Between Desire and Routine: Assembling Environment and Finance in Carbon Markets

and, Philippe Descheneau; Paterson, Matthew

doi:10.1002/9781118315835.ch4

Cited by 10 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Second, I examine how RWE creates new, ordered, 'ecologies of repair', based on narratives of better nature and better future and feeding, third, into the ecotourism-extraction nexus (Bu¨scher and Davidov, 2013). The latter is illustrated by RWE's attempts to turn the world's largest hole and the largest human-made mountain into extractive attractions (Brock and Dunlap, 2018: 40) -enrolling visitors, residents and 'nature lovers' by building 'affective attachments' (Descheneau and Paterson, 2011;Huff, forthcoming) that play into modernist fantasies of controlling and domesticating nature.…”

Section: Spectacularisation Sustainability Coal and The Remaking Ofmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(Brock and Dunlap, 2018: 40) Lastly, and illustrated above, :terra nova is a particular good example of an 'extractive attraction' that plays into RWE's transformation of coal mining into an ecotourist experience while mediating social relations between RWE and mining tourists. Descheneau and Paterson (2011) have illustrated how affective attachments and desires are created and mobilised in relation to CO 2 offsets. A similar process is at play here: it is through the spectacularisation of the offsetting site, and its transformation into an extractive attraction that such affective attachment is produced and capitalised on.…”

Section: Engineering Nature New Ecologies Of Repair and Better Naturmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Securing accumulation by restoration – Exploring spectacular corporate conservation, coal mining and biodiversity compensation in the German Rhineland

Brock

2020

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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German energy giant and coal mine operator RWE makes two products: cheap electricity and ‘pretty new landscapes’. These ‘pretty new landscapes’ are biodiversity offsets to compensate for the destruction of the ancient Hambacher Forest for the world’s largest opencast lignite coal mine in the German Rhineland. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork including participant observation and interviews in and around the mine and its offset sites, this paper explores the relationship between coal mining, spectacularisation of conservation, the ecotourism–extraction nexus and accumulation by restoration. I illustrate the historic and contemporary importance of restoration activities to the accumulation process and explore the recent engagement of mine operator RWE in the provision of restored nature (in the form of ‘eco-points’), which constitute new business opportunities. The significance of RWE’s biodiversity work for accumulation by restoration lies not only in its profit opportunities but its productive power: the legitimation of coal mining and the making of new, ordered ‘ecologies of repair’. This productive power operates through the mobilising function of RWE’s offsetting work, which forms the foundation for corporate partnerships and alliances with conservation groups and volunteers. These lend legitimacy to RWE’s ‘repair work’ and form the basis for the ecotourism–extraction nexus by turning the mine and its offsets into ‘extractive attractions’ for visitors and ‘nature lovers’. Its power further manifests in the way it captures imaginations through novel imaginaries and narratives of sustainable coal mining, supposedly creating not only a ‘better nature’ but a ‘better future’. Positioning offsetting as social technology of governance, I explore RWE’s spectacular performance of sustainability and the ontological flattening to facilitate claims of commensurability and ‘offsettability’ of nature. These are integral to the ecotourism–extraction nexus and grounded in the belief in the human/corporate ability to recreate nature, a fascination with huge earth-shifting machinery and a commitment to high-modernist ideologies of control.

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Section: Spectacularisation Sustainability Coal and The Remaking Ofmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Engineering Nature New Ecologies Of Repair and Better Naturmentioning

confidence: 99%

Securing accumulation by restoration – Exploring spectacular corporate conservation, coal mining and biodiversity compensation in the German Rhineland

Brock

2020

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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“…CPE approaches agree with this critique of carbon market politics but extend it further. They argue that carbon markets (about which there is a huge literature in CPE (Baldwin, ; Böhm & Dabhi, ; Böhm, Misoczky, & Moog, ; Bohm, Murtola, & Spoelstra, ; Descheneau & Paterson, ; Ervine, ; Lohmann, , , ; Lovell, ; MacKenzie, ; Meckling, ; Newell, ; Newell & Bumpus, ; Newell & Paterson, ; Paterson, 2010, ; Reyes, ; Spash, ; Stephan & Lane, )), should be understood as the central example of the way that neoliberalism has shaped climate policy.…”

Section: Political Economy Of Responses To Climate Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Political economies of climate change

Paterson

P-Laberge

2018

WIREs Climate Change

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Political economy approaches across the social sciences provide powerful explanations for important dynamics within the global response to climate change. This article discusses in particular how they provide explanations of the social origins of greenhouse gas emissions, the dominant policy and governance responses to climate change, recurrent political conflicts over these responses, and the patterns of bargaining between states, businesses, and other actors. Underlying these dynamics are a set of contradictions or tensions between the character of capitalism as a social system and the demands of decarbonizing the global economy, specifically: between the imperative for growth that constrains and shapes responses; concerning the power of large transnational businesses and other incumbent interests to block responses; and over the embeddedness of carbon emissions in daily life. The article explores the implications of these contradictions as well as some of the important theoretical debates about the limits of political economy approaches. This article is categorized under: Policy and Governance > Multilevel and Transnational Climate Change Governance Climate Economics > Economics and Climate Change

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“…Through this market‐making activity and by actively championing product carbon footprinting, global retailers have entrenched a powerful reimagining of the carbon economy, directing attention away from the registries of carbon markets (Bailey et al ; Descheneau and Paterson ), away from government programs for mass public transport (Levy and Spicer ), and away from programs like expanding cook‐stoves schemes in Ugandan villages (Lovell et al ). Instead the mitigation of climate change is being rescaled to the site of the individual product, and the everyday practices by which products are sourced, made, transported, and consumed.…”

Section: New Centers Of Gravity In the Carbon Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

New Regimes of Responsibilization: Practicing Product Carbon Footprinting in the New Carbon Economy

Ormond

2015

Economic Geography

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This article discusses how by voluntarily adopting new dimensions of corporate responsibility-for the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions generated by its products-global retailers not only position their organizations as responsible in the battle to win the hearts, minds, and wallets of their consumers, but also articulate a new solution for the mitigation of climate change aligned with their commercial interests. As part of this solution, retailers (and other brands) reimagined how GHG emissions should be allocated-shifting from a productionist-based to a consumptionist-based perspective-and redefined what they are responsible for and what their supply chains must care about. The article argues that the complexity involved in engaging tens, hundreds, or even thousands of individual organizations across numerous products' supply chains means that requirements to measure and reduce a product's carbon footprint cannot, and are not, simply pushed down a supply chain. Rather through a confluence of the practices of translation, observation, and normalization retailers are creating, fostering, and articulating new regimes of responsibilization within which actors across successive tiers of a product's supply chains must measure, monitor, and reduce their own carbon footprints independently, conscientiously, and diligently, thereby enabling retailers to achieve carbon reductions at a distance. Seen through the Foucauldian-inspired lens of the technologies of the self and self-government under neoliberal governance regimes, this article suggests that, through the control of what is in a product's carbon footprint, how this should be measured, and how it should be reduced-what are called here carbon truths-global retailers are working to consolidate their socioeconomic powers as sustainability leaders that fundamentally direct society's response to, and mitigation of, climate change.V C

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Between Desire and Routine: Assembling Environment and Finance in Carbon Markets

Cited by 10 publications

References 41 publications

Securing accumulation by restoration – Exploring spectacular corporate conservation, coal mining and biodiversity compensation in the German Rhineland

Securing accumulation by restoration – Exploring spectacular corporate conservation, coal mining and biodiversity compensation in the German Rhineland

Political economies of climate change

New Regimes of Responsibilization: Practicing Product Carbon Footprinting in the New Carbon Economy

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