{"id":198955,"date":"2021-11-08T12:02:52","date_gmt":"2021-11-08T12:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=198955"},"modified":"2025-01-10T15:08:24","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T15:08:24","slug":"conservation-or-land-grab-the-financialization-of-nature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/11\/conservation-or-land-grab-the-financialization-of-nature\/","title":{"rendered":"Conservation or Land Grab? The Financialization of Nature"},"content":{"rendered":"

5 Nov 2021 – Just in time for the UN\u2019s policy push for \u201c30 x 30\u201d \u2013 30% of the earth to be \u201cconserved\u201d by 2030 \u2013 a new Wall Street asset class puts up for sale the processes underpinning all life.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A month before the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (known as COP26) kicked off in Scotland, a new asset class was launched by the New York Stock Exchange that will \u201copen up a new feeding ground for predatory Wall Street banks and financial institutions that will allow them to dominate not just the human economy, but the entire natural world.\u201d So writes Whitney Webb in an article titled \u201cWall Street\u2019s Takeover of Nature Advances with Launch of New Asset Class<\/a>\u201d:<\/p>\n

Called a natural asset company, or NAC, the vehicle will allow for the formation of specialized corporations \u201cthat hold the rights to the ecosystem services produced on a given chunk of land, services like carbon sequestration or clean water.\u201d These NACs will then\u00a0maintain, manage and grow<\/a>\u00a0the natural assets they commodify, with the end goal of maximizing the aspects of that natural asset that are deemed by the company to be profitable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The vehicle is allegedly designed to preserve and restore Nature\u2019s assets; but when Wall Street gets involved, profit and exploitation are not far behind. Webb writes:<\/p>\n

[E]ven the creators of NACs admit that the ultimate goal is to extract near-infinite profits from the natural processes they seek to quantify and then monetize\u2026.<\/p>\n

Framed with the lofty talk of \u201csustainability\u201d and \u201cconservation\u201d, media reports on the move in outlets\u00a0like\u00a0Fortune<\/a>\u00a0couldn\u2019t avoid noting that NACs open the doors to \u201ca new form of sustainable investment\u201d which \u201chas enthralled the likes of BlackRock CEO Larry Fink over the past several years even though there remain big, unanswered questions about it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

BlackRock is the world\u2019s largest asset manager, with nearly\u00a0$9.5 trillion under management<\/a>. That is more than the gross domestic product of every country in the world\u00a0except the U.S. and China<\/a>. BlackRock also runs a massive technology platform that oversees at least $21.6 trillion in assets. It and two other megalithic asset managers, State Street and Vanguard (BlackRock\u2019s largest shareholder), already effectively own much of the world. Adding \u201cnatural asset companies\u201d to their portfolios could make them owners of the foundations of all life.<\/p>\n

A $4 Quadrillion Asset \u2014 The Earth Itself<\/strong><\/p>\n

Partnering with the New York Stock Exchange team launching the NAC is\u00a0the Intrinsic Exchange Group<\/a>\u00a0(IEG), major investors in which are the Rockefeller Foundation and the Inter-American Development Bank, notorious for imposing neo-colonialist agendas\u00a0through debt entrapment<\/a>. According to IEG\u2019s website:<\/p>\n

We are pioneering a new asset class based on natural assets and the mechanism to convert them to financial capital.\u00a0These assets are essential, making life on Earth possible and enjoyable. They include biological systems that provide clean air, water, foods, medicines, a stable climate, human health and societal potential.<\/p>\n

The potential of this asset class is immense.\u00a0Nature\u2019s economy is larger than our current industrial economy\u00a0\u2026.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The immense potential of \u201cNature\u2019s Economy\u201d is estimated by IEG at $4,000 trillion ($4 quadrillion).<\/p>\n

Webb cites researcher and journalist Cory Morningstar, who maintains that one of the aims of creating \u201cNature\u2019s Economy\u201d and packaging it via NACs is to drastically advance massive land grab efforts made by Wall Street and the oligarch class in recent years, including those\u00a0made by Wall Street firms<\/a>\u00a0and billionaires\u00a0like Bill Gates<\/a>\u00a0during the COVID crisis. The land grabs facilitated through the development of NACs, however, will\u00a0largely target indigenous communities<\/a>\u00a0in the developing world. Morningstar observes:<\/p>\n

The public launch of NACs strategically preceded the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, the biggest biodiversity conference in a decade. Under the pretext of turning 30% of the globe into \u201cprotected areas\u201d, the largest global land grab in history is underway. Built on a foundation of white supremacy, this proposal will displace hundreds of millions, furthering the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The UN\u2019s \u201c30 x 30\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The land grab of which Morningstar speaks is embodied in a draft agreement called the \u201cPost-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework<\/a>,\u201d currently being negotiated among the 186 governments that are signatories to the Convention for Biological Diversity. Part I of its 15th meeting (COP15) closed on October 15, just ahead of COP26 (the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties)\u00a0hosted in Glasgow from October 31 through November 12. COP26 focuses on climate change, while COP 15 focuses on preserving diversity. Part II of COP15 will be held in 2022. The draft text for the COP 15 nature pact includes\u00a0a core pledge to protect at least 30%<\/a>\u00a0of the planet\u2019s land and oceans by 2030.<\/p>\n

In September 2020, 128 environmental and human rights\u00a0NGOs and experts warned<\/a>\u00a0that the 30 x 30 plan could result in severe human rights violations and irreversible social harm for some of the world\u2019s poorest people. Based on figures from a paper published in the academic journal\u00a0Nature, they argued that the new target could displace or dispossess as many as 300 million people. Stephen Corry\u00a0of\u00a0Survival International<\/a>\u00a0contended:<\/p>\n

The call to make 30% of the globe into \u201cProtected Areas\u201d is really a colossal land grab as big as Europe\u2019s colonial era, and it\u2019ll bring as much suffering and death. Let\u2019s not be fooled by the hype from the conservation NGOs and their UN and government funders. This has nothing to do with climate change, protecting biodiversity or avoiding pandemics \u2013 in fact it\u2019s more likely to make all of them worse. It\u2019s really all about money, land and resource control, and an all out assault on human diversity. This planned dispossession of hundreds of millions of people risks eradicating human diversity and self-sufficiency \u2013 the real keys to our being able to slow climate change and protect biodiversity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

30 x 30 in the United States<\/strong><\/p>\n

The 30 x 30 target was incorporated in President Biden\u2019s\u00a0Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and\u00a0Abroad<\/a>\u00a0dated January 27, 2021, which includes at Sec. 219 \u201cthe goal of conserving at least 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030.\u201d<\/p>\n

How that is to be done is not clearly specified, but proponents insist it is not a \u201cland grab.\u201d\u00a0Critics, however, contend there is no other way to pull it off.<\/a>\u00a0Only about 12% of land and water in the U.S. is now considered to be \u201cin conservation,\u201d including wilderness lands, national parks, national wildlife refuges, state parks, national monuments, and private lands with permanent conservation easements (contracts to surrender a portion of property rights to a land trust or the federal government). According to\u00a0environmental expert Dr. Bonner Cohen<\/a>, raising that figure to 30%, adding 600 million acres to the total, \u201cmeans putting this land and water (mostly land) off limits to any productive use in perpetuity. To accomplish this goal, the federal government will have to buy up \u2013 through eminent domain or other pressures on landowners making them \u2018willing sellers\u2019 of their property \u2013 millions of acres of private land.\u201d<\/p>\n

In July 2021, 15 governors wrote to the Administration\u00a0opposing the plan<\/a>, led by Gov. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska.\u00a0Ricketts said in a press release<\/a>:<\/p>\n

This requires restricting a land area the size of the State of Nebraska every year, each year, for the next nine years, or in other words a landmass twice the size of Texas by 2030.<\/p>\n

This goal is especially radical given that the President has no constitutional authority to take action to conserve 30% of the land and water.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Real Threat to Mother Nature<\/strong><\/p>\n

The federal government may have no constitutional authority to take the land, but a megalithic private firm such as BlackRock could do it simply by making farmers and local residents an offer they can\u2019t refuse. This ploy has already been demonstrated in the housing market.<\/p>\n

According to a survey\u00a0reported in\u00a0The Guardian<\/a>\u00a0on October 12, 2021, nearly 40% of U.S. households are facing serious financial problems, including struggling to afford medical care and food; and 30% of lower income households (those earning under $50,000 per year) said they had lost all their savings during the coronavirus pandemic. In the first quarter of 2021,\u00a015% of U.S. home sales<\/a>\u00a0went to large corporate investors including BlackRock, which beat out families in search of homes just by\u00a0offering substantially more<\/a>\u00a0than the asking price. Sometimes whole neighborhoods were bought up at once for conversion into rental properties.<\/p>\n

BlackRock\u2019s chairman Larry Fink is on the board of the World Economic Forum, which until recently featured\u00a0a controversial promotional video<\/a>\u00a0declaring \u201cYou will own nothing, and you\u2019ll be happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

We all want a clean environment, and we want to preserve species biodiversity. But that includes human biodiversity \u2013 acknowledging the rights of rural landowners and Indigenous peoples, the land\u2019s natural stewards. The greatest threat to the land is not the people living on it but those well-heeled investors who swoop in to buy up the rights to it, financializing the earth for profit.<\/p>\n

Not just private property but those public lands and infrastructure once known as \u201cthe commons\u201d are now under threat. We face an existential moment in our economic history, in which accumulated private wealth is acquiring\u00a0carte blanche\u00a0control of the essentials of life. Whether that juggernaut can be stopped remains to be seen, but the first step in any defensive action is to be aware of the threat at our doorsteps.<\/p>\n

________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/em>Ellen Brown is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>, an attorney, founder\/chairperson of the\u00a0<\/em>Public Banking Institute<\/a>, and author of thirteen books including\u00a0<\/em>Web of Debt<\/a>,\u00a0The Public Bank Solution<\/a>, and\u00a0<\/em>Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age<\/a>.\u00a0Her 300+ blog articles are at\u00a0ellenbrown.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 ellenbrown.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

5 Nov 2021 – Just in time for the UN\u2019s policy push for \u201c30 x 30\u201d \u2013 30% of the earth to be \u201cconserved\u201d by 2030 \u2013 a new Wall Street asset class puts up for sale the processes underpinning all life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":179118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[2101,232,2716,550,354,555,401,562,626,610,1624,391,1200,2059,2198,2060,2718,124,1557],"class_list":["post-198955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-blackrock","tag-capitalism","tag-cop26","tag-corruption","tag-economics","tag-elites","tag-environment","tag-finance","tag-greed","tag-inequality","tag-mafia","tag-nature","tag-natures-rights","tag-organized-crime","tag-post-capitalism","tag-profits","tag-pyramid-schemes","tag-united-nations","tag-wall-street"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198955"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284677,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198955\/revisions\/284677"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}