Arrested Development? The Promises and Paradoxes of “Selling Nature to Save It”

Abstract

Mainstream environmentalism and critical scholarship are abuzz with the promise and perils (respectively) of what we call for-profit biodiversity conservation: attempts to make conserving biodiverse ecosystems profitable to large-scale investment. But to what extent has private capital been harnessed and market forces been enrolled in a thoroughly remade conservation? In this article we examine the size, scope, and character of international for-profit biodiversity conservation. Despite exploding rhetoric around environmental markets over the last two decades, the capital flowing into market-based conservation remains small, illiquid, and geographically constrained and typically seeks little to no profit. This marginal character of for-profit conservation suggests that this project continues to underperform as a site of accumulation and as a conservation financing strategy. Such evidence is at odds with the way this sector is commonly portrayed in mainstream environmental conservation literature but also with some critical geographical scholarship. We present a more puzzling situation: Although for-profit conservation has long been promoted as a logical, easy fix to ecological degradation, it remains negligible to and largely outside of global capital flows. We argue that this project has important consequences, but we understand its effects in terms of how it reaffirms narrowed, antipolitical explanations of biodiversity loss, instills neoliberal political rationalities among conservationists, and forecloses alternative and progressive possibilities capable of resisting status quo logics of accumulation.

主流的环境保育主义和批判学术研究, 充斥着我们所谓的盈利导向的生物多样性保育—— 亦即企图让保育生物多样性的生态系统成为大规模投资可获益之事物——的（各自）前景与危险。但就何种程度而言, 私人资本被驾驭、市场驱力被纳入一个彻底改造的保育之中？我们于本文中, 检视以营利为导向的国际生物多样性保育的规模、范畴与特徵。尽管过去二十年来, 有关环境市场的修辞激增, 但流进以市场为基础的保育之资本仍然相当小、缺乏资金流动、在地理上受限, 并且一般寻求相当少的利润、甚至毫无利润可言。此一盈利导向的保育之边际特徵, 显示此一作为积累场域和保育融资策略的计画仍然表现平平。而此般证据, 与这个部门在主流的环境保育文献中一般被描绘的方式并不一致, 且亦与若干批判地理学术研究不尽相同。我们呈现出更为难解的情境：尽管盈利导向的保育, 长期以来被推广作为生态恶化的合理且简易的修补方式, 但它对全球资本流动而言仍是微不足道, 且大部份发生在全球资本流动的外部。我们主张, 此一计画具有重要的后果, 但我亦理解其在重申狭隘、反政治的生物多样性丧失解释方面的影响, 为保育工作者灌输新自由主义的政治理性, 并排除了能够抵抗既存的积累逻辑的另类进步之可能。

La corriente principal del ambientalismo y la erudición crítica están enardecidos con la promesa y peligros (respectivamente) de lo que llamamos conservación de la biodiversidad con fines lucrativos: intentos por hacer rentables a la inversión en gran escala la conservación de ecosistemas biodiversos. ¿Pero con qué alcance se ha empleado el capital privado y se han enrolado las fuerzas del mercado en una conservación plenamente rediseñada? En este artículo examinamos el tamaño, forma y carácter de la conservación internacional de la biodiversidad con fines lucrativos. A pesar de la explosiva retórica que ha rodeado los mercados ambientales durante las pasadas dos décadas, el capital que fluye hacia la conservación basada en mercado sigue siendo pequeño, sin liquidez, geográficamente restringido y que típicamente busca poca o ninguna ganancia. Este carácter marginal de la conservación lucrativa sugiere que tal proyecto sigue rindiendo muy poco como lugar de acumulación y como estrategia financiera de conservación. Esa evidencia está en desacuerdo con el modo como este sector es comúnmente retratado en la literatura principal de la conservación ambiental, aunque también con alguna erudición geográfica crítica. Presentamos una situación más enigmática: Aunque la conservación con fines lucrativos ha sido promovida desde hace mucho tiempo como un remedio lógico y fácil contra la degradación ecológica, sigue siendo insignificante entre los flujos globales de capital y en gran medida fuera de ellos. Sostenemos que este proyecto tiene importantes consecuencias, aunque entendemos sus efectos en términos de cómo el mismo reafirma explicaciones estrechas y antipolíticas de la pérdida de biodiversidad, infunde recionalidades políticas neoliberales entre los conservacionistas y excluye posibilidades alternativas y progresistas capaces de resistir el statu quo de la lógica de la acumulación.

Key Words:

• biodiversity conservation
• commodification
• conservation finance
• environmental finance
• neoliberal conservation

关键词：:

• 生物多样性保育
• 商品化
• 保育融资
• 环境融资
• 新自由主义保育。

Palabras clave:

• conservación de la biodiversidad, comodificación, finanzas de la conservación, finanzas ambientales, conservación neoliberal

Acknowledgments

We appreciate the excellent feedback from Rosemary Collard, Kathleen McAfee, many others who saw versions of this article in conferences and seminars, and the anonymous reviewers.

Funding

We thank the Social Science and Humanities Research Council for research funding. Daniel Chiu Suarez received additional funding and assistance from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis while undertaking this project.

Notes

1 See https://www.cbd.int/sp/targets/ (last accessed 23 November 2015).

2 A selection of reports reviewed for this article includes CFA (2014), Credit Suisse, World Wildlife Fund, and McKinsey & Company (2014), NatureVest and EKO Asset Management Partners (2014), Goldstein and Gonzalez (2014), Ecosystem Marketplace (2013), Peters-Stanley, Gonzalez, and Yin (2013), Parker et al. (2012), Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (2012), Peters-Stanley, Hamilton, and Yin (2012), Madsen et al. (2011), O'Donohoe (2010), WWF (2009), and Bishop et al. (2008).

3 Indeed, the Little Biodiversity Finance Book notes that “[j]ust a few major government spending programmes (or groups of programmes) in the USA, Europe, and China account for 51% of global biodiversity finance” (Parker et al. 2012, 30).

4 The estimate counts 10 percent of the total value of the products traded under these types of certification as being directed toward financing biodiversity conservation.

5 Impact investment refers to investments that seek both to generate financial profit (or at least return principal) and to create positive social or environmental impact, describing finance with motivations combining or laying somewhere between profit-driven investors and impact-driven donors.

6 Bishop et al. (2008), for example, offered their own estimates of existing conservation finance, but recognized that any “published estimates of global conservation spending almost certainly underestimate the true level of effort and resources available” (20), which is complicated further by definitional issues and data availability as noted earlier. Ecosystem Marketplace (2013) also maintains alternative sets of estimates, but as is characteristic of many of the reports we reviewed exploring this subject, definitional issues make precise cross-comparison difficult with what is presented here and in other studies.

7 According to the Credit Suisse, World Wildlife Fund, and McKinsey & Company report (2014), “The shift from donor- to investor-driven financing will bring new roles for both major conservation organizations and financial institutions. Rather than designing their own financing schemes, NGOs such as WWF could serve as advisors to the investment professionals who can structure and place these projects, making their knowledge and expertise available” (6).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jessica Dempsey

JESSICA DEMPSEY is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z2, Canada. E-mail: J[email protected]. Her research focuses on the political ecologies of biodiversity conservation.

Daniel Chiu Suarez

DANIEL CHIU SUAREZ is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at the University of California, Berkeley 94720-3114. E-mail: [email protected]. His doctoral research analyzes the spread of ecosystem services concepts through transnational policy networks into biodiversity conservation.