Making Nature Investable (original) (raw)
Related papers
2018
In response to perceived valuation problems giving rise to global environmental crisis, ‘nature’ is being qualified, quantified and materialised as the new external(ised) ‘Nature-whole’ of ‘natural capital’. This paper problematises the increasing legibility, through numbering and (ac)counting practices, of natural capital as an apparently exterior ‘matter of fact’ that can be leveraged financially. Interconnected policy and technical texts, combined with observation as an academic participant in recent international environmental policy meetings, form the basis for a delineation of four connected and intensifying dimensions of articulation in fabricating ‘nature’ as ‘natural capital’: discursive, numerical-economic, material and institutional. Performative economic sociology approaches are drawn on to clarify the numbering and calculative practices making and performing indicators of nature health and harm as formally economic. These institutionalised fabrications are interpreted as attempts to enrol previously uncosted ‘standing natures’ in the forward-driving movement of capital.
Noting some effects of fabricating ‘nature’ as ‘natural capital’
The contemporary moment of global ecological crisis is also a moment wherein ‘nature’ is being named and framed as ‘natural capital’. This article considers aspects of this fabrication of ‘natural capital’, drawing attention to three connected processes: [1] commensuration, through which different elements of the natural world are made to correspond to one another through applying a common measure; [2] aggregation, through which different aspects of the material world are conceptualized together, enabling calculations of a total or ‘net’ quantity; and [3] capitalization, through which conserved ‘standing natures’ can be financed and developed as capital assets. The article queries the social and environmental benefits claimed for these processes of fabrication, drawing attention to some of the justice implications of asserting natural capital valuations for nature. In considering whether the conservation of ‘natural capital’ is the same as the conservation of ‘nature’, the article emphasizes the constitutive ( i.e. world-making) implications of the naming and framing of ‘nature’ as ‘natural capital’.
LCSV Working Paper, 2014
The contemporary moment of global crisis in both ecological and economic spheres is also the moment wherein ‘nature’ is being consolidated as ‘natural capital’. Through this, key interlocking elements are systematically joining the previously rather distinct domains of economics, business and finance with ecology, environmentalism and conservation. The emerging ‘green economy’ assemblage of discourses, actors, institutions and calculative technologies underpins the creation of markets for ecosystem services, including carbon, and is critical in constituting the logic of REDD+ and associated financing. Following approaches in economic sociology that emphasise performative elements in creating what becomes treated as economic, and with particular reference to some proposed financing mechanisms for REDD+ and to strategies for materialising environmental risk, this paper delineates four key shifts enabling external nonhuman natures to become legible and leverage-able as ‘natural capital’. These are: 1. a discursive shift, through which both conservation practice and understandings of nonhuman natures are reframed in economic and financial terms (amongst which ‘natural capital’ and ‘ecosystem services’ are paramount); 2. an institutional shift, in which networks and alliances are becoming constituted as an interlinked assemblage organised around making the core metaphor of nature as natural capital into the materialised reality of accounted for natural capital; 3. a calculative and accounting shift, through which relatively untransformed and restored natures are becoming technically inscribed through numerical signifiers of capital, such that these can be added to and offset against other forms of (ac)counted capital; and 4. a material shift, through which businesses and financiers are turning to accounted for conserved nonhuman nature as ‘natural capital’ assets that can be leveraged as the underlying asset on which financial investment is secured. In the concluding section I draw on selected works by theorists Bruno Latour, Mary Midgley, Michel Foucault and Paul Feyerabend to aid interpretation of these shifts and their world-making characteristics. In doing so, my aim is to enhance understanding regarding the structuring effects of these interventions and the occlusions they may necessitate.
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.
Rethinking the financialization of ‘nature’
Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2018
This editorial provides an analytical intervention to accompany the theme issue’s empirical papers on “Rethinking the Financialization of Nature.” The papers turn our attention towards three often neglected themes in prior research on finance and nature: (1) the frictional processes through which money leverages nature and resource-based ventures to produce more money (“Getting between M-C-M’”); (2) the role played by moralities, values, and affect in the financialization of nature and resistance levelled against it; and (3) the multiple roles of the state in mediating the circulation of finance in and through nature. We also engage with the politics of information and legitimation accompanying the financialization of nature to tease out levers for political critique. Finally, we map out a forward-looking agenda calling for research to engage more substantially with both the methodological questions accompanying the study of the financialization of nature, and the class dimensions o...
Financialisation of Nature as Crisis Strategy (2014, Journal für Entwicklungspolitik)
The financialisation of nature has been intensified during the current multiple crisis. It has gained importance given an ongoing over-accumulation, problems with the enhanced reproduction of capital, and the problems resulting from the financialisation of other sectors (such as housing). This article aims to contribute to the debate on the financialisation of nature from the perspective of political ecology and hegemony theory. We argue that the financialisation of nature (a) is part of a class strategy which attempts to overcome the current crisis in the sense of a passive revolution; (b) is politically mediated in a process in which the internationalised state plays an important role; and (c) is based on the imperial mode of living of the Global North, and thus shapes societal nature relations. The financialisation and commodification of nature is part of an emerging hegemonic project which we call Green Capitalism. The social and ecological costs of such a project are high, as it is linked to massive dispossession, land-use conflicts, and further ecological degradation.
The Edward Elgar Companion on Critical Environmental Politics, 2022
The 'financialisation of nature' is related to a shift in environmental governance-from regulation to marked-based approaches-involving strong state support to facilitate the establishment of 'innovative financial instruments' and markets related to nature. Although innovative finance got a bad reputation after the 2008 financial crisis, they are strongly encouraged in the environmental policy domain and supported by actors such as UNEP or the CBD. This paper explains the theoretical underpinning and the process of establishing such financial instruments, focusing in particular on offsetting and related ideas such as 'net-zero' calculations and 'nature-based solutions'. It explains how natural entities are converted into abstract units of equivalence to allow the establishment of schemes for tradable 'nature credits' (supposedly) compensating damage across time and space. The financialisation of nature is then analysed and critiqued with respect to its lack of environmental effectiveness, its problematic socioeconomic consequences and its impact on human-nature relationships. Instead of dealing with the environmental problems at hand, the conversion of nature into financial assets simply turns nature into objects of investment and speculation, while simultaneously creating a potential for financial bubbles.
Valuing nature within and beyond capitalism: A response
2017
This paper is a response to commentaries on our article entitled 'Value in capitalist natures: an emerging framework' (Kay and Kenney-Lazar, 2017). We argue that the responses to our initial paper served to broaden our proposed framework and to underscore the need for a unified, but diverse, approach to nature–society studies with value at its center. Extending the argument from the initial article, we continue to see potential for value to act as a bridge that can bring together diverse scholarship in nature–society geography and political ecology. After briefly addressing both the tensions and possibilities for value as a bridging concept, we focus our response primarily around three major threads that emerged across the commentaries. First, we address points raised by the respondents concerning the bounding of capitalism and its permeation into socionatures. Second, we engage with value's inverse and its absence, captured through the concepts of 'devaluation' (Collard and Dempsey) and 'disvalues' (Sullivan). Finally, we close by engaging the possibility of a 'liberatory valuing of nature'—one which recognizes a multiplicity of social and ecological values as a means of working toward more just and emancipatory nature–society relations beyond capitalism. We are grateful to the respondents for their thoughtful and engaging commentaries on our paper. While we initially aimed to simply explore lingering questions concerning how economic value is produced in relation to nature, the debates and discussions that we ventured into showed us how generative the intersections of value and nature could be. Thus, we began advocating a research agenda focused on value in capitalist natures that could place dis-parate forms of nature–society research into conversation. While this has proved to be a challenging task, our interlocutors have immeasurably helped us to move in the right direction. In our view, the capacity for a group of scholars with such diverse research interests, topical foci, and theoretical perspectives to debate the relations between value, nature, and capitalism in quite collaborative ways
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.