Conservation banking and the economization of nature : an institutional analysis

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Serval ID
serval:BIB_D2BB614A885B
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Conservation banking and the economization of nature : an institutional analysis
Journal
Ecosystem services
Author(s)
Boisvert V.
ISSN
2212-0416
Publication state
Published
Issued date
2015
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
15
Pages
134-142
Language
english
Abstract
During the last decade, conservation banking mechanisms have emerged in the environmental discourse as new market instruments to promote biodiversity conservation. Compensation was already provided for in environmental law in many countries, as the last step of the mitigation hierarchy. The institutional arrangements developed in this context have been redefined and reshaped as market-based instruments (MBIs). As such, they are discursively disentangled from the complex legal-economic nexus they are part of. Monetary transactions are given prominence and tend to be presented as stand alone agreements, whereas they take place in the context of prescriptive regulations. The pro-market narrative featuring conservation banking systems as market-like arrangements as well as their denunciation as instances of nature commodification tend to obscure their actual characteristics.
The purpose of this paper is to describe the latter, adopting an explicitly analytical stance on these complex institutional arrangements and their performative dimensions. Beyond the discourse supporting them and notwithstanding the diversity of national policies and regulatory frameworks for compensation, the constitutive force of these mechanisms probably lies in their ability to redefine control, power and the distribution of costs and in their impacts in terms of land use rather than in their efficiency.
Keywords
Market-based instruments, Biodiversity offsets, Commodification, Land sparing, Institutional analysis
Create date
07/08/2015 15:13
Last modification date
20/08/2019 15:52
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