Emerging Markets for Nature and Challenges for the Ecosystem Service Approach

type="main"> Ecosystem services (ESS) are a burdened concept. They are supposed to function as a protective mechanism to make nature economically visible, while simultaneously contributing to economic development. At the core of the concept is the ideal of concisely valued and well-accounted-for goods traded in markets by rational and moral actors. This virtual idea is being challenged by real local processes of short-term commodification and market-based incentives for profit making in ‘messy’, unequal and illegitimate ESS markets. This article presents a local case-study perspective focusing on the thatch grass ESS in the Kavango Regions of Namibia, where harvesters have become involved in an emerging capitalist value chain. It shows how, against the background of a post-colonial political-institutional setting that leaves plenty of leeway for exploitation, the real-life conflation of market incentives and cash desires transforms local subsistence, causes a revaluation of ESS, and poses a real challenge to the virtual ESS conservation approach. Instead of viewing ESS as countable items involved in beneficial market interactions, we need to come to a more precise understanding of the consequences, local vulnerabilities and externalities of ESS marketizations.