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Arrested Development? The Promises and Paradoxes of “Selling Nature to Save It”

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  • Jessica Dempsey
  • Daniel Chiu Suarez

Abstract

Mainstream environmentalism and critical scholarship are abuzz with the promise and perils (respectively) of what we call for-profit biodiversity conservation: attempts to make conserving biodiverse ecosystems profitable to large-scale investment. But to what extent has private capital been harnessed and market forces been enrolled in a thoroughly remade conservation? In this article we examine the size, scope, and character of international for-profit biodiversity conservation. Despite exploding rhetoric around environmental markets over the last two decades, the capital flowing into market-based conservation remains small, illiquid, and geographically constrained and typically seeks little to no profit. This marginal character of for-profit conservation suggests that this project continues to underperform as a site of accumulation and as a conservation financing strategy. Such evidence is at odds with the way this sector is commonly portrayed in mainstream environmental conservation literature but also with some critical geographical scholarship. We present a more puzzling situation: Although for-profit conservation has long been promoted as a logical, easy fix to ecological degradation, it remains negligible to and largely outside of global capital flows. We argue that this project has important consequences, but we understand its effects in terms of how it reaffirms narrowed, antipolitical explanations of biodiversity loss, instills neoliberal political rationalities among conservationists, and forecloses alternative and progressive possibilities capable of resisting status quo logics of accumulation.

Suggested Citation

  • Jessica Dempsey & Daniel Chiu Suarez, 2016. "Arrested Development? The Promises and Paradoxes of “Selling Nature to Save It”," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 106(3), pages 653-671, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:raagxx:v:106:y:2016:i:3:p:653-671
    DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2016.1140018
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    Cited by:

    1. Fletcher, Robert & Büscher, Bram, 2017. "The PES Conceit: Revisiting the Relationship between Payments for Environmental Services and Neoliberal Conservation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 224-231.
    2. Poulton, David W. & Kaplinsky, Eran S., 2022. "Unfinished business: Market-based instruments under the Alberta Land Stewardship Act," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    3. Jessica Smith & Mikael Samuelson & Benedict Moore Libanda & Dilys Roe & Latif Alhassan, 2022. "Getting Blended Finance to Where It’s Needed: The Case of CBNRM Enterprises in Southern Africa," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(5), pages 1-16, April.
    4. Patrick Bigger, 2018. "Hybridity, possibility: Degrees of marketization in tradeable permit systems," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 50(3), pages 512-530, May.
    5. Wim Carton & Adeniyi Asiyanbi & Silke Beck & Holly J. Buck & Jens F. Lund, 2020. "Negative emissions and the long history of carbon removal," Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 11(6), November.
    6. Manda, Simon & Mukanda, Nyambe, 2023. "Can REDD+ projects deliver livelihood benefits in private tenure arrangements? Experiences from rural Zambia," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).

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