Natural capital must be defended: green growth as neoliberal biopolitics

Background

The growing global trend of natural capital accounting (NCA) is a strategy for environmental conservation that seeks to use the economic value of nature to incentivize local resource users to protect it. The authors argue that this trend represents a form of neoliberal biopolitics, which aims to defend life by demonstrating its “profitability.” They note that NCA promotes market-based instruments and is part of a broader movement toward neoliberalization in conservation governance. The research focuses on rural, resource-dependent populations in frontier Southeast Asia, specifically in the Philippines and Indonesia, where intensifying agrarian transformations and pressures from extractive industries affect these populations.

Goals and Methods

The research aims to explore how the vision of NCA materializes within on-the-ground policy and practice in frontier settings. The study investigates how NCA impacts local communities and livelihoods, particularly in the context of biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration initiatives. To achieve these goals, the authors employ long-term ethnographic research over eight years (2008-2016) in southern Palawan, Philippines, and three years (2013-2016) in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. Their research methods include semi-structured interviews with NGO, government, and community representatives, as well as participant observation and focus group discussions with rural farmers. The researchers document past and present farming practices, local responses to NCA interventions, and both their socio-economic and biophysical outcomes.

Conclusions and Takeaways

The study concludes that NCA can, in practice, become the opposite of conservation, and potentially promote the very resource extraction it aims to prevent. This is due to its failure to provide adequate financial benefits to local communities. While NCA initiatives can influence local behaviors and some livelihood changes, their effects are often incomplete and inconsistent. The research shows a disparity between the rhetoric and incentives of NCA and the material aspirations of local farmers. This disparity leads farmers to choose more exploitative options when promised environmental markets fail to materialize. The authors suggest that NCA embodies a tension between its promotion of economic valuation and its inability to generate the necessary financial resources for effective conservation, especially when resource extraction remains a far more lucrative option.