RANT: THE SMUG CANADIAN'S REPORT: IT'S NOT NICE TO F@*K WITH MOTHER NATURE! Part One

I REMEMBER A FEW YEARS AGO, when I had cable TV and a TV to go with it (aka “boomer-box”), I saw advertisements from time to time—IIRC, from the Chartered Accountants of Canada or some such lobbying organization—which opens with an older gent seated in an armchair. After a moment, he turns to face the camera and, in thoughtful, avuncular manner, comments how the best way, he thought, to protect nature was by putting a price tag on it. That way, he reasoned, we could see how much it was worth to us, in dollars and cents. He didn’t really say what we should do with such knowledge, and I had little sense what such a scheme might involve, though it seemed like a scam to me, but then there were so many scams of one sort or another in those days (not like now, of course). Ho hum. Change the channel.

FAST FORWARD A FEW YEARS, and the agenda and the mechanisms to undertake such an audacious auditing have become much clearer. And not in a good way. 

IN A 2014 Global Transition Initiative article, "Monetizing Nature", BARBARA UNMÜßIG says:

 

“Some argue that monetization, by revealing the economic contribution of nature and its services, can heighten public awareness and bolster conservation efforts. Others go beyond such broad conceptual calculations and seek to establish tradable prices for ecosystem services, claiming that markets can achieve what politics has not.”("Monetizing", GTI)

 

“Valuation” of nature, an idea broached by many environmentalists as a way of bringing the climate crisis to the attention of general public, she goes on to say, is problematic at best and warns it is a “slippery slope” from valuating nature to commodifying it, adding:

 

“…such an approach collapses nature’s complex functions into a set of commodities stripped from their social, cultural, and ecological context and can pose a threat to the poor and indigenous communities who depend on the land for their livelihood.” (“Monetizing”, GTI)

 

IN ANOTHER HELPFUL ARTICLE, this one written last October, Whitney Webb brings us up to date on the mechanics of how financial elites are contemplating slicing up the fresh-baked pie of a commodified nature. And, boys and girls, just for the record: “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature!”

Whitney notes that, in September 2021, Wall Street announced a new financial asset class, and a listing instrument to go with it called a “Natural Asset Company” (NAC). An “asset class” is a grouping of securities that have similar characteristics and are governed by the same laws and regulations, like, for example, bonds, real estate, currencies, etc., and now Nature is to be added to the list. NACs* are companies, the "instruments", that purchase rights to various “ecosystem services” that a particular piece of land performs, for example, a forest providing carbon sequestration or a marsh that cleans groundwater. The reasoning goes that such companies, by investing in a particular ecological service, would automatically act to preserve the long-term functioning of the service and the land it operates from.

 

IN AN ARTICLE for ScienceDirect, Robert Costanza, et al, take exception to this view, writing:

 

“The concepts of ecosystem services flows, and natural capital stocks are increasingly useful ways to highlight, measure, and value the degree of interdependence between humans and the rest of nature. This approach is complementary with other approaches to nature conservation but provides conceptual and empirical tools that the others lack, and it communicates with different audiences for different purposes.” (Costanza, et al, “Changes”)   

 

THEY GO ON TO GIVE the example of ecosystem services that were lost, globally, due to changes in land use (urbanization, deforestation, wetland drainage, etc.) between 1997 and 2011, resulting in a loss of ecosystem services estimated “between $4.3 and $20.2 trillion/yr., and we believe that these [figures] are conservative.” Now, when the average reader, like me, comes across such crazy large figures as these, it makes me stop and think that maybe losing¹ that much natural “capital” each year might not be a good thing for human beings or for the planet.

And this might be a reason to put a price tag on nature and the services it provides, stating in monetary terms just how much we have to gain, or to lose, from it. However, their article concludes with a critical reminder that such analyses—like calculating in dollars and cents how much a wetland, say, provides a region in terms of clean water, shoreline preservation, habitat maintenance, etc., —should only be undertaken, “to measure, and value the degree of interdependence between humans and the rest of nature.” Such calculations, they add, should not be used to treat ecosystem services “as private commodities that can be traded in private markets. Many ecosystem services are public goods or the product of common assets that cannot (or should not) be privatized.” (Costanza, et al.)

 

ANOTHER ARTICLE, IN BIOSCIENCE, shares similar concerns. Marc Tadaki and Kai Chan in a review of Jessica Dempsey’s 2016 book, Enterprising Nature, note that Dempsey supports Constanza’s conclusions against privatizing nature. She begins her study with some historical background on the concept of “selling nature in order to save it”, an argument, Dempsey says, that has been debated in environmental circles for decades. Putting a “price tag” on nature, taking inventory of its “capital” and “service provision” resources; assigning them monetary values has, in the end, “born sparse and stunted fruit” (Tadaki), in terms of conservation efforts or adopting policies to combat pollution and climate change. In the 1970s, the environmental movement dropped its more radical critique of capitalism as the main culprit behind ecological crimes, and instead began to promote a kind of ‘enviro-business’ model, which brought corporations inside the environmental movement as ‘solutions-partners’. SHE SAYS THIS POLICY has been an overall failure. Think about today, for example: does anyone take seriously a “Green New Deal” in whatever country you pick, as something having any relevance combating climate change? The proverb about not letting the fox into the hen-house should come to mind. 

 

DEMPSEY ALSO PROVIDES an interesting analysis on what she calls “venture ecology”², which is the use of environmental data by businesses, but to assess where nature will prove most risky to their bottom line, such as where storm surges might occur, or data on flood plains, ground subsistence, water shortages, droughts, etc. BUT all this ecological ‘bookkeeping’ does is to help elites choose more carefully sites for businesses that continue the same rapacious and environmentally damaging practices, only in safer locales. Again, the emphasis is on nature as either a business opportunity or else a threat to profit margins, which are two halves of the same coin: Both see nature as separate from us and as some thing, some other that can be used indefinitely for profit, like a perpetual milking machine, as it were.

She suggests this “business model” version of environmentalism has only institutionalized “structures of extraction and exploitation.” Instead of allying with business, as many mainstream ecological NGOs have done—other “allies” from indigenous, Third World, grass roots, and green social movements need to be partnered with to counter decades of “green wash” and co-optation by corporations and financial elites, and to develop new goals and practices more in keeping with sustainable ecological principles.

 

“Dempsey advocates for a critical ecology that will ‘discard dreams of mastery, to embrace highly dynamic, uncertain, and deep unknowns of the future,’ and she proposes that such an ecology should be ‘conducted… not to serve elite needs, but to serve [social] movements with a real chance of creating abundant, diverse futures.’” (Tadaki)

 

Tadaki and Chan, in their critique of Dempsey’s arguments, suggest her arguments may be valid, but “idealistic” and may ultimately prove unable to turn “the juggernaut of global supply chains and consumer demands when even the fiercest ecological activists cannot escape these relations.”

I don’t accept this conclusion on their part. DEMPSEY IS RIGHT that environmentalism, as a movement, has strayed from its core principles. Corporations have far too much influence in what and how ecological scientists, researchers, and activists study and focus their energies as they address the various environmental crises we face today. Changes are obviously needed, and change can happen, where there are enough wills to shape it!

 

I’VE CITED SEVERAL ARTICLES, all of them suggesting fundamental changes are needed in how we go forward, ecologically speaking. I haven’t mentioned what I started out with, namely the mechanisms with which business elites are making new inroads into the commodification of nature, using new financial tools and tricks to do the job, as discussed in Whitney Webb’s “Wall Street’s Takeover of Nature” article. BUT I THINK I will stop here, as this is a lot to chew on. I’ll do an additional post in a few days detailing Whitney’s examination of NACs and a couple of other items.

 

Enough for now,

Jake.

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* Acronyms may be the death of us yet!

 

 ^1. Nothing is ever “lost”, really. It’s converted into something else: When we die, our bodies are returned to their constitute parts and recombine with the earth and air. (Unless you make other plans, of course.) Or maybe you decide to pave over a wetland, turning it into a parking lot, with the flora and fauna returning to their constituent parts, and asphalt replacing its surface. For a time. So it goes.)

 

^2. Insurance companies are a vast treasure trove of such data, of course, as their business model depends on up-to-date information about where they are most likely to be exposed (in a pecuniary sense) to hazards emerging from the natural world. I imagine historians and archaeologists of the future will find their archives fascinating as they excavate amid the ruins of our civilization, trying to discover what kind of people we were, and what we valued.           

 

 

 

Webb, Whitney. “Wall Street’s takeover of Nature Advances with Launch of New Asset Class”. n. pag. Web:  Unlimited Hangout. 12 Oct 2021. https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/10/investigative-reports/wall-streets-takeover-of-nature-advances-with-launch-of-new-asset-class/

 

Unmüßig, Barbara. “Monetizing Nature: Taking Precaution on a Slippery Slope” (2014). n. pag. Web: Global Transition Initiative. Tellus Institute. 2021. https://greattransition.org/publication/monetizing-nature-taking-precaution-on-a-slippery-slope

 

Robert, Costanza Rudolfde; Groot, Paul Sutton; Sandervan der Ploeg, Sharolyn: J. Anderson; Stephen Farber; R. Kerry Turner. “Changes in the Global Value of Ecosystem Services” n. pag. Web: Global Environmental Change. Vol 26, ScienceDirect. May 2014. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378014000685#bib0045

 

Marc Tadaki, Kai M. A. Chan. “Economizing Nature as a Political Strategy: Is it Working?” Review. n. pag. Web: BioScience 67. 8 2017. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/67/8/770/3861058

 

 

 

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