Banking Nature? The Spectacular Financialisation of Environmental Conservation

Abstract

: In this paper I emphasise the financialisation of environmental conservation as 1. the turning of financiers to conservation parameters as a new frontier for investment, and 2. the rewriting of conservation practice and nonhuman worlds in terms of banking and financial categories. I introduce financialisation as a broadly controlling impetus with relevance for environmental conservation. I then note ways in which a spectacular investment frontier in conservation is being opened. I highlight the draw of assertions of lucrative gains, combined with notions of geographical substitutability, in creating tradable indicators of environmental health and harm. I disaggregate financialisation strategies into four categories—nature finance, nature work, nature banking and nature derivatives—and assess their implications. The concluding section embraces Marx and Foucault as complementary thinkers in understanding the transforming intensifications of late capitalism in environmental conservation, and diagnosing their associated effects and costs.

Re-establishing an ecological discourse in the policy debate over how to value ecosystems and biodiversity

“…Thus, at Rio+20 the Natural Capital Declaration was launched as a financial sector, CEO endorsed, initiative to mainstream natural capital into loans, bonds, equities and insurance, as well as accounting and reporting frameworks; internationally 44 financial institutions are signatories. This provision of financial rewards is presumed to outweigh the numerous problems associated with the use of biodiversity offsets (Spash, 2014;Sullivan, 2013) and ecosystem services (Gomez-Baggethun and Ruiz-Perez, 2011;Redford and Adams, 2009), and their orientation towards the continued expansion of economic growth, capital accumulation and financial markets (Norgaard, 2010;Spangenberg and Settele, 2010).…”

Climate capitalism and the global corporate elite network

“…be junior partners whose role is not specifically defined; human beings are non-existent in themselves, and appear only under the form of a population to be employed or managed; similarly, ecosystems are sources of wealth in the form of natural capital and thus objects to be managed as well. This discourse is easily recognized as that of neoliberal environmentalism (see Bernstein 2002;Büscher and Fletcher 2015;Sullivan 2013) and rests heavily on a 'Promethean' view of technology as all powerful (see Dryzek 2013). In line with the neoliberal discourse (Castree 2010;Collard et al 2015), it diverts attention from the substantial state intervention and investments required by climate capitalism by emphasizing the superior agency of 'business' and a reduced role of the state.…”

Accumulation by securitization: Commercial poaching, neoliberal conservation, and the creation of new wildlife frontiers

“…Specifically, accumulation by dispossession solves the capitalist crisis of overaccumulation, or Òthe lack of opportunities for private investment,Ó by enclosing common assets and releasing them for private investment where they are then commodified, thereby ensuring capitalismÕs expansion and survival (Harvey, 2003, 139). The framework of accumulation by dispossession has been employed to analyze a variety of issues in the neoliberal economic period from the privatization and commodification of utilities (Bakker, 2007;Swyngedouw, 2005), life itself (Prudham, 2007), and, closely related to this paper, the phenomenon of land grabbing Hall, 2013;White et al, 2012), along with a variety of neoliberal conservation practices (Benjaminsen and Bryceson, 2012;Corson and MacDonald, 2012;Leach et al, 2012;Sullivan, 2013). Hall (2013Hall ( , 1598, for instance, demonstrates the concept is vital in understanding the Òdispossessory responses to capitalist crises, the use of extraeconomic means of capital accumulation, and the creation, expansion and reproduction of capitalist social relationsÓ that are central to the phenomenon of land grabs.…”

“…Hall (2013Hall ( , 1598, for instance, demonstrates the concept is vital in understanding the Òdispossessory responses to capitalist crises, the use of extraeconomic means of capital accumulation, and the creation, expansion and reproduction of capitalist social relationsÓ that are central to the phenomenon of land grabs. Writing on green grabbing also frequently deploys the concept to make sense of ÒgreenÓ projects ranging from biocarbon sequestration and climate change mitigation Lohmann, 2012; and nature-based derivatives (Little et al, 2013;Mandel et al, 2010;Sullivan, 2013) to tourism and hunting (Benjaminsen and Bryceson, 2012;Corson and MacDonald, 2012;Gardner, 2012;Snijders, 2012). Central to the latter is the contention that conservation practiceÑespecially neoliberal conservation practiceÑis a form of ongoing primitive accumulation or accumulation by dispossession as it encloses land and biodiversity and dissolves common access to it, thereby dispossessing rural populations of land, resources, and livelihood opportunities to provide new avenues for capital accumulation (BŸscher, 2009;Kelly, 2011;Neves and Igoe, 2012;Sullivan, 2013).…”