Green Grabbing: a new appropriation of nature?

Abstract

More details/abstract: Across the world, 'green grabbing' -the appropriation of land and resources for environmental ends -is an emerging process of deep and growing significance. The vigorous debate on 'land grabbing' already highlights instances where 'green' credentials are called upon to justify appropriations of land for food or fuel -as where large tracts of land are acquired not just for 'more efficient farming' or 'food security', but also to 'alleviate pressure on forests'. In other cases, however, environmental green agendas are the core drivers and goals of grabs -whether linked to biodiversity conservation, biocarbon sequestration, biofuels, ecosystem services, ecotourism or 'offsets' related to any and all of these. In some cases these involve the wholesale alienation of land, and in others the restructuring of rules and authority in the access, use and management of resources that may have profoundly alienating effects. Green grabbing builds on well-known histories of colonial and neo-colonial resource alienation in the name of the environment -whether for parks, forest reserves or to halt assumed destructive local practices. Yet it involves novel forms of valuation, commodification and markets for pieces and aspects of nature, and an extraordinary new range of actors and alliances -as pension funds and venture capitalists, commodity traders and consultants, GIS service providers and business entrepreneurs, ecotourism companies and the military, green activists and anxious consumers among others find once-unlikely common interests. This collection draws new theorisation together with cases from African, Asian and Latin American settings, and links critical studies of nature with critical agrarian studies, to ask: To what extent and in what ways do 'green grabs' constitute new forms of appropriation of nature? How and when do circulations of green capital become manifest in actual appropriations on the ground -through what political and discursive dynamics? What are the implications for ecologies, landscapes and livelihoods? And who is gaining and who is losing -how are agrarian social relations, rights and authority being restructured, and in whose interests?

The evolution of ecosystem services: A time series and discourse-centered analysis

“…Hence despite Aldo Leopold being an important figure in raising interest in developing solutions to environmental degradation, he explains his Land Ethic in 1949 as a direct response against those who were trying to put economic values to nature. A range of authors have raised concerns that putting a price on nature (Fairhead et al, 2012) can lead to separation, commodification and ultimately exploitation of environment, rather than a closer relationship to it. Others, coming from a biological sciences perspective, are concerned about the perceived weak links between biodiversity management and ecosystem services provision (Ridder, 2008) and that the anthropocentric focus may have detrimental effects on species (McCauley, 2006).…”

What’s in a name? Epistemic perspectives and Payments for Ecosystem Services policies in Nicaragua

“…These mainstream ideas are promoted by influential multilateral agencies, consultants, experts, traders, etc. Contracted as key knowledge brokers (Rocha, 2005), they profit from the technical complexities of constructing and negotiating such PES arrangements (Fairhead et al, 2012). While we do not claim to have clearly identified the actors involved and the process dynamics, we feel our study does underline the necessity of further scrutinising PES success stories, given that they are so easily and uncritically circulated as 'good practices' (see also Büscher, 2012).…”

“…Kosoy and Corbera (2010) refer to PES as a form of 'commodity fetishism' whereby the creation of new commodities (ES) threatens to disguise the social relationships underlying the production process. Thus, PES implementation can result in increased competition for control over valuable flows of services and the ecosystems that provide them, possibly leading to new forms of environmental dispossession and 'green grabbing' (Fairhead et al, 2012;Redford and Adams, 2009).…”

“…Various studies indicate that discourses and corresponding policies promoted by global governance institutions are increasingly inspired by neoliberal notions and the assumption that conservation efforts should be governed by market principles (e.g. Büscher et al, 2012;Fairhead et al, 2012;McAfee, 1999). The discursive power concentrated around these institutions allows PES to be promulgated as a promising conservation and development tool (McAfee, 2012).…”

“…The increasing local adoption of PES discourses might then be framed within a context of new strategies of peasant resistance to (neo)colonial legacies of resource alienation in the name of the environment, in which peasants are often discursively constructed as environmental destructors (e.g. Fairhead et al, 2012;McElwee et al, 2014).…”