Fictitious conservation in Canadian parks and protected areas

ABSTRACT

Since 1987, sustainable development has become popular in Canada. During this same time, capitalism has shifted from post-Fordist to financialization regimes for capital accumulation. Using data from environmental non-government organization websites, think tank reports, government websites, media stories and consultant papers from 2009 to 2016, we examine how neoliberal conservation practices have evolved to include fictitious commodities (e.g. biodiversity credits and protected in situ resources used by ecotourism) and financialization tactics (e.g. speculative financing, and derivatives and futures trading). These tactics suggest conservation practice in Canada is changing to reflect a monetization of nature that divorces conservation from specific places, allowing capital to produce more capital without the need for actual conservation. The more Canadian parks and protected areas adopt financialization, the less sustainable they will be.

RÉSUMÉ

Depuis 1987, le concept de développement durable est populaire au Canada. Cette période se caractérise par le passage d’un capitalisme post-fordiste à des régimes de financiarisation à des fins d’accumulation du capital. Utilisant des données tirées de sites web d’organisations non gouvernementales environnementales, de rapports de groupes de réflexion, de sites web gouvernementaux, d’articles médiatiques et de rapports de consultants diffusés de 2009 à 2016, nous examinons l’évolution des pratiques de conservation néolibérales, afin de leur inclure des valeurs factices (p. ex.: crédits de biodiversité, protection de ressources existantes utilisées dans le cadre d’activités d’écotourisme) et des tactiques de financiarisation (p. ex.: financement spéculatif, négociation de produits dérivés et de contrats à terme). La mise en place de ces tactiques suggère un changement des pratiques de conservation au Canada vers la monétisation de la nature, ce qui sépare les efforts de conservation d’un lieu en particulier, ce qui permet au capital de produire plus de capital sans effort de conservation concret. Plus ces principes de financiarisation seront appliqués aux aires protégées et aux parcs canadiens, moins ils seront durables.

KEYWORDS:

• Parks and protected areas
• capitalism
• neoliberalism
• conservation
• sustainable development

MOTS CLÉS:

• parcs et aires protégées
• capitalisme
• néolibéralisme
• conservation
• développement durable

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Sustainability here refers to the end goal while sustainable development refers to the specific neoliberal strategy to reach that goal. Because of its close connection to capitalism, sustainable development is prone to certain critiques, whereas sustainability could escape such critiques if based on a different strategy.

2. Money is not the only way to value nature. See Martinez-Alier, Kallis, Veuthey, Walter and Temper (2010) for an overview of alternative languages of valuation. We address economic language because (1) it is the dominant language, especially in neoliberal societies such as Canada (2) it has recently expanded to include entities and processes that previously escaped it and (3) the environmental movement itself is adopting this language. Nevertheless, we wish to acknowledge that alternative languages of valuation can be powerful, and, as a critique of monetary valuation, our paper stands in solidarity with such languages.

3. Without a market to establish pricing, earlier transactions were idiosyncratic and not representative of capitalism. Commodities only arise within a capitalist system as they circulate through the market, which works to establish their exchange value.

4. Accumulation strategies do not entirely replace one another. Rather, new strategies superimpose themselves over previous strategies, intensifying accumulation (Büscher & Fletcher, 2015).

Additional information

Funding

This work was not supported by any funding or granting agency.