Biodiversity Banking and the Struggle to Commodify Nature in Sabah, Malaysia
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ªLove for saleº: biodiversity banking and the struggle to commodify nature in Sabah, Malaysia Article (Published Version) Brock, Andrea (2015) “Love for sale”: biodiversity banking and the struggle to commodify nature in Sabah, Malaysia. Geoforum, 65. pp. 278-290. ISSN 0016-7185 This version is available from Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/56852/ This document is made available in accordance with publisher policies and may differ from the published version or from the version of record. If you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher’s version. Please see the URL above for details on accessing the published version. Copyright and reuse: Sussex Research Online is a digital repository of the research output of the University. Copyright and all moral rights to the version of the paper presented here belong to the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. To the extent reasonable and practicable, the material made available in SRO has been checked for eligibility before being made available. Copies of full text items generally can be reproduced, displayed or performed and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk Geoforum 65 (2015) 278–290 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Geoforum journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum ‘‘Love for sale”: Biodiversity banking and the struggle to commodify nature in Sabah, Malaysia q Andrea Brock 1 University of Sussex, Centre for Global Political Economy, Department of International Relations, Arts Building C, Arts Road, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9SJ, United Kingdom article info abstract Article history: In Malaysia, second largest palm oil producer worldwide, logging companies, palm oil corporations, and Received 8 April 2014 even responsible citizens can now compensate their biodiversity impacts by purchasing Biodiversity Received in revised form 2 August 2015 Conservation Certificates in an emerging new biodiversity market: the Malua BioBank. Biodiversity mar- Accepted 22 August 2015 kets are part of a wider trend of marketisation and neoliberalisation of biodiversity governance; intro- duced and promoted as (technical) win–win solutions to counter biodiversity loss and enable sustainable development. The existing neoliberalisation and nature literature has tended to analyse these Keywords: processes as consequences of an inherent drive of capital to expand accumulation and submit ever more Biodiversity offsetting areas of nature to the neoliberal market logic. Biodiversity markets Neoliberal conservation In contrast, I aim (a) to problematise the agency and the ‘‘work” behind marketisation of biodiversity, State challenging the story of (corporate-driven) neoliberalisation as the realisation of an inherent market- Political economy logic (based on the a false conceptual state–market divide, often prevalent even in activist academic cir- Malaysia cles working on neoliberalisation of nature) and to see the state not only as regulator, but driving force behind, and part of ‘‘the market”; (b) to question the myth of neoliberalisation as state losing control to the market and to show how the state is using the biodiversity market as mode of governing; re-gaining control over its forests and its conservation policy; and (c) to demonstrate empirically the distinction between neoliberal ideology and practice, and to show that marketisation was based on pragmatic deci- sions, not ideology-driven political action. My analysis is based on 35 qualitative interviews with actors involved in the BioBank. Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction the size of ‘‘a large garage” can be saved for US$5 at www.protect- malua.org. While the BioBank was established to save one of the In Malaysia, second largest palm oil producer worldwide, log- last remaining orang-utan habitats and rehabilitate degraded for- ging companies, palm oil corporations, and even responsible citi- est, it also constitutes a for-profit business model through which zens can now compensate their biodiversity impacts by investment into nature is supposed to yield ‘‘competitive returns” purchasing Biodiversity Conservation Certificates (BCCs) in an to investors (Sunjoto et al., n.d.: 7). emerging new biodiversity market: the Malua Wildlife Conserva- Biodiversity markets have proliferated across the globe, rising tion Bank (Malua BioBank). For US$10 per 100 m2, producers, but from two to 45 existing schemes, with another 27 under develop- also multinational oil and gas corporations, can help protect the ment (Madsen et al., 2011). The European Commission is currently last remaining orang-utans in Borneo – while addressing supply exploring the setup of the first transnational banking scheme. chain impacts, integrating conservation strategies, identifying These schemes are based on the idea of assigning a monetary value branding opportunities and developing new sourcing strategies to biodiversity habitat provision, resulting in its commodification, (Malua BioBank, 2010). Individual consumers may offset their sale, and sometimes trading in the form of habitat credits or certifi- personal biodiversity impacts with a mouse click; a piece of forest cates. With these credits for ‘‘conservation actions intended to compensate for the residual, unavoidable harm to biodiversity caused by development projects, so as to ensure no net loss of bio- q This work has partly been funded by the UK ESRC. Additional details relating to the interview data are available from the author. diversity” (Ten Kate et al., 2004), destructive biodiversity impacts 1 Affiliation at the time of fieldwork: VU University Amsterdam, Department of can be compensated through the conservation or rehabilitation of Political Science and Institute for Environmental Studies, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV habitat elsewhere. Habitat banking or biodiversity markets involve Amsterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail address: [email protected] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.08.009 0016-7185/Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. A. Brock / Geoforum 65 (2015) 278–290 279 ‘‘turning offsets into assets that can be traded, creating a market and to identify possibilities of change – because provoking change system for developers” (Eftec and IEEP, 2010: 2). is the whole point of critical scholarship (cf. Cox, 1986). Demon- Important progress in understanding and theorising neoliberal- strating the contradictory nature of neoliberalism, its failures and ism and nature has been made in the critical neoliberal conserva- the ideology–practice divide, avoids reifying neoliberalism as a tion literature (Sullivan, 2006; Igoe, 2010; Büscher, 2010a; hegemonic project and therewith exaggerating its power (Larner, Brockington and Duffy, 2010; Brockington et al., 2008; Holmes, 2003). Biodiversity markets are not only good case studies due to 2012; Liverman, 2004; Milne and Adams, 2012; McElwee, 2012; their political relevance today, but also due to their theoretical Pokorny et al., 2010; for a good overview see Büscher et al., contradictions and practical problems, which arguably point to 2012). This growing body of work yields important insights, but, the limits to neoliberalisation of nature. The Malua BioBank is a I argue, may focus too much on structural forces behind, and con- particularly interesting example due to its international nature. straints of marketisation and neoliberalisation, analysing them as While established and operated with involvement of local and corporate-driven processes and subsumed under some inherent international actors, the transnational political–economic struc- market-logic (e.g. Smith, 2007), based on a problematic conceptual tures in which it is situated are even more important: the certifi- separation of markets and states. Explanations not only tend to cates were intended to compensate2 for the devastating underplay the crucial role of the state in market construction, biodiversity effects of (export) palm oil agriculture. Yet, marketisa- but also fail to analyse it beyond its role as facilitating and regulat- tion has not been as successful as expected. ing the market. Instead, as Malua illustrates, biodiversity markets After this lengthy introduction, I first briefly discuss my theoret- constitute instruments through which the state governs its natural ical approach and the methodological agency approach, before resources, its population and corporations. In the more structural introducing biodiversity offsetting. After presenting the Malua Bio- accounts, marketisation can end up being explained away simply Bank as my case study, I analyse, firstly, the mobilisation of the by reference to the fundamental ideas and ideologies of neoliberal- dominant discourses for the discursive legitimation of the BioBank ism, and although Castree (2008) and others recognise that such and, secondly, the instrumentalisation of the historically specific thing as a ‘‘generic ‘neoliberalism’” doesn’t exist, and neoliberal material and institutional context which facilitated its setup; the ideology is not synonymous with neoliberal practice, I suggest they political economies of timber and palm oil, and the legal frame- don’t go far enough in analysing these as fundamentally different, work