economy serves as a tool of global counterinsurgency, managing, preempting and redirecting the inevitable ecological anxiety that could mobilize for radical social change. While fragmenting ecological opposition, the green economy meanwhile serves as a "force multiplier" for market expansion and capitalist development, as opposed to actually working towards real socio-ecological mitigation and remediation. The article proceeds by defining counterinsurgency, and indicating its relevance to the green economy. Dissecting the technics of the green economy, the next section reviews its origins and epistemological foundations by investigating the concepts and operationalization of 'energy', 'biodiversity' and 'carbon'. Then, briefly, the article reviews the extractive reality of low-carbon infrastructures, revealing the socio-ecological harm implied and justified by the green economic and decarbonization schemes. The green economy, it concludes, is a governmental technology, preventing collective self-reflection and action to (adequately) rehabilitate ecosystems and address the structural socio-ecological problems threatening the planet, thus preforming a counterinsurrectionary function in the service of state and capital.