Where Forest Carbon Meets Its Maker: Forestry-Based Offsetting as the Subsumption of Nature

ABSTRACT

The “subsumption of nature” framework focuses on productivity increases and extractive innovations in nature-based industries. In this article, we argue that it can also be employed beyond that context in order to capture the convoluted dynamics of market environmentalism. To substantiate our argument, we draw on recent fieldwork on “Trees for Global Benefits,” a forestry-based offsetting project in western Uganda. Like industrial tree plantations, this project relies on the subsumption of carbon sequestration to market imperatives in order to guarantee the quality of its carbon credits. The ecological and socioeconomic difficulties this process engenders give rise to unintended consequences and set in motion the disciplining of the carbon offset producers themselves. The application of the subsumption framework to nonindustrial sectors in this way calls attention to the interlinked socioecological dynamics involved in the subsumption of nature, and highlights potential synergies with previous work on the subsumption of labor.

KEYWORDS:

• Carbon offsetting
• forestry
• subsumption of labor
• subsumption of nature
• Uganda

Acknowledgments

We thank Eric Clark, Erik Jönsson, Beatriz Bustos, the reviewers, and the participants at the 2015 AAG session on the subsumption of nature for their constructive comments on earlier versions of this text. We also acknowledge the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography (SSAG) and the LUCID research school at Lund University, which both provided travel funding for our fieldwork in Uganda. Above all, this work would not have been possible without the generous assistance of Moses Ahimbisibwe and Frank Mugagga, or without the openness and hospitality of all the farmers that we interviewed. All remaining shortcomings are our responsibility alone.

Notes

The rotation period and growing characteristics of Omuyuvu could not be determined.