Financialisation in the green economy: Material connections, markets-in-the-making and Foucauldian organising actions

Abstract

This paper explores the connections between financialisation in the green economy and the material commodification processes that underpin this economy. It argues that these connections are important and can be usefully conceived in terms of spaces of mutuality. These spaces of mutuality direct attention to the material processes of value creation at the level of real environmental assets. That these material processes appear thin, sluggish, fractured, hybridised or stalled in practice invites new modes of analytical engagement. One important mode of analysing these emergent green projects is to emphasise their status as durable processes of becoming or what could be called markets-in-the-making, by going beyond forms of market and economic reductionism. Michel Foucault's analysis of neoliberalism and his idea of "organising actions" prove useful in this regard. Foucauldian organising actions render markets-in-the-making projects visible as durable governmental apparatuses made of disparate elements that are geographically specific, historically contingent and are aligned with an overarching market telos. Drawing on an empirical case of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation plus carbon stock enhancement and sustainable forest management (REDD+) in Nigeria's Cross River, the paper analyses organising actions along four meta-processes -problematisations, visions, implementation, stabilisation. It concludes by highlighting the wider implications for work on environmental financialisation.

Intimate Mediations of For‐Profit Conservation Finance: Waste, Improvement, and Accumulation

“…Yet rendering biodiversity conservation investable is hardly a smooth process. Those dollar bills are heavy and sticky: it is difficult to generate revenue from conservation, and thus, difficult to make a robust asset class for investors—one with an attractive risk‐return profile (Asiyanbi ; Dempsey and Suarez ; although see Kay for a North American counter‐story). As such, the capital circulating in FPCF is not—for the most part—market rate.…”

“…Even when one does finally broker a deal, the capital can be hard to turn over. In some cases, this is because there is hardly a market for the commodity produced, such as for forest carbon (Asiyanbi ), but this difficulty arises even with commodities like cattle. Indeed, capital turnover time was a key problem for GrazingWorks.…”

A faultline in neoliberal environmental governance scholarship? Or, why accumulation-by-alienation matters

“…The public-sector supported and administered market-oriented approaches of PES are thereby applied specifically to forest carbon, placing an economic value on standing tree biomass through carbon accounting practices that quantify carbon values, which can then be monetized through payments to individuals, communities, land owners, NGOs or governments in developing countries (Asiyanbi, 2017;Corbera, 2012;Dunlap, 2015;Ehrenstein and Muniesa, 2013;Ervine, 2018;Lohmann, 2009Lohmann, , 2014.…”

“…REDD+ projects are diverse in terms of their funding mechanisms and specific projects, often using varied methods of conservation-linked payments which can be subsidized by clean development mechanism (CDM) donors connected with the Kyoto Protocol, or by voluntary carbon 'cap-and-trade' mechanisms (Aguilar-Støen et al, 2016;Böhm and Dabhi, 2009;Dunlap, 2015). A key current distinction between PES and REDD+ is that REDD+ is in the process of developing an internationally applicable measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) scheme to monitor forest carbon levels (see UN-REDD Programme, n.d.), which delegates responsibility to countries to establish their own REDD+ MRV accountability systems that provide transparent, comparable and conservative forest carbon estimates (see Asiyanbi, 2017;Ehrenstein and Muniesa, 2013;Svarstad and Benjaminsen, 2017). REDD+ constitutes one of the largest 'naturalcapital-accounting' projects in various stages of preparation and implementation around the world, by integrating forests into global market-based governance so as to extend forest conservation practices whilst also creating possibilities for financial returns from forest carbon investment (as reviewed in Sullivan, 2014Sullivan, , 2018a.…”

Getting soaked? Climate crisis, adaptation finance, and racialized austerity

“…Women, and women of color in particular, are more reliant on public transportation for wage and reproductive labor, so both financial and environmental risks are experienced more acutely by women, who comprise around 60% of subway trips(Saska, 2015). Water access in Cape Town is acutely gendered as well (seeHarris et al, 2017;Sultana, 2018).4 Though these interventions often have detrimental social outcomes for impacted communities regardless of their economic or environmental failures (seeAsiyanbi, 2018;Chomba et al, 2016; Beymer- Ferris & Basset, 2012).…”