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Nature in the Market-World: Ecosystem services and inequality

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Abstract

Programmes to address global warming and promote green development, such as Payments for Ecosystem Services and Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and [forest] Degradation financed by carbon-offset trading, are framed by a world-as-market paradigm that subsumes social goals within a project of globalized eco-economic management. Because market-based strategies reinforce existing property claims and power relations, Kathleen McAfee argues that they are likely to worsen inequality without yielding net, global environmental benefits. A better approach would build upon positive synergies between climate mitigation, agriculture, and rural livelihoods.

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Notes

  1. In addition to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, REDD+ is meant to support forest conservation, sustainable management and enhancement.

  2. On the rush for land, see Development 54(1), also see Journal of Pleasant Studies, forthcoming 2012 issue: ‘Green Grabbing: A new appropriation of nature’.

  3. Carbon Finance at the World Bank: Frequently Asked Questions, http://web.worldbank.org/wbsite/external/topics/environment/extcarbonfinance/0,,print:y~iscurl:y~contentmdk:21848927~menupk:4125939~pagepk:64168445~pipk:64168309~thesitepk:4125853,00.html, accessed 25 April 2011.

  4. World Bank funding for planning and pilot programmes has been approved for more than 35 countries. Proto-REDD projects have been launched under the aegis of UNREDD with funds and technical support dispersed via the UN Development Programme, GEF and other agencies, and by government and non-government agencies.

  5. Although forest ecosystem services trade is a minor component of the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the World Bank views the CDM as a model for REDD and REDD+. Also see Notes 3, 6, and 7.

  6. Guidelines for pro-poor payments for environmental services, http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTEEI/Resources/ProPoorPES-2col.pdf, accessed 26 April 2011.

  7. Estimating the opportunity costs of REDD+: A training manual, http://wbi.worldbank.org/wbi/learning-product/estimating-opportunity-costs-redd, accessed 27 August 2011.

  8. This debate is muddied by confusion between for-profit markets as a source of financing for REDD and markets as mechanisms for disbursing such funds to suppliers of ecosystem services. (Personal Communication: Jutta Kill, FERN).

  9. PES schemes ‘cannot, for example, target their interventions to areas of high poverty, as these may not be the areas that generate the desired services. PES programmes also cannot choose to promote particular land use practices solely on the basis of the poor being able to undertake them’ (Pagiola et al., 2005: 238).

  10. FCPF makes headway towards a future with REDD+, http://web.worldbank.org/wbsite/external/topics/environment/extcarbonfinance/0,,contentmdk:22751912~pagepk:64168445~pipk:64168309~thesitepk:4125853,00.html, accessed 26 August 2011.

  11. World Bank eyes network of CO 2 markets in make-or-break decade, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-06/world-bank-eyes-network-of-co2-markets-in-make-or-break-decade.html, accessed 26 August 2011.

  12. Similar logic informed the infamous 1991 memo signed by the World Bank's then-chief economist, Lawrence Summers, which argued that Africa is ‘under-polluted’ because lives cut short by pollution there are worth less, according to ‘impeccable’ economic reasoning.

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  1. Kathleen McAfee
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Argues for new positive synergies between climate mitigation, agriculture and rural livelihoods

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McAfee, K. Nature in the Market-World: Ecosystem services and inequality. Development 55, 25–33 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/dev.2011.105

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