{"id":20805,"date":"2012-08-13T12:00:51","date_gmt":"2012-08-13T11:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=20805"},"modified":"2012-08-07T10:07:01","modified_gmt":"2012-08-07T09:07:01","slug":"the-great-impostors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2012\/08\/the-great-impostors\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Impostors"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the name of saving the natural world, governments are privatising it. <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying \u2018this is mine\u2019, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not anyone have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, \u2018Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody\u2019\u201d(1).<\/p>\n

Jean Jacques Rousseau would recognise this moment. Now it is not the land his impostors are enclosing, but the rest of the natural world. In many countries, especially the United Kingdom, nature is being valued and commodified so that it can be exchanged for cash.<\/p>\n

The effort began in earnest under the last government. At a cost of \u00a3100,000(2), it commissioned a research company to produce a total annual price for England\u2019s ecosystems. After taking the money, the company reported \u2013 with a certain understatement \u2013 that this exercise was \u201ctheoretically challenging to complete, and considered by some not to be a theoretically sound endeavour.\u201d(3) Some of the services provided by England\u2019s ecosystems, it pointed out, \u201cmay in fact be infinite in value.\u201d<\/p>\n

This rare flash of common sense did nothing to discourage the current government from seeking first to put a price on nature, then to create a market in its disposal. The UK now has a Natural Capital Committee, an Ecosystem Markets Task Force and an inspiring new lexicon. We don\u2019t call it nature any more: now the proper term is \u201cnatural capital\u201d. Natural processes have become \u201cecosystem services\u201d, as they exist only to serve us. Hills, forests and river catchments are now \u201cgreen infrastructure\u201d(4), while biodiversity and habitats are \u201casset classes\u201d within an \u201cecosystem market\u201d(5). All of them will be assigned a price, all of them will become exchangeable.<\/p>\n

The argument in favour of this approach is coherent and plausible. Business currently treats the natural world as if it is worth nothing. Pricing nature and incorporating that price into the cost of goods and services creates an economic incentive for its protection. It certainly appeals to both business and the self-hating state. The Ecosystem Markets Task Force speaks of \u201csubstantial potential growth in nature-related markets \u2013 in the order of billions of pounds globally.\u201d(6)<\/p>\n

Commodification, economic growth, financial abstractions, corporate power: aren\u2019t these the processes driving the environmental crisis? Now we are told that to save the biosphere we need more of them.<\/p>\n

Payments for ecosystem services look to me like the prelude to the greatest privatisation since Rousseau\u2019s encloser first made an exclusive claim to the land. The government has already begun describing land owners as the \u201cproviders\u201d of ecosystem services, as if they had created the rain and the hills and the rivers and the wildlife that inhabits them(7). They are to be paid for these services, either by the government or by \u201cusers\u201d. It sounds like the plan for the NHS.<\/p>\n

Land ownership since the time of the first impostor has involved the gradual accumulation of exclusive rights, which were seized from commoners. Payments for ecosystem services extend this encroachment by appointing the landlord as the owner and instigator of the wildlife, the water flow, the carbon cycle, the natural processes previously deemed to belong to everyone and no one.<\/p>\n

But it doesn\u2019t end there. Once a resource has been commodified, speculators and traders step in. The Ecosystem Markets Task Force now talks of \u201charnessing City financial expertise to assess the ways that these blended revenue streams and securitizations enhance the ROI of an environmental bond\u201d(8). This gives you an idea of how far this process has gone \u2013 and of the gobbledegook it has begun to generate.<\/p>\n

Already the government is developing the market for trading wildlife, by experimenting with what it calls biodiversity offsets(9). If a quarry company wants to destroy a rare meadow, for example, it can buy absolution by paying someone to create another somewhere else. The government warns that these offsets should be used only to compensate for \u201cgenuinely unavoidable damage\u201d and \u201cmust not become a licence to destroy\u201d(10); but once the principle is established and the market is functioning, for how long do you reckon that line will hold? Nature, under this system, will become as fungible as everything else.<\/p>\n

Like other aspects of neoliberalism, the commodification of nature forestalls democratic choice. No longer will we be able to argue that an ecosystem or a landscape should be protected because it affords us wonder and delight. We\u2019ll be told that its intrinsic value has already been calculated and, doubtless, that it it turns out to be worth less than the other uses to which the land could be put. The market has spoken: end of debate.<\/p>\n

All those messy, subjective matters, the motivating forces of democracy, will be resolved in a column of figures. Governments won\u2019t need to regulate, the market will make the decisions that politicians have ducked. But trade is a fickle master, and unresponsive to anyone except those with the money. The costing and sale of nature represents another transfer of power to corporations and the very rich.<\/p>\n

It diminishes us, it diminishes nature. By turning the natural world into a subsidiary of the corporate economy, it reasserts the biblical doctrine of dominion. It slices the biosphere into component commodities: already the government\u2019s task force is talking of \u201cunbundling\u201d ecosystem services(11), a term borrowed from previous privatisations. This might make financial sense; it makes no ecological sense. The more we learn about the natural world, the more we discover that its functions cannot be safely disaggregated.<\/p>\n

Rarely will the money to be made by protecting nature match the money to be made by destroying it. Nature offers low rates of return by comparison to other investments. If we allow the discussion to shift from values to value \u2013 from love to greed \u2013 we cede the natural world to the forces wrecking it. Pull up the stakes, fill in the ditch, we\u2019re being conned again.<\/p>\n

References: <\/strong><\/p>\n

1. Jean Jacques Rousseau, 1754. A Discourse on a Subject Proposed by the Academy Of Dijon: What Is the Origin of Inequality Among Men, and Is It Authorised by Natural Law? http:\/\/www.constitution.org\/jjr\/ineq.htm<\/p>\n

2. http:\/\/randd.defra.gov.uk\/Default.aspx?Menu=Menu&Module=More&Location=None&Completed=0&ProjectID=14752<\/p>\n

3. S.O\u2019Gorman and C.Bann, 2008. A Valuation of England\u2019s Terrestrial Ecosystem Services, a report to Defra. http:\/\/www.fires-seminars.org.uk\/downloads\/valuation_englands_ecosystem_services.pdf<\/p>\n

4. Petrina Rowcroft et al, September 2011. Barriers and Opportunities to the Use of Payments for Ecosystem Services. Report for DEFRA. http:\/\/randd.defra.gov.uk\/Document.aspx?Document=PESFinalReport28September2011%28FINAL%29.pdf<\/p>\n

5. G Duke et al, 14th June 2012. Opportunities for UK Business that Value and\/or Protect Nature\u2019s Services. Ecosystem Markets Task Force. http:\/\/www.defra.gov.uk\/ecosystem-markets\/files\/EMTF-VNN-STUDY-FINAL-REPORT-REV1-14.06.12.pdf<\/p>\n

6. Ecosystem Markets Task Force, July 2012. Update on work to date. http:\/\/www.defra.gov.uk\/ecosystem-markets\/files\/Ecosystem-Markets-Task-Force-One-Year-On-Update2.pdf<\/p>\n

7. Helen Dunn, October 2011. Payments for Ecosystem Services. Defra Evidence and Analysis Series, Paper 4. http:\/\/www.defra.gov.uk\/publications\/files\/ecosystem-payment-services-pb13658a.pdf<\/p>\n

8. G Duke et al, 14th June 2012. Opportunities for UK Business that Value and\/or Protect Nature\u2019s Services. Ecosystem Markets Task Force. http:\/\/www.defra.gov.uk\/ecosystem-markets\/files\/EMTF-VNN-STUDY-FINAL-REPORT-REV1-14.06.12.pdf<\/p>\n

9. http:\/\/www.defra.gov.uk\/environment\/natural\/biodiversity\/uk\/offsetting\/<\/p>\n

10. DEFRA, July 2011. Biodiversity offsetting: guiding principles for biodiversity offsetting http:\/\/archive.defra.gov.uk\/environment\/biodiversity\/offsetting\/documents\/110714offsetting-guiding-principles.pdf<\/p>\n

11. G Duke et al, 14th June 2012. Opportunities for UK Business that Value and\/or Protect Nature\u2019s Services. Ecosystem Markets Task Force. http:\/\/www.defra.gov.uk\/ecosystem-markets\/files\/EMTF-VNN-STUDY-FINAL-REPORT-REV1-14.06.12.pdf<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

About George Monbiot: Here are some of the things I try to fight: undemocratic power, corruption, deception of the public, environmental destruction, injustice, inequality and the misallocation of resources, waste, denial, the libertarianism which grants freedom to the powerful at the expense of the powerless, undisclosed interests, complacency. Here is what I fear: other people\u2019s cowardice.<\/em><\/p>\n

Published in the Guardian 7th August 2012.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

In the name of saving the natural world, governments are privatising it. \u201cThe first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying \u2018this is mine\u2019, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20805","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=20805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}