On ‘Natural Capital’, ‘Fairy Tales’ and Ideology

Sullivan, Sian

doi:10.1111/dech.12293

Cited by 26 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 59 publications

(69 reference statements)

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“…Our concern here is to draw attention to a possible normalizing of past primitive accumulations which may accompany the depoliticized and hybridized acceptance of market-oriented environmental interventions. Celebrations of agency and adaptation to current neoliberal environmental governance policies can thereby mask the monstrous historical 'leviathan' of colonial conquest and technologies of political control (Federici, 2004;Sullivan, 2017aSullivan, , 2019aTaussig, 2010Taussig, [19801987). As Fletcher and Büscher (2019: 423), following Springer (2014) argue, Van Hecken et al (2018 seem to be flirting with a 'neoliberalism in denial', by abandoning the 'vigilance needed to combat the pernicious diffusion of neoliberal ways of thinking and being'.…”

Section: A Productive Faultine?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Dunlap

Sullivan

2019

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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This article identifies an emerging faultline in critical geography and political ecology scholarship by reviewing recent debates on three neoliberal environmental governance initiatives: Payments for Ecosystem Services, the United Nations programme for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries and carbon-biodiversity offsetting. These three approaches, we argue, are characterized by varying degrees of contextual and procedural – or superficial – difference, meanwhile exhibiting significant structural similarities that invite critique, perhaps even rejection. Specifically, we identify three largely neglected ‘social engineering’ outcomes as more foundational to Payments for Ecosystem Services, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries and carbon-biodiversity offsetting than often acknowledged, suggesting that neoliberal environmental governance approaches warrant greater critical attention for their contributions to advancing processes of colonization, state territorialization and security policy. Examining the structural accumulation strategies accompanying neoliberal environmental governance approaches, we offer the term ‘accumulation-by-alienation’ to highlight both the objective appropriations accompanying Payments for Ecosystem Services, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries and offsetting and the relational deficiencies accompanying the various commodifying instrumentalizations at the heart of these initiatives. We concur with David Harvey’s recent work proposing that understanding the iterative and consequential connections between objective/material and subjective/psychological dimensions of alienation offers ‘one vital key to unlock the door of a progressive politics for the future’. We conclude (with others) by urging critical geography and political ecology scholars to cultivate research directions that affirm more radical alternatives, rather than reinforcing a narrowing focus on how to improve Payments for Ecosystem Services, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries and offsetting in practice.

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Section: A Productive Faultine?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Dunlap

Sullivan

2019

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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“…Yet while the vision underlying NCA promotion has been explored in various ways by ecological economists (e.g. Jansson 1994;Costanza et al 1997Costanza et al , 2014 and others (Dempsey 2016;Sullivan 2017aSullivan , 2017b, how this vision is currently materializing within on-the-ground policy and practice has yet to be systematically investigated. As NCA is frequently introduced into frontier areas harboring rural, resource-dependent populations, investigating NCA's impacts in the context of rapidly intensifying agrarian transformations remains critically important.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural capital must be defended: green growth as neoliberal biopolitics

Fletcher

Dressler

Anderson

et al. 2018

The Journal of Peasant Studies

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This contribution addresses the growing global trend to promote 'natural capital accounting' (NCA) in support of environmental conservation. NCA seeks to harness the economic value of conserved nature to incentivize local resource users to forgo the opportunity costs of extractive activities. We suggest that this represents a form of neoliberal biopower/biopolitics seeking to defend life by demonstrating its 'profitability' and hence right to exist. While little finance actually reaches communities through this strategy, substantial funding still flows into the idea of 'natural capital' as the basis of improving rural livelihoods. Drawing on two cases in Southeast Asia, we show that NCA initiatives may compel some local people to value ecosystem services in financial terms, yet in most cases this perspective remains partial and fragmented in communities where such initiatives produce a range of unintended outcomes. When the envisioned environmental markets fail to develop and benefits remain largely intangible, NCA fails to meet the growing material aspirations of farmers while also offering little if any bulwark against their using forests more intensively and/or enrolling in lucrative extractive enterprise. We thus conclude that NCA in practice may become the antithesis of conservation by actually encouraging the resource extraction it intends to combat.

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“…These numbering practices do not simply reflect an objective and impartially knowable state of affairs (Mackenzie, 2008). They function normatively and ideologically to bolster particular interests, ontologies and political economy structures whilst occluding others (Sullivan, 2017a).…”

Section: Introduction[1][2]mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…UK monetary estimates of natural capital A global consolidation of ecological accounting, and particularly natural capital accounting, is taking place. This consolidation is part of a concerted effort to make nature values visible and legible economically, both as stocks of 'natural capital' and as associated flows of 'ecosystem and/or environmental services' (for review see Bateman et al, 2011;Read and Scott Cato, 2014;Sullivan, 2014Sullivan, , 2017aCoffey, 2016;Nadal, 2016). These innovations extend an older social accounting and 'full cost accounting' impetus to account for those social -and now environmental -costs that have conventionally been considered external to financial transactions (see discussion in Milne, 2007;also Gray and Bebbington, 2001).…”

Section: Introduction[1][2]mentioning

confidence: 99%

“Mathematics maybe, but not money”

Sullivan

Hannis

2017

AAAJ

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to consider and compare different ways of using numbers to value aspects of nature-beyond-the-human through case analysis of ecological and natural capital accounting practices in the UK that create standardised numerical-economic values for beyond-human natures. In addition, to contrast underlying ontological and ethical assumptions of these arithmetical approaches in ecological accounting with those associated with Pythagorean nature-numbering practices and fractal geometry. In doing so, to draw out distinctions between arithmetical and geometrical ontologies of nature and their relevance for “valuing nature”. Design/methodology/approach Close reading and review of policy texts and associated calculations in: UK natural capital accounts for “opening stock” inventories in 2007 and 2014; and in the experimental implementation of biodiversity offsetting (BDO) in land-use planning in England. Tracking the iterative calculations of biodiversity offset requirements in a specific planning case. Conceptual review, drawing on and contrasting different numbering practices being applied so as to generate numerical-economic values for natures-beyond-the-human. Findings In the cases of ecological accounting practices analysed here, the natures thus numbered are valued and “accounted for” using arithmetical methodologies that create commensurability and facilitate appropriation of the values so created. Notions of non-monetary value, and associated practices, are marginalised. Instead of creating standardisation and clarity, however, the accounting practices considered here for natural capital accounts and BDO create nature-signalling numbers that are struggled over and contested. Originality/value This is the first critical engagement with the specific policy texts and case applications considered here, and, the authors believe, the first attempt to contrast arithmetical and geometrical numbering practices in their application to the understanding and valuing of natures-beyond-the-human.

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On ‘Natural Capital’, ‘Fairy Tales’ and Ideology

Cited by 26 publications

References 59 publications

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

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

Natural capital must be defended: green growth as neoliberal biopolitics

“Mathematics maybe, but not money”

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