Neoliberal performatives and the ‘making’ of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES)

Abstract

This paper argues that Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) serve as a neoliberal performative act, in which idealized conditions are re-constituted by well-resourced and networked epistemic communities with the objective of bringing a distinctly instrumental and utilitarian relationality between humans and nature into existence. We illustrate the performative agency of hegemonic epistemic communities advocating (P)ES imaginaries to differentiate between the cultural construction of an ideal reality, which can and always will fail, and an external reality of actually produced effects. In doing so, we explore human agency to disobey performative acts to craft embodied and life-affirming relationships with nature.

Silencing Agency in Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) by Essentializing a Neoliberal ‘Monster’ Into Being: A Response to Fletcher & Büscher's ‘PES Conceit’

“…We caution that F & B's claim that PES is a neoliberal conceit can take on a performative role, through which the work of critical scholars may, paradoxically, serve to reify the essence of neoliberal governmentality, obstructing greater attention to the how and why of the hybridization, variegation, and outright failure or 'success' of a neoliberal PES (Kolinjivadi et al, 2017b;Butler, 2010). Through the language of 'diffusion' and 'internalization' of the dominant logic (Fletcher and Büscher, 2017:229), neoliberalism is portrayed as an abstract, static macro entity that can either be accepted by otherwise powerless micro agents or passive victims of overpowering (neoliberal) oppression or completely resisted by heroic revolutionaries.…”

“…Gibson-Graham, 2006;Mignolo, 2009;Santos, 2004), we believe that the tendency towards building a neoliberal 'monster' can never be forcibly stopped, but can only fail to manifest or materialize by placing greater attention on entangled social-ecological contexts and the adaptations they engender. We hold that socio-economic and scientific theories, and the epistemic communities that translate such theories into practice, tend to construct or 'perform' the realities we are examining (Kolinjivadi et al, 2017b). Therein lies our main concern with F & B's 'PES conceit'; by insisting on viewing PES through a singular theoretical lens we risk strengthening the overgeneralized monolith of neoliberalism itself.…”

“…Alternative theoretical frameworks for PES shaped by ecological economists, geographers, and anthropologists provide more nuanced perspectives (Dempsey and Robertson, 2012;Muradian et al, 2010;Pirard, 2012;Singh, 2015), emphasizing that not everything labelled PES has been driven by a neoliberal agenda. Clearly, some initial international funders promoted a vision of PES in line with neoliberal ideologies (Pagiola et al, 2002; see also Pasgaard et al, 2017;Kolinjivadi et al, 2017b). But as with other policy instruments originally borrowed "from the neoliberal bag of tricks" (Ferguson, 2009:174), even these PES initiatives have been used to promote outcomes that often defy neoliberal intents (Corbera, 2015;McElwee, 2012;McAfee and Shapiro, 2010).…”

Rendering Local: The Politics of Differential Knowledge in Carbon Offset Governance

“…Lansing 2012). As is common in PES projects (Kolinjivadi et al 2019), the universal primacy of economic incentives and of rational decision making based on perfect information is simply assumed by Ecotrust and offset buyers. Despite contradicting these claims, the complex and contradictory motivations and knowledges of participants hold little weight within the TFGB assemblage.…”

Blockchain for Environmental Governance: Can Smart Contracts Reinforce Payments for Ecosystem Services in Namibia?

“…PES are further seen as a strategy of neoliberal capitalism to expand into the rural periphery, a process which is believed to rather exacerbate than ameliorate the current environmental crisis (Arsel and Büscher, 2012;Büscher et al, 2012;Fletcher and Büscher, 2017). Post-structuralist voices within this strand of literature, whether adopting neo-Gramscian (Igoe et al, 2010) or Foucauldian understandings (Kolinjivadi et al, 2019), criticize PES for reconstructing detrimental human-environment relations and suppressing alternative frames. Regarding global justice, PES is criticized for adding to the marginalization of potential ES providers in the Global South by subjecting them to the will of wealthier ES buyers in the North (McAfee, 2012) along the lines of "underdevelopment" (Frank, 1966).…”