Creating a mechanism for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+) in tropical developing countries has become, from 2005 onward, a central element in international climate protection discourse. The goal is to create financial incentives for forest protection by making avoided deforestation a tradable good that can be sold on the carbon market or to government funds. A discourse-analytical perspective on the process of commodification and market creation is developed in order to assess how avoided deforestation is being made tradable. Going beyond existing approaches, such a perspective enables us to highlight the contestedness and contingency of the commodification and market creation process. The extent to which on-going qualification and commensuration practices can result in a disentanglement of avoided deforestation as tradable good is discussed, and one of the consequences of a successful commodification of avoiding deforestation - the carbonification of forests is highlighted

This overview of the existing political analysis of carbon markets identifies three broad strands in the literature. The first is concerned with the processes by which particular carbon market schemes are established. The second focuses on the role of particular actors in the creation of carbon markets. The third strand assesses carbon markets on efficiency, legitimacy or justice grounds. This existing literature is contrasted with the framework developed by the contributions to this volume. Broadly drawing on constructivist and poststructuralist approaches, the carbon economy is deconstructed, its history scrutinised and the practices and technologies that have been used to bring these markets into being are highlighted. Thus it is demonstrated that politics is not limited to the policy process leading up to the decision to implement an emissions trading scheme or offset mechanism, but is also present in the forms of knowledge claims that underpin these markets, as well as the various daily practices that constitute them.

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