Ecosystem services and fictitious commodities

Brockington, Dan

doi:10.1017/s0376892911000531

Cited by 51 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Finally, from a social perspective, scholars critique the way in which the concept avoids consideration of crucial social, political and contextual factors (Corbera et al, 2007;Daw et al, 2011;Fairhead et al, 2012;Barnaud and Antona, 2014). Furthermore, scholars critique the way in which the concept, despite its merits, reflects and reinforces certain market-based models of society and underlying ideologies (Gómez-Baggethun et al, 2010;Brockington 2011). Critical scholars see ES as a neoliberal approach to the environment that commodifies nature and creates new sites for capital accumulation largely in the hands of a global elite (Heynen and Robbins, 2005;McAfee, 1999McAfee, , 2012aMcCarthy and Prudham, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The political ecology of ecosystem services

2015

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International audienceHighlights(3-5 bullets max 85 char each) Abstract (should be 250 words) The current dominance of " ecosystem services " as a guiding concept for environmental management – where it appears as a neutral, obvious, taken-for-granted concept – hides the fact that there are choices implicit in its framing and in its application. In other words, it is a highly political concept.Following a political ecology framework, we investigate the origin and agency of the ecosystem services idea, its relationship to multi-scale power structures that constrain or facilitate certain outcomes, the practical difficulties of applying the idea, and its impacts for different parts of society and the environment.Building on the literature, on an analysis of theMillennium Ecosystem Assessment, and onbrief examples from tropical rain forest contexts such as Brazil and Madagascar, we investigate four moments or processes in the construction and application of the ecosystem services idea:discursive (the emergence of the term), ontological (what knowledge does the concept allow?), scientific (debates and difficulties in its practical application), and political (who wins, who loses?).All four components have ecological and political consequences. First, choices are made during the framing and institutionalization of the concept that mobilize, for example, a human-nature dichotomy and the pre-eminence of ecological and economic perspectives. Second, choices are made in the application of the concept, in terms of the type of service, the scale of analysis, and the kind of market rationality, that create winners and losers.The concept is a boundary object with widespread appeal, used in diverse ways by different interests to justify different kinds of interventions that at times might be totally opposed

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The political ecology of ecosystem services

2015

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“…However, PES remains a contested conservation approach. PES is a market-based approach with a 'buyer' and 'seller' of a 'well-defined ecosystem service' (Wunder, 2005: 3).limited attention has been given to developing better understanding of the perils and promises of adoption of the new and largely untested conservation approach (Redford and Adams, 2009;Brockington, 2011). We seek to contribute to filling this gap in the literature by examining the direct and indirect livelihood impacts of the Equitable Payments for Watershed Services (EPWS) program piloted in Morogoro, Tanzania.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The livelihood impacts of the Equitable Payments for Watershed Services (EPWS) Program in Morogoro, Tanzania

Kwayu

Paavola²,

Sallu³

2017

Envir. Dev. Econ.

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ABSTRACT. Research on PES programs in agro-ecosystems is recent and limited in developing countries. The authors use a multi-method, quasi-experimental impact evaluation approach to examine direct and indirect livelihood impacts of the Equitable Payments for Watershed Services (EPWS) program piloted in the Morogoro region in Tanzania. The evaluation is based on a survey of 116 program participants and 117 non-participants, 32 semi-structured interviews and 16 focus group discussions to complement the survey data. They find that, while the EPWS program incentives resulted in direct benefits, indirect benefits such as increased crop yields, higher land values, new employment opportunities, more knowledgeable farmers, improved leadership skills asThe authors thank the University of Dar es Salaam on behalf of the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology for granting permission to conduct this research. They thank EPWS-Morogoro staff, local community leaders, local government officers, farmers and enumerators for their support and participation in fieldwork. They gratefully acknowledge the support of the Government of Tanzania, Dar es Salaam University College of Education (DUCE) and the School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds for funding this study.terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355770X17000067 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 18.236.120.13, on 13 May 2018 at 03:05:24, subject to the Cambridge Core Environment and Development Economics 329 well as increased trust, expanded internal and external networks and strengthened institutions were more important. The results clearly indicate the potential of PES schemes to generate win-win outcomes in agro-ecosystems, but they also call for attention to equity in the design of PES programs implemented on agro-ecosystems.

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“…Such worldviews are fundamentally different to Western science in that they are underpinned by more entangled notions of nature, society and place, rather than privileging objective, value-free observations and asserting the separateness of people and nature (Braun, 2006;Johnson and Murton, 2007). Recognising these worldviews resists distilling complex and dynamic understandings into a technical and stable ecological knowledge, and their consequent simplistic integration into Western management systems (such as Payments for Ecosystem Services, PES) through community participation (Adams, 2014;Brockington, 2011). Other authors have gone further, asserting the environment as a co-author, encompassing humans, more-thanhumans and all other tangible and non-tangible elements which are co-becoming in a relational understanding of place/space (Country et al, 2015).…”

Section: Spiritual Worldviews and Conservationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Witchcraft, spiritual worldviews and environmental management: Rationality and assemblage

Smith

2016

Environ Plan A

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This article interrogates the interrelationship between witchcraft, spiritual worldviews and environmental management. Drawing on diverse literatures from anthropology, conservation science and geography, this article explores how witchcraft and spiritual worldviews have been rationalised in order to explain their continued significance, for society as a whole and for the conservation of natural resources and biodiversity specifically. Using an assemblage framework, this article examines how the agencies of spirits and witches are entangled with other social and material entities, drawing on examples from three communities in Tanzania. It argues that thinking through assemblage allows the agentic capacities of spirits and witchcraft to be recognised, whilst also acknowledging their inseparability from other expressive and material components of assemblages, including social organisation and more-than-human actors. Finally, this article turns to evidence for the deterritorialisation, or breaking apart, of these assemblages around spiritual worldviews and witchcraft, and considers their future role in local conservation.

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Ecosystem services and fictitious commodities

Cited by 51 publications

References 19 publications

The political ecology of ecosystem services

The political ecology of ecosystem services

The livelihood impacts of the Equitable Payments for Watershed Services (EPWS) Program in Morogoro, Tanzania

Witchcraft, spiritual worldviews and environmental management: Rationality and assemblage

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