Catastrophe bonds and financial risk: Securing capital and rule through contingency

Johnson, Leigh

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2012.04.003

Cited by 76 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…They are increasingly interested in financial institutions and models as they come to bear on ecosystems, weather, climate, and life itself (Collard and Dempsey, 2013). What they suggest is a fundamental linking of nature with capitalism through a performative "bringing-into-being" (Johnson, 2013, page 6) of the environment as quantified, financialized risk. What specifically enables this financialization are calculative devices like the forecasts and models which define securities and inform commodity traders' strategies.…”

Section: Neoliberal Naturesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some wetlands will never be created because of what code computes; other restoration projects will happen in specific spots in the landscape because of it. Second, software performs "nature's value," affording the kinds of remaking of state, capital, and science associated with the emerging international project of financializing natural capital (Johnson, 2013;Robertson and Wainwright, 2013). Finally, rather than appearing from nowhere, software materializes these relations, and the specificity of code matters to the process.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Performing nature's value: software and the making of Oregon's ecosystem services markets

Nost

2015

Environ Plan A

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Geographers of technology illustrate software code's contexts, effects, and agencies as they shape urban space and everyday life, but the consequences of code for nature remain understudied. Political ecologists have critiqued remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) based conservation projects, but have not engaged more broadly with the role of software in the contested production, circulation, and application of ecological knowledge. Yet, around the world, data analytics firms and conservation nonprofits argue for optimizing environmental management through faster and bigger data collection and new techniques of data manipulation and visualization. I present a case study from the US state of Oregon, illustrating how conservationists and environmental regulators employ computer programming to plan markets in which entrepreneurs restore stream and wetland ecosystem services to earn offset credits. In these markets, code-executed algorithms constituting spreadsheets, web maps, and GIS utilities generate, relate, and make sense of the data that define credit commodities. I argue that code tends toward three effects: producing a landscape defined by wetlands' modeled value, performing social relations associated with nature's neoliberalization and financialization, and legitimating these moves. Although emphasis on the performativity of code and other technological objects is warranted, the contexts in which these are authored, deployed, and evaluated should remain central to understanding environmental governance. This is to caution against seeing technology as reducing nature and society to state or capitalist rationalities and to hesitate to differentiate prima facie code's work on space and on nature. I call for bridging political ecology and geographies of technology in ways that can explain how code is generative of environmental knowledge, change, and conflict.

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Section: Neoliberal Naturesmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Performing nature's value: software and the making of Oregon's ecosystem services markets

Nost

2015

Environ Plan A

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“…In the wealthy world, climate change still does not matter-or, alternatively, its "mattering" is refused. Instead, the buildup of anthropogenic greenhouse gases is confronted as mere market failure, for which various market-mending policies are proposed: cap-and-trade, carbon offsets, catastrophe bonds, mandatory risk disclosure, flood and hurricane insurance, and so on (Johnson 2013).…”

Section: Leviathan and The Adaptation Of The Politicalmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Examining the manifold incipient forms of subjectivity, and their relation to the forces that produce multiscalar political-economic inertia and change, is surely one of the most important tasks facing human geography today. It demands a willingness to follow the carbon, materially and theoretically, an endeavor to which many geographers are already committed (e.g., Yusoff 2009;Johnson 2010Johnson , 2013Rice 2010;Swyngedouw 2010;Osborne 2011;Chatterton, Featherstone, and Routledge 2012;Lansing 2012;Saldanha 2012Saldanha , 2013Huber 2013;Labban 2013); more will surely follow.…”

Section: A Natural History Of Our Conjuncturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such questions preoccupy many geographers today (e.g., Yusoff 2009;Johnson 2010;Swyngedouw 2010;Bond 2011;Chatterton, Featherstone, and Routledge 2012;Labban 2012;Dempsey 2013;Braun 2014). We recently proposed a framework for anticipating the possible political-economic forms that might emerge as the world's climate changes (Wainwright and Mann 2013), to broadly outline the paths that humanity faces.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Climate Change and the Adaptation of the Political

Wainwright

Mann

2014

Annals of the Association of American Geographers

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In the face of climate change, along what path might we attempt transformation that could create a just and livable planet? Recently we proposed a framework for anticipating the possible political-economic forms that might emerge as the world's climate changes. Our framework outlines four possible paths; two of those paths are defined by what is called "Leviathan," the emergence of a form of planetary sovereignty. In this article we elaborate by examining the adaptive character of emergent planetary sovereignty. To grasp this, we need a theory that can see through our ostensibly "postpolitical" moment to grasp not the disintegration but the adaptation of the political. What does it mean to say the political adapts? Reduced to its essence, it is to say that if the character of political life prevents a radical response to crisis, then it is the political that must change. A materialist attempt to elaborate on this question must begin by reflecting on the manifest inequalities of power in the current mode of global political-economic regulation. After doing so, we conclude by arguing for a return to the concept of natural history.Frente a la realidad del cambio clim atico, ¿de qu e manera podr ıamos intentar la transformaci on que pudiese crear un planeta justo y habitable? Hace poco propusimos un marco que anticipara las formas pol ıtico-econ omicas que podr an aparecer a medida que cambie el clima del mundo. Nuestro marco de predicci on esboza cuatro posibilidades; dos de estas se definen como "Leviatanes," la emergencia de una forma de soberan ıa planetaria. En el art ıculo nos extendemos un poco examinando el car acter adaptativo de la emergente soberan ıa planetaria. Para captar esto, necesitamos una teor ıa que pueda ver a trav es de nuestro momento ostensiblemente "pospol ıtico" que opte no por la desintegraci on de lo pol ıtico sino por su adaptaci on. ¿Qu e se quiere decir con que lo pol ıtico se adapte? Concentr andonos en lo esencial, se quiere decir que si el car acter de la vida pol ıtica previene una respuesta radical a la crisis, entonces lo pol ıtico es lo que debe cambiar. Un intento materialista de elaborar alrededor de esta cuesti on debe empezar reflexionando sobre las manifiestas desigualdades de poder en el modo actual de la regulaci on global pol ıtico-econ omica. Despu es de hecho lo anterior, concluimos abogando por un regreso al concepto de historia natural. Palabras clave: cambio clim atico, futuros, pol ıtico, teor ıa, soberan ıa.

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2016

Enterprising Nature

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Catastrophe bonds and financial risk: Securing capital and rule through contingency

Cited by 76 publications

References 42 publications

Performing nature's value: software and the making of Oregon's ecosystem services markets

Performing nature's value: software and the making of Oregon's ecosystem services markets

Climate Change and the Adaptation of the Political

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