Marketing the planet: The financialization of nature . Helena Paul . January 31, 2022 https://radicalecologicaldemocracy.org/marketing-the-planet-the-financialization-of-nature/ Community, Democracy, Development, Ecology, Environment, New Economy, New Politics, Power Dynamic, Sustainability Extracts:
The Financialisation of Nature project has taken a number of forms, using different kinds of market instruments such as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), wetland banking, Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), Payments for Ecosystem services (PES)...Another new booster for the financialisation project is the drive to turn at least 30% of all land and oceans into ‘protected areas’, often to attract funding; and to re-define nature as carbon sinks to offset continued emissions of greenhouse gases. Those in support of the financialization project claim that such changes to our current economic structures are capable of reversing the degradation and destruction of the planetary life support systems all living beings depend on.
Now, the financialization project introduces another form of “enclosure” or privatisation: that of any “service” nature provides... This increasing scarcity is seen as an economic asset within financialization models that seek to privatise ecosystem services – functions that were previously part of the commons – and turn them into a for-profit business model...
At the same time the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ is proposing technological innovations as ‘solutions’ to that same decline, generating profits for the corporations that develop and own these technologies. Other, complementary, technologies are focused on control and surveillance, undermining the autonomy and democratic rights of the people who seek to oppose such models....
Increasing corporate influence and takeover of the functions of government. Legal instruments such as Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) can be used against governments seeking to prevent harmful exploitation, thus prioritising corporate profit over environmental and social justice.
Comment by Brian of Radicalroad.com: While relevant to current dilemmas, it does not specifically address, as integral to these dilemmas, military institutions and industries, and militarism itself—increasingly evident as the leading threat to humanity, and the planet itself, including as a dominant factor in environmental degradation and climate shift