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Unpacking the politics of natural capital and economic metaphors in environmental policy discourse
Abstract
Economic metaphors – including natural capital, natural assets, ecosystem services, and ecological debt – are becoming commonplace in environmental policy discourse. Proponents consider such terms provide a clearer idea of the ‘value’ of nature, and are useful for ensuring the environment is given due attention in decision making. Critical discourse analysis highlights the ideological work language does; the way in which we think, write, and talk about the environment has important implications for how it is governed. Consequently, the widespread use of economic metaphors is politically significant. This article discusses how metaphors have been analysed in environmental policy research, surveys the use of prominent economic metaphors in environmental policy, and considers the politics associated with such terms. The uptake of various economic metaphors represents a form of reverse discourse, varies in politically significant ways, and narrows the terms of environmental debate.
... Gregson et al. 2015, de Man and Friege 2016, Zink and Geyer 2017 and on EU environmental policy narratives suggests otherwise. Many scholars of EU environmental policy identify a dominant 'ecological modernization' discourse in EU policy (e.g., Hajer 1995, Dryzek 1997, Stephan 2012, Turnhout et al. 2015, Coffey 2016, Machin 2019. The conviction that economic growth and ecological sustainability can be reconciled or 'decoupled' through technological innovation and more efficient production and consumption commonly characterises ecological modernization (e.g. ...
... Hence, scholars came to see it as so omnipresent that it blocks new ideas and voices, thereby upholding the status quo and preventing the development of narratives and policies for a more sustainable society (e.g. Stephan 2012, Turnhout et al. 2015, Coffey 2016. While these scholars provide explanations for this omnipresence, most focus on the form and content of specific narratives subsumed under ecological modernization. ...
It is widely acknowledged that policies for a more sustainable society require narratives outside the status quo. This contribution studies the EU’s environmental policy narrative of a circular economy (CE), which many consider promising in this respect. The results demonstrate that the CE narrative was created to transform EU policy discourses ‘from within’ but eventually perpetuated the established discourse of ecological modernization. This perpetuation resulted from specific strategic practices used to create the CE narrative, which (1) concealed conflict, (2) strengthened the agency of incumbents, and (3) excluded alternative voices. The analysis uses empirical evidence from 28 interviews with key stakeholders, 84 policy documents and participant observation data at the European Union (EU) level. The results suggest that the development of narratives outside the status quo depends on strategic practices that address (future) conflicts and offer new agency to change agents as well as transition strategies to incumbents.
... Quantifiable framings of urban forestry are frequently entangled with ecosystem service justifications of the value of urban forests. The concept of ecosystem services provides an opportunity for reflecting the social, ecological and economic value of urban forests in ways that can resonate with policy-makers (Konijnendijk et al. 2006;Campbell and Gabriel 2016), despite widespread criticism about the use of economic framings in environmental policy and governance (Turnhout et al. 2013;Coffey 2016). In practice, the operationalisation of ecosystem service mentalities can quickly narrow to putting a price on the urban forest. ...
... This framing also creates room for technological responses driven by private sector innovation in developing greening solutions (Figure 3). In this way, green infrastructure can provide a slightly different discursive space to that provided by narrow economic frames for public policy investment (Coffey 2016). However, being folded into urban infrastructure objectives does not come without riskswhen environmental policy discourses are already infused with a need to contribute to economic development, there is potential for green infrastructure projects to be defined by this potential, rather than their ability to deliver social and ecological benefit (Salomaa et al. 2016). ...
Global enthusiasm for nature in cities is at high point. Australia is no exception, where there is a great deal of policy momentum and research interest in urban greening. The challenges presented by increasing urban heat associated with climate change, greater awareness of the potential social, physical and psychological benefits of exposure to ecologies for people, and recognition of cities as vital habitats for more-than-humans are central tenants of urban greening enthusiasm. Yet, there is a need for a more critical lens on urban greening in Australia. One that interrogates the purported normative, apolitical and instrumental benefits of greening, to position greening within a trajectory of the power relations, settler-colonialism, socio-ecological processes and capital flows that constitute the urban. This editorial introducing the special issue on urban greening politics explores how different conceptions of urban natures – green space, urban forestry and green infrastructure – have been put to work, before outlining the potential of ‘urban greening’ as the terminology for a more politically sensitive and process-orientated framing. The editorial concludes with a summary of the contributions to the special issue.
... This potent combination of qualities increases its utility; boundary tools can be instrumental in reshaping narratives and deepening the leverage space for achieving sustainability transitions (Linnér and Wibeck 2021). Diverse landscape imaginaries of aspirational futures can be mobilized through discursive strategies that contradict mainstream or colonizing economic and environmental development discourses (Coffey 2016). Q-methodology can help fill this function, but there is a need to further develop its empowering potential by using it to identify discourse coalitions and combatting colonial impositions of whose knowledge, visions, and values count. ...
Landscapes are conceptually fuzzy and rich, and subject to plural framings. They are places of inquiry and intervention for scientists and practitioners, but also concepts bound to peoples’ dynamic identities, knowledge systems, inspiration, and well-being. These varying interpretations change the way landscapes function and evolve. Developed in the 1930s, Q-methodology is increasingly recognized for being useful in documenting and interrogating environmental discourses. Yet its application in the context of how integrated landscape approaches better navigate land-use dilemmas is still in its infancy. Based on our experience and emerging literature, such as the papers in this special collection, this article discusses the value of Q-methodology in addressing landscape sustainability issues. Q-methodology helps unravel and communicate common and contradicting landscape imaginaries and narratives in translational and boundary-spanning ways, thus bridging actors’ different understandings of problems and solutions and revealing common or differentiated entry points for negotiating trade-offs between competing land uses. The methodology can be empowering for marginalized people by uncovering their views and aspirational values to decision-makers and policymakers. We argue that this potential can be further strengthened by using Q to identify counter-hegemonic discourses and alliances that combat injustices regarding whose knowledge and visions count. In this way, applying Q-methodology in integrated landscape approaches can become a key tool for transitioning toward just, inclusive, and sustainable landscapes.
... For example, discourses and policies relating to climate change draw on 'greenhouse', 'footprint', 'race', 'war' and 'emergency' (Nerlich & Hellsten, 2014;Flusberg et al., 2017), while continuing to inhabit a discursive space dominated by the 'market' metaphor (Cojanu, 2008). This applies also to recent economic metaphors that have emerged in response to growing scientific and policy engagement with, as well as public disquiet about, environmental degradation, biodiversity loss and climate risk (Coffey, 2016). The use of such metaphors, and how they are inserted into broader discursive frames, are not politically neutral, and it is a feature of their deployment that they can often serve divergent ideological positions simultaneously: capitalists and environmentalists can both espouse notions of green growth. ...
... In the light of previous research, it is found that nature is not given its due importance in different discourses. The language affects the ideology of human beings as how one thinks, writes, and talks about the ecosystem, and it directly affects the environment, which is being governed (Coffey, 2015). According to , advertisements use metaphors to enhance the value of their products, and those metaphors are harmful to the environment. ...
The present study deals with erasure in commercial advertisements of multinational companies. For this purpose, commercial advertisements for food products were selected. The data were collected from the official websites of the relevant companies. The study applied Stibbe’s (2015) theoretical framework to analyze the element of erasure. The study focused primarily on erasure. However, other aspects such as conviction and metaphor, have also been analyzed to erasure. The study results reveal that nature has been partially or entirely erased from commercial advertisements. Nature and its resources (cows and fruits) are presented in more abstract form, or there is no mention. The study also found that the advertisements underpin the stories of conviction, metaphor, and erasure. The study is significant because language does ideological work in how one thinks, writes, and talks about the ecosystem.
... Adoption of neoliberal values and policies is often presented as persuasive, fated or inevitable (Peck and Tickell 2002;Heynen and Robbins 2005;Castree 2008). This is supported by the discourse of economics, which frames how the environment is understood and governed (Coffey and Marston, 2013;Coffey, 2016;Baldwin et al., 2019). ...
Coastal areas are at risk from the dual burden of climate change and rapid development. Coastal areas are significant as contested interfaces where social, cultural and environmental values vie for attention amongst economic and political aspirations. As a political logic, neoliberalism favours market-based logics, privatisations and commodification. Under neoliberal settings, planning for coastal adaptation is constantly tempered by an economic agenda. This case study analyses the management of a particular coastal land use in New South Wales, Australia following a change in management which signals a move to the market-based settings of neoliberalism. Specifically, this paper examines the case of campgrounds on public lands following a State-led change of management from local municipality to a state-run enterprise. I draw on a critical discourse analysis to study local and national media articles and coastal and campgrounds management documents. Findings highlight the influence of neoliberal settings on community consultation, local knowledge and community connections to the coast; management of coastal risks and responsibilities; and the change from nature-based holidays to a more commodified experience. Discussed is how this change and approach is likely to impact on climate change adaptation, with a call for more ambitious and inclusive conversations around coastal futures under a changing climate.
... Kriittinen diskurssianalyysi nostaa esiin kielen ideologisen työn: sillä, miten ajattelemme, kirjoitamme ja puhumme ympäristöstä, on siis oleellista vaikutusta siihen, miten me sitä 51:2 (2022) ss. 86-106 hallitsemme (Coffey 2016). Fairclough (2013, 31) erottaa diskurssianalyysin kriittiset tavoitteet kuvailevista tavoitteista tulkitsemalla myös taustatietona pidetyn tiedon sekä tekemällä näkyväksi osallisille näkymättömissä olevat diskurssien sosiaaliset määrittelyt ja vaikutukset. ...
Artikkelissa tarkastellaan alueellisen maankäytönsuunnittelun ympäristödiskursseja Pohjois-Karjalassa. Keskityn erityisesti globaalien ilmastonmuutoksen hillinnän ja luonnon monimuotoisuuden suojelun tavoitteiden toteutukseen maakuntasuunnittelussa. Tutkimuksessa analysoin sisällönanalyysin ja diskurssianalyysin keinoin aineistoon kuuluvat maakuntastrategian, kolme maakuntaohjelmaa sekä kokonaismaakuntakaavan ympäristövaikutusten arviointeineen. Tässä kriittisessä aluesuunnittelun ympäristöpoliittisessa tutkimuksessa sovelletaan evolutionaarisen hallinnan teoriaa. Tutkimus valaisee keskeiset poliittishallinnolliset syyt heikkoon ympäristötavoitteiden toteutukseen maankäytön suunnittelussa aluetasolla Pohjois-Karjalassa. Tutkimuksessa väitetään, että syynä tähän ovat aluekehittämisen riippuvuussuhteet ja Euroopan Unionin ympäristöpolitiikasta lähtöisin olevat ja aluesuunnittelussa omaksutut ekomodernistisen ympäristöpolitiikan hallinnan mallit.
... This can be seen with the move to environmental land management schemes from the CAP in which the government will reward those actions which see increases in natural capital (Helm, 2016(Helm, , 2017UK Government, 2018). It is this quantification of nature that is likely to be central to government policy, and the risk may be that gains in one location may be allowed to make up for losses elsewhere providing a patchwork of protection rather than a robust area-based scheme (Coffey, 2016;Fletcher et al., 2019). ...
... Given the hysteresis that followed the 2008 downturn, continued slack in labor markets, and low interest rates on government debt, deficit-financed investments can improve economic fundamentals and provide the financing needed to build a green economy. That said, some might contend that maintaining the language of economics in environmental policy shows the persistence of neoliberalism's influence (Coffey, 2016). ...
Activists and scholars increasingly blame neoliberalism for the failure to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but there is insufficient research that investigates the theoretical link between neoliberalism and climate paralysis. This paper seeks to fill that gap by presenting a coherent account of how neoliberal ideology has constrained policies to address climate change in the United States. As motivation, we first present evidence suggesting more neoliberal countries perform worse in addressing climate change. We then analyze how three tenets of neoliberal ideology—to decentralize democracy, defund public investment, and deregulate the economy—have stymied climate action in the United States. Finally, we discuss the Green New Deal as a decisively anti-neoliberal framework that seeks to wield the power of the federal government to pursue large-scale public investments and binding climate regulations for rapid decarbonization.
... Similarly, the loss of SNL has been implicated in loss of native pollinators , or changes in pollinator community composition (Baldock et al., 2015;Theodorou et al., 2016;Harrison et al., 2017), depending on nesting habitats and disturbance types (Williams et al., 2010). Given that wild pollinators benefit our agricultural and economic supply chains , the fitness of wild flowering plants (Motten, 1986;Chateil and Porcher, 2015), as well as the inherent value of biodiversity to humans (Silvertown, 2015;Coffey, 2016), there is a clear imperative to increase our understanding of this topic. ...
Canola (Brassica napus L.) is a valuable crop that occupies a large part of the Canadian prairies, and is visited by wild and managed bees. However, the distribution of foraging bees in mass-flowering crops (MFCs), the value of bee visitation, and how MFCs and semi-natural land (SNL) affect wild bee populations in the context of canola agro-ecosystems is unclear. Using three separate studies, I related pollination and yield to bee visitation, and landscape composition and canola abundance to wild bee abundance. The first study examines honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) visitation in commodity canola fields using a simulation model, and reveals that honey bees most closely followed predictions for solitary efficiency-maximizers, valuing nearby flower sources much more than distant ones. The second study relates visita-tion rates of honey bees and alfalfa leafcutting bees (Megachile rotundata (Fabr.)) to pollen deposition and seed production using a structural equation model. Leafcutter bee visitation strongly increased pollen deposiion, but not honey bee visitation, and extra pollen deposition increased seed production in seed canola, but not in commodity canola. The final study uses solitary bee abundance data from a set of landscapes across southern Alberta, and relates bee abundance to landscape composition from the current and previous year. While the overall response of bee abundance to SNL was positive, individual species' response to SNL ranged from positive to negative, and canola had little effect on any species' abundances. These results reveal that insect visitation in flowering crops decay rapidly with distance, that the plant growth context of canola is equally important as the pollination context, and that while the effect of SNL on wild bee abundance is generally positive, it likely varies depending on the traits of individual bee species. This work provides mechanistic insight into the foraging behaviour and contextual value of pollination by managed bees, and sheds light on how agro-ecological landscapes shape wild bee communities.
... Many studies of metaphors related to environmental and natural resource management have been undertaken over the past 30 years [12]. These have included exploration of metaphorical concepts ranging from specifics, for example the health of farm animals [13], to broader ideas such as nature [14] and sustainability [15]. ...
We make sense of the world around us through mental knowledge structures called ‘frames’. Frames, and the metaphors that help to form and maintain them, can be studied through examining discourse. In this paper, we aim to understand the framing of two trials with environmental water by analysing interview-derived discourse. Two separate flow trials, involving changes to river operating rules and practices, were undertaken in the Edward/Kolety-Wakool river system in Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin in 2017 and 2018, as part of the adaptive delivery of water for the environment. Semi-structured interviews with 18 actors in the Edward/Kolety-Wakool river system were undertaken in 2019, in which they reflected on the trials and the use of environmental water in the area. Analysis of the interviews suggest four framings of environmental water, which we have labelled business, engineering, science and medical. Each frame privileges expert practice, potentially marginalising other ways of experiencing and knowing the river system. ‘Participants’ in the social learning/adaptive management occurring in this situation, especially those with authority or influence, should be open to exploring alternate framings of situations. We present this small research project as a practical example of how a focus on revealing and considering discourse can provide interested actors with avenues for co-creation of new understandings and practice.
... Examples of existing niche innovations include urban farming, decentralised renewable energy systems, sustainable urban transport, and access and social economies. Political expectations and a growing convergence on a reformist agenda determine which niches, networks, and ideas become mainstreamed and which remain on the margins [69]. ...
The combined pressure of economic, environmental, and social crises, including bushfires, waste management, and COVID created conditions for a turn to the circular economy in Australia. In addition to a dominant circular discourse of ecological modernization in state and federal policy and business and public consultations, other more socially inclusive and ecologically sensitive discourses are circulating. The two main competing discourses are a techcentric circular economy and a reformist circular society, the latter reflected in ‘growth agnostic’ doughnut economics. In the context of unambitious federal and state policies, the circular transition is being supported by a range of intermediary organizations whose key representatives envision or ‘figure’ the sustainability transition in hybrid discursive combinations. Few studies of the circular economy transition in Australia exist and none focus on competing discourses and intermediation for sustainability transition. Since intermediary organizations both discursively reflect and lead the circular change, fuller understanding of how circularity is interpreted or ‘figured’ by key actors is crucial. This study identifies how twenty representatives from intermediating organizations actively ‘figure’ the process of the circular transition for Australia, including while managing the tension between personal positions and organizational missions. Employing the concept of figured worlds this qualitative thematic discourse interview study analyses how, drawing on available circular discourses, key actors and their organisations actively ‘figure’ the present and future circular transition. The study contributes to debates on circular discourses, nature, and the limitations of the circular economy in Australia, the relational space of intermediation, and the nature of MLP transitions for a sustainable circular transition economy in Australia.
... For example, if one can buy the right to pollute, then polluting ceases to be a moral offense. Nevertheless, the dominant measure used to promote environmental concern is pricing, such as attempts to price ecosystem services to value the natural environment and its many interconnected functions (Coffey 2016;Goméz-Baggethun 2015). ...
As the urgency for green transformation grows, the question of whether finance capital can be harnessed to promote green transformation has been raised. Public pension funds are of particular interest since they are publicly governed, have long-term interest, and are growing in proportion to the global investment capital. However, transformative change demands a reprioritization of fundamental values in terms of trade-offs among economic, environmental, and social ends. This article identifies shifts in value judgments in public pension fund investments and particularly focuses on the institutional constraints by which value (re)priorities are resisted by investigating Swedish public pension funds. While there are signs of environmental embedding of the economy, I also note neutralization of the role and investment strategies of the funds, which has a stabilizing rather than a transformative function. The neutralization constrains deep green transformation, which demands politicization of the role of institutional investors.
... Thus articles were categorised into this subcategory if their abstract either explicitly mentioned a critical theory approach, or if the article undertook a discourse analysis of a particular phenomenon that laid bare the neoliberal framing of environmental politics. Examples include Elise Remling's (2018) poststructuralist analysis of the implicit values and assumptions behind European Union Green and White Papers on climate adaptation, Brian Coffey's (2016) critical discourse analysis of the role of economic metaphors in environmental policy discourse, and Lucian Vesalon and Remus Creţan's (2015) examination of the neoliberalisation of natural resources in Romania. ...
Against environmentalism’s roots in radical re-thinking of society, mainstream environmental politics has become a largely technical, problem-solving matter of realising concrete targets. Environmental politics scholarship seems to have followed suit, with most publications in journals such as Environmental Politics focusing on realist analyses of mainstream politics as opposed to radical and critical thought. This article contends a solely target-driven discourse loses sight of two vital dimensions of environmental politics: radical imagination and ideology critique. Insofar as the late-capitalist mainstream drives both environmental destruction itself and forms of political domination entwined with it – such as depoliticisation and colonisation – critical and imaginative research that challenges this is urgently needed. I argue environmental politics scholarship, and thus the journals that give it its platform, have a responsibility to actively withstand the biases produced by ideology, by promoting critical and radical work and engaging with the movements for democratisation and decolonisation of academic practice.
... We used Dryzek's typology of nine environmental discourses 18 as a general framework on how environmental discourses have emerged, disseminated and competed in environmental governance since the 1960s. Other sources from this literature 20,22,28,46,[56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63] were used to obtain more granular details for each discourse, including rationales, or governance changes. This scholarly literature was also used to consider potential events, actors or documents that had not previously been mentioned (to our knowledge) by the academic and grey literature on biodiversity offsetting. ...
Biodiversity offsetting—actions aimed to produce biodiversity gains to compensate for development impacts—has become an important but controversial instrument of sustainability governance. To understand how this occurred, we conducted a discourse analysis, iteratively applying a qualitative coding system to 197 policy documents produced between 1958 and 2019 across four institutional scales. We show that offsetting has historically been promoted by reformist approaches, which encourage economic growth without consideration of biocultural limits. More recently, those promoting more transformative approaches have reinterpreted offsetting as an instrument to transition towards sustainable economies respectful of planetary boundaries. However, we show that enacting this approach requires major structural governance changes that challenge the dominance of reformist coalitions across scales. Such changes would need to include a commitment by institutions to renounce non-essential projects and avoid damage and for offset stakeholders to become aware of how their contributions become enrolled in the service of specific discourses. Without such changes, offsetting risks structurally encouraging conservationists to produce natures compatible with a status quo development, rather than to advance transformative practices for biocultural diversity.
... These records emerged by examining the ways in which language was used to achieve political and organizational targets, as well as by examining how the political documents were interpreted by the public auditing (Jacobs, 2006). Coffey (2016) analyses the use of natural capital and economic metaphors in environmental policy discourse. One statement could also be applied for the present case study: "[…] such metaphors define the environment in particular ways, and that this is important because the way we think, write, and talk about the environment has implications for the way in which it is understood and governed" (Fairclough, 1992, quoted in Coffey, 2016. ...
... None of the reviewed papers does justice to deltas as complex systems with emergent properties, because simplified assessment of ecosystem services and livelihoods is typically used to proxy the overall state of the delta. The use of concepts like ecosystem services and livelihoods can also be criticised for omitting what counts for citizens or ecosystems (Turnhout et al., 2013;Coffey, 2016). Finally, each study adopts its own conceptual delta-SES model linked to the expertise of involved researchers which again undermines the collective research effort. ...
Increased river flows and sea level rise in a changing climate are of great concern in deltas and makes sustainability particularly important for delta societies. This article reviews current approaches to assess delta sustainability, results of these assessments and what they mean for policies regarding deltas. We particularly ask whether deltas need transformations in order for delta living to be feasible in the future. The reviewed literature is mostly based on socio-ecological systems theory with small contributions from socio-technical systems theory, and struggles to take account of all relevant interrelationships. The technological interventions that shape the relationships between societies and delta environments should be highlighted by considering deltas as complex socio-ecological-cum-technical systems, in part because technological interventions are the most feasible societal response to secure delta living in the short term. The reviewed research suggests that most deltas are locked-in to an irreversible path towards unsustainability. We examine the pathways for transformation offered by socio-ecological systems and socio-technical systems research, and we assess whether they are technically and politically sufficient, feasible and acceptable to achieve the required transformations. We conclude that while the experimentation advocated in research may support local adjustments, their up-scaling to delta level is challenged by political disagreement and societal resistance.
... Thus, I argue that these values are representative of an individualistic 'consumerist ideology,' which is supported by the loss of moral lessons on the selfish pursuit of treasure (see above). It follows that this new understanding of socioecological relations, necessarily guides the way participants look at, think about, and act towards nature, where -as prescribed by neoliberal resource use regimes -'nature' becomes something that can be separated from its socioecological context and assigned a monetary value (Coffey, 2016;Sullivan, 2017). This new way of relating to nature is realized not just with dolphins, but also with trees from local forests that are used to carve sculptures to sell to tourists and to build bigger, higher socialstatus houses, despite the rising socioecological costs of deforestation as I discussed in a previous publication (Deutsch, 2018). ...
Critical assessments of the conservation-capitalism relationship based on Foucault’s concept of governmentality have generated notions of environmental governance as forms of ‘green’ governmentality or ‘environmentality.’ This paper contributes to the environmentalities literature by demonstrating the utility of a variegated environmentalities approach in understanding how the process of neoliberalization unfolds in different conservation contexts to influence different subjectivities. In this cross-national comparison, I examine the value shifts associated with conservation projects from the perspectives and experiences of the people most affected by these projects. Using Fletcher’s (2010) environmentalities typology, I compare two approaches to Irrawaddy dolphin conservation: one in Myanmar focused on community enrichment and preservation of traditional human-dolphin relationships; the other in Cambodia focused on individual monetary wealth and neoliberal economic development. I argue that the dominant governing rationalities in each country influenced the execution of neoliberal environmentality and the ways in which it articulated with other types of environmentality. I then show how these unique articulations led to starkly different subjectivities by reinforcing socioecological values in Myanmar while restructuring them in Cambodia to align with neoliberal rationalities. I do this by contrasting findings in the two projects to trace the alteration of values in Cambodia from dolphins to other socioecological relations. I conclude by suggesting that dominant governing rationalities that foreground community and reciprocity in socioecological relations may serve to temper neoliberalism and thus provide a path toward alternative socioecologies and sustainabilities.
... On the one hand, an 'embrace' strategy accepts financial metaphors within neoliberal assumptions about NCA. By contrast, a 'reject and replace' strategy criticises those assumptions, while counterposing different metaphors such as organic ones, ecological debt, Mother Earth, etc. (Coffey 2016). This typology was meant to analyse academic perspectives, though it also has relevance to stakeholder agendas; see Table 1. ...
How the asset—anything that can be controlled, traded, and capitalized as a revenue stream—has become the primary basis of technoscientific capitalism.
In this book, scholars from a range of disciplines argue that the asset—meaning anything that can be controlled, traded, and capitalized as a revenue stream—has become the primary basis of technoscientific capitalism. An asset can be an object or an experience, a sum of money or a life form, a patent or a bodily function. A process of assetization prevails, imposing investment and return as the key rationale, and overtaking commodification and its speculative logic. Although assets can be bought and sold, the point is to get a durable economic rent from them rather than make a killing on the market. Assetization examines how assets are constructed and how a variety of things can be turned into assets, analyzing the interests, activities, skills, organizations, and relations entangled in this process.
The contributors consider the assetization of knowledge, including patents, personal data, and biomedical innovation; of infrastructure, including railways and energy; of nature, including mineral deposits, agricultural seeds, and “natural capital”; and of publics, including such public goods as higher education and “monetizable social ills.” Taken together, the chapters show the usefulness of assetization as an analytical tool and as an element in the critique of capitalism.
The open access edition of this book was made possible by generous funding from Arcadia – a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin.
Contributors
Thomas Beauvisage, Kean Birch, Veit Braun, Natalia Buier, Béatrice Cointe, Paul Robert Gilbert, Hyo Yoon Kang, Les Levidow, Kevin Mellet, Sveta Milyaeva, Fabian Muniesa, Alain Nadaï, Daniel Neyland, Victor Roy, James W. Williams
... Thus, the specific ways in which commonly used but ambiguous terms with broad meanings, such as "ecosystem services", "sustainability" and "resilience" are used as metaphors are thus important, as how they frame the environment can promote or restrict discourse on environmental management and influence the political significance of the subject matter. For instance, Coffey (2016) argued that the dominant use of ecosystem services as an economic metaphor risks creating a narrow, anthropocentric perspective of the environment, as it places excessive emphasis upon the provision of goods and services of value to humans. As also highlighted by Polasky et al. (2015), a lack of common understanding and definition in ecosystem services research is also a barrier to translating research outcomes to action for practitioners and policy makers. ...
Urban ecosystem service (UES) is becoming an influential concept to guide the planning, design, and management of urban landscapes towards urban sustainability. However, its use is hindered by definitional ambiguity, and the conceptual bases underpinning its application remain weak. This is exemplified by two different but equally valid interpretations of UES: “urban ecosystem services”, referring to ecosystem services from analogs of natural and semi-natural ecosystems within urban boundaries, and “urban ecosystem services”, a much broader term that includes the former group as well as urban services in a city. While we recognize that a single definition of UES is not possible nor necessary as its application is context-dependent, it is nevertheless useful to clarify the relationships between these interpretations to promote consistent use, and importantly, explore how a broader interpretation of UES might advance its applications in areas that have been neglected. We developed a conceptual framework that links UES to natural and human-derived capital to explain the relationships between the dual meanings of UES and proposed three normative propositions to guide its application: (1) integrate holistically multiple components of natural capital to provide UES, (2) reduce dependence on non-renewable abiotic resources and human-derived capital, and (3) enhance UES through technology. The framework we developed helps to resolve the current ambiguity in the meanings of UES, highlights the need to recognise neglected aspects of natural capital important for UES, and can be used to clarify relationships with related concepts conveying dependence of human well-being on nature.
... These officials, like many critical academics, associate natural capital accounting with economic valuation of ecosystems (e.g. Coffey, 2016). Some officials were sceptical of the concept's neoliberal philosophical underpinnings, and sourced its origins to Table 3 Core concepts underpinning MfE's four year plan 2017-2021. ...
This paper examines how bureaucrats exercise discretion in an environmental bureaucracy. Drawing upon interviews, documentary evidence, and time spent within Aotearoa New Zealand’s Ministry for the Environment during 2016–2017, I examine the contours of bureaucratic discretion exercised in relation to freshwater policy development and implementation support. Bureaucrats make consequential choices about the design of implementation projects, strategically coordinate civil society involvement in policy development, and set organizational objectives that are not inconsistent with the formal policy positions of the government, while exceeding these positions at the same time. Discretionary politics take different forms across the organisation, and careful legitimation is needed to narrate any specific action as authorized by enabling legislation or differently scaled objectives of the bureaucracy. While discretionary action can reinforce dominant patterns of political-economic power, discretionary activities can also subvert these patterns, and sometimes, intentionally so. Looking for a plurality of intentions and practices behind putatively neoliberal language can reveal frontiers for formulating and engaging in an environmental bureaucratic politics.
... The main body of environmental diplomacy is the participant and implementer of environmental diplomacy activities [3]. In a narrow sense, environmental diplomacy refers to a variety of external activities that the state adjusts international environmental relations by negotiations and consultations on behalf of the state through diplomatic departments and environmental protection departments [4]. In a broad sense, the main body of environmental diplomacy is the country, but it is not limited to the country, but also regional or global. ...
In order to explore the rise and characteristics of environmental diplomacy in Australia, the rise and characteristics of environmental diplomacy in Australia through literature review and analysis methods was studied in this research. The results show that Australia’s environmental diplomacy is influenced by international environmental system, international public opinion, national interest and other factors, and its characteristics include diversified participation, strategic promotion of the status of domestic environmental diplomacy, and environmental diplomacy with national interests at the top. To sum up, Australia’s environmental diplomacy have been affected by both international environmental politics and domestic national interest protectionism since ancient times. Therefore, the analysis of the rise of environmental diplomacy in Australian and its characteristics has a positive effect on subsequent research.
... Different disciplinary traditions have grappled with these concepts, aiming for conceptually rigorous and operationally useful approaches to sustainable development. Neoclassical economists, for example, have drawn on the idea of natural capital (14). In "weak" versions of sustainability, natural and human-made capital are substitutable, as long as long-term utility and well-being are maintained. ...
Ecotourism originated in the 1980s, at the dawn of sustainable development, as a way to channel tourism revenues into conservation and development. Despite the “win-win” idea, scholars and practitioners debate the meaning and merits of ecotourism. We conducted a review of 30 years of ecotourism research, looking for empirical evidence of successes and failures. We found the following trends: Ecotourism is often conflated with outdoor recreation and other forms of conventional tourism; impact studies tend to focus on either ecological or social impacts, but rarely both; and research tends to lack time series data, precluding authors from discerning effects over time, either on conservation, levels of biodiversity, ecosystem integrity, local governance, or other indicators. Given increasing pressures on wild lands and wildlife, we see a need to add rigor to analyses of ecotourism. We provide suggestions for future research and offer a framework for study design and issues of measurement and scaling.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Environment and Resources Volume 44 is October 17, 2019. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
... However, there were no explicit mentions of measures to mediate potential community health or social inequity caused by the economic shock of the plant closure in the policy response. Our analysis showed a distinct economic focus in both policies, reflecting prevailing norms of encouraging continued economic growth and development that, while uncontested here, are questioned elsewhere, for example in urban sustainability literature with reference to climate change, equity and health (Wilson & Chakraborty, 2013;McAllister, McCrea, & Lubell, 2014;Coffey, 2016). ...
Deindustrialisation and the closure of automotive manufacturing can differentially affect the socioeconomic prospects of workers and their communities, and contribute to social and health inequity. We used Bacchi's problematisation approach to examine the South Australian (SA) Labor government's policy responses to the General Motors Holden (GMH) Elizabeth plant closure announcement. We focused on the way that these policy responses framed the ‘problem’ of this major economic shock, particularly the extent to which potential social and health equity consequences were addressed. We found a narrow focus on economic strategies, neglecting the compounding impact of poverty in Playford, which may exacerbate health inequity. The community effects from the GMH closure remain uncertain and may be delayed for several years. SA requires better integrated social and economic policies to minimise social and health inequalities, as the consequences of the car manufacturing loss are realised. An analysis of how the South Australian government's policy response to the General Motors Holden closure addressed potential health equity for the affected community.
... On the one hand, an "embrace" strategy accepts financial metaphors within neoliberal assumptions about NCA. By contrast, a "reject and replace" strategy criticizes those assumptions, while counterposing different metaphors such as organic ones, ecological debt, or Mother Earth (Coffey 2016). This typology was meant to analyze academic perspectives, though it also has relevance to stakeholder agendas (see table 9.1). ...
... Fischer-Kowalski et al. 2011;Mir & Storms 2016, Ward et al. 2016Schandl et al 2017). What has not been so rigorously investigated is the history of the concepts, narratives and institutional developments that informed the construction of the mainstream of both economic thought and practice that subsequently enabled the hegemony of green growth (Coffey 2016;Dale et al. 2016). And it is here that I have focused in this paper. ...
The anthropocene is an increasingly important lens through which to observe relationships between natural resource exploitation, economic growth, and the consequent ecological impacts these entail. However, there has been little work that specifically addresses the postwar ‘great acceleration’ of economic growth, resource extraction and environmental impacts as a qualitatively distinct moment of the anthropocene. This paper uncovers the impact of the US President's Materials Policy Commission (PMPC), more commonly known as the Paley Commission after its Chairman, William S. Paley. It does so in order to address the key, but currently little studied issues of the timing, institutional development, sociotechnical and conceptual underpinnings of the great acceleration. The Paley Commission's 1952 report Resources for Freedom: Foundations for Growth and Security was crucial to the development of a globe spanning US-led ‘growth paradigm’ the rapid expansion in fossil fuel extraction and use that powered this growth, and ultimately helped spark the great acceleration of a distinctly American anthropocene age.
... However, the literature on valuation of biodiversity and ecosystem services is increasingly divided. While many authors are calling for better valuation studies as the basis for better decisions (for example,Nelson et al 2009), others argue that the ecosystems services approach embeds neoliberal conceptualisations about the environment and its value through the use of market metaphors(Coffey 2016), which entrench commodification and calculative reasoning. The financialisation of nature(Sullivan 2013) and the enthusiasm for neoliberal business modalities is indicated by the way that ecological systems, like rivers and wetlands, are defined as "assets" including in legislation (Commonwealth of Australia 2009) with benefits they generate for humans defined as ecological services(Robertson 2007;De Groot 2012). ...
The interactions between the economy and nature are little reflected in the management tools of capitalism. The impacts on the latter remain largely invisible to economic processes. This is the narrative behind the proposal to integrate nature into a central instrument of capitalism: accounting. However, nature accounting is shaped by a diversity of actors, practices, objectives and effects. Taking a chronological approach, we show how three successive approaches that we call “accounting worlds” have developed over time and coexist today. The first is public accounting expressed in biophysical, material and energy units, with the aim of exposing the exploitation and unequal exchange of natural resources as an extension of unbalanced trading relations. This was followed by the gradual development of natural capital monetary accounting projects, aimed at internalizing environmental externalities, initially at the national level and later extended to private accounting. A third and final project has recently emerged in connection with traditional accounting and financial standards. Its purpose is to measure the impact of nature and its degradation on the economic and hence financial performance of firms. Based on an analysis of these three worlds, we suggest that the growing influence of accounting thought and practices on nature, especially in their most recent forms, leads not so much to its commodification or financialization as to its invisibility or dilution in the logic of financial capitalist reproduction. Finally, we question the possible emergence of a unified regime of accounting for nature.
Les instruments de gestion du capitalisme ne reflètent qu’imparfaitement les interactions entre l’économie et la nature. De ce fait, les impacts de l’activité économique sur cette dernière sont largement ignorés dans les processus décisionnels. Tel est le récit qui sous-tend la proposition d’intégration de la nature à un instrument central du capitalisme : la comptabilité. Cette entreprise fait intervenir une diversité d’acteurs et de pratiques, avec des objectifs et des effets tout aussi variés. En nous appuyant sur une démarche chronologique, nous montrons comment trois formes de comptabilité de la nature – que nous proposons de qualifier de « mondes de la comptabilité » – ont été développées au fil du temps et coexistent aujourd’hui. Le premier est une comptabilité publique exprimée en unités biophysiques, matérielles et énergétiques, ayant pour but de mettre au jour l’exploitation et l’échange inégal de ressources naturelles. On a pu par la suite observer l’essor d’une comptabilité monétaire, dite du capital naturel, visant à internaliser les externalités environnementales, d’abord uniquement liée à la comptabilité nationale puis étendue à la comptabilité privée des entreprises. Finalement, un dernier projet a récemment émergé en relation avec les normes comptables traditionnelles ou financières. L’objet en est la mesure des impacts de la nature et de sa dégradation sur les performances économiques et financières des entreprises. À partir de l’analyse de ces trois mondes, nous suggérons que l’emprise croissante de la pensée et des pratiques comptables sur la nature, surtout sous ses formes les plus récentes, entraîne moins sa marchandisation ou sa financiarisation que son invisibilisation ou sa dilution dans la logique de reproduction du capitalisme financier. Nous interrogeons pour finir la possible émergence d’un régime unifié de comptabilité de la nature.
In integrated ecosystem assessment projects, scenarios provide alternative images of environmental futures as orientation knowledge for opinion-forming and decision-making. Participatory scenario frameworks provide the methodological basis for ecosystem scenario building as multi-stakeholder process. These processes combine scientific assessment of natural capital and related ecosystem services with the formation of social capital as stakeholders' identification and trust with the research process and results. The article reviews the ecosystem scenario concept from a futures studies perspective and traces its practice from the origins in the UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment to its present forms and application potentials. The theoretical argumentation also derives relevant aspects for combining natural capital preservation and social capital formation in ecosystem scenario processes and discusses implications for participatory framework designs. Overall, it contributes to the wider establishment of ecosystem scenarios in the futures studies community and to interdisciplinary exchange with related fields such as the natural, environmental and sustainability sciences.
Government attention selectively distributed to various issues in policy-making processes is usually reflected in language, such as metaphors in political discourse. In addition, metaphor change may reveal how conceptualizations of major topics such as economy and ecology evolve over time. After self-building a corpus of China’s 45-year Government Work Reports, this study explores whether there is a difference in attention to topics of economy and ecology over time and investigates the diachronic change of metaphor use on them based on a modified framework for diachronic metaphor change analysis. Results show that attention to economy has been steadily decreasing while attention to ecology has been growing, and that there is an increasing tendency of using more economy and ecology metaphors. Metaphor change on the use of source domains is arranged on a continuum, ranging from constant use ( war for economy and ecology , and journey and object for economy ), incremental change ( living organism and building for economy and ecology , and object for ecology ) to fundamental change ( building and living organism for ecology ). This study may enrich the understanding of diachronic metaphor change by providing a Chinese perspective on the metaphor use in government discourse over time.
Nature conservation has often been depicted as an effective policy measure to redress the ongoing environmental problems across the globe. The need to ensure sustainability for people’s secured subsistence has rendered nature conservation an indispensable scheme in the tourism development policy. It is evident that during the last couple of decades, the notion of “conservation” has become less established whilst tourism development has been prioritised as a profit making venture by both the national and international agencies. Numerous solutions have been prescribed by international organisations adopting tourism as an “immense potentiality” which mostly represented a sustainability effort for the local development and environment. South Asia in general and Bangladesh, in particular, are no different, since policy for nature conservation has been misplaced and misread to reach sustainability goals, as it has always been connected with the tourism development agenda. From a systematic literature review, it was found that the use of natural resources by local people was exemplified as a threat to sustainability where the relations between conservation and tourism became a policy issue. The paper intends to problematise the mechanism of tourism policies for nature conservation or conservation policies for tourism development that overlooks the local eco-cultural management practice for sustainability. Along with the environmental discourses, an eco-cultural critique on sustainability was employed.
Tracing the story of beaver restoration across California, this paper investigates the emerging discourse of ‘working with nature’ through the lens of animal work and labour, exploring possibilities for, and conceptualising, multispecies collaboration. At the intersection of animal geographies, environmental anthropology, and geographies of conservation, this paper finds three concurrent modes of working with beaver: beaver as labourer, beaver as coworker, and beaver as community. Beaver as labourer emerges as a mode where beavers go from material resource to low‐wage labourer, their liveliness predicated on their ability to be working for humans. Beaver as coworker transitions beavers from labourers to workers, respected for their skills as ecosystem engineers to be working with. Beaver as community emerged as a mode in which beavers and humans live with each other as kin, amidst wider multispecies assemblages. This mode sets the foundation to theorise the concept of multispecies collaboration, a term often used in the literature, but never defined. This paper explores the concept through theories of animal work and labour, challenging the premise of work altogether, while situating multispecies collaboration as an in‐between, a both/and space of working and living with ‘nature.’ This paper serves as an important reflection on the ways in which humans ‘work with nature,’ in a time where various nonhumans are being made to be ‘workers.’ It presents and analyses these relations, ruminates on implications for governance of these multispecies spaces, and develops the concept of multispecies collaboration as a critical consideration for Nature‐based Solutions.
Außergewöhnliche Wetterphänomene wie die Hitzesommer 2018 und 2019 in nördlichen und mittleren Teilen Europas, die Flutkatastrophe im Sommer 2021 in Nordrhein-Westfalen und Rheinland-Pfalz sowie verheerende Wald- und Buschbrände wie in Australien, Kalifornien oder in Mittelmeer-Anrainerstaaten finden einen breiten Widerhall in den Medien und im alltäglichen Erzählen. Fragen des Klimawandels sind daher längst nicht mehr auf den akademischen Bereich beschränkt, sondern werden mittlerweile auch in breiten Schichten der Bevölkerung diskutiert. Dabei werden mitunter heftige Emotionen hervorgerufen, von denen die Angst bzw. Zukunftsangst im Zentrum dieses interdisziplinär angelegten Sammelbandes steht.
In den letzten Jahren haben ökonomische Argumentationsmuster in vielen Handlungsfeldern zunehmende Aufmerksamkeit erfahren – so auch in der Naturschutzpolitik. Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird die wissenschaftlich-politische Initiative „Naturkapital Deutschland – TEEB-DE“ anhand von Dokumentenanalysen und ExpertInnen-Interviews untersucht. Im Fokus stehen dabei die Organisationsstruktur, der zentrale Diskurs sowie verschiedene konkurrierende Diskurse. Der Beitrag schließt mit Überlegungen, wie mit den zum Teil widersprüchlichen Befunden aus sozialwissenschaftlicher Sicht umgegangen werden kann.
Water is increasingly framed as a financial risk in equity markets. This article illustrates that this framing must be understood as a new aspect of the wider history of the financialization of the water sector. Unlike earlier instances, where water‐related services , or water risks are the primary subjects to be financialized, water itself is here being reformed to fit market logic. This article reviews, unpacks, and analyses the factors that have enabled, reframed, and defined water as a financial risk. As such, the article goes beyond simply reviewing what has happened, but also presents a critical analysis of why and how , and the potential effects this may have. Drawing on advanced theoretical perspectives from the social sciences, specifically building on the constitutive nature of language, the role of expertise in the knowledge‐policy interface, and the sociology of quantification, it proposes that the reframing of water into a financial risk is not a value‐free exercise. Critically, it shows that the value of water, at least as it relates to company activities, could be reduced to only embody those aspects which, in quantitative terms can be shown to affect Return on Investment. To alleviate this reductive process, an ambitious multi‐ and interdisciplinary research agenda must be developed moving forward to ensure that the multiple values of water are recognized and accounted for in equity markets and beyond.
This article is categorized under: Human Water > Value of Water
Human Water > Water Governance
The future is persistently considered in the sociology of finance from two divergent, problematic angles. The first approach consists in supplementing financial reasoning with an acknowledgement of the expectations that are needed in order to cope with an uncertain future and justify the viability of investment decisions. The second approach, often labelled critical, sees on the contrary in the logic of finance a negation of the future and an exacerbation of the valuation of the present. This is an impasse the response to which resides, we suggest, in considering the language of future value, which is indeed inherent to a financial view on things, as a political technology. We develop this argument through an examination of significant episodes in the history of financial reasoning on future value. We explore a main philosophical implication which consists in suggesting that the medium of temporality, understood in the dominant sense of a temporal progression inside which projects and expectations unfold, is not a condition for but rather a consequence of the idea of financial valuation.
Many political analyses of adaptation politics have been undertaken, ranging across an array of issues, locations and subjects and using a variety of political approaches, frameworks and concepts. In this chapter, four prominent and contrasting approaches are examined as these encompass much of this political scholarship: Institutional reform of decision-making, political economy, environmental justice and political ecology. Although each approach is distinct, there are some aspects shared between the approaches and these are described. A range of features of each approach are described, canvassing such aspects as ideology, political focus, key concerns, political realms of interest and normative goals. This chapter draws on the political context and political themes described in the preceding chapters.
As Australian cities face challenges of increased size, density and a range of environmental issues, compounded by climate change impacts, integration of greening is receiving increased attention. Greening, in the form of parks, gardens, waterways, water-sensitive designs and green roofs, contributes to liveability, sustainability and resilience, and habitat for non-human species. Local governments are responsible for the day-to-day management of much of Australia’s urban public spaces and are developing strategies for these areas. However, local-scale planning risks piecemeal, uncoordinated and ineffective approaches, particularly for biophysical systems that have little relationship with municipal boundaries. How can a metropolitan-scale approach be applied to green space planning and governance? This paper presents a case study of Living Melbourne metropolitan urban forest strategy, developed by Nature Conservancy and Resilient Melbourne. Resilient Melbourne brings together Melbourne’s 32 local governments to plan and advocate at the metropolitan scale. While the Living Melbourne strategy provides a metropolitan-scale approach, questions of governance, including how the strategy will be implemented and how local context is understood, are highlighted. Further, in developing a metropolitan-scale approach, how are the voices of local communities included? The paper analyses who is governing Melbourne’s urban greening, and the benefits and risks of a metropolitan-scale approach.
Cambridge Core - Natural Resource Management, Agriculture, Horticulture and forestry - Conservation Politics - by David Johns
Scholars and practitioners are engaging in a fierce debate over the implications of using market-based discourse in communicating environmental problems and solutions. However, there has been less attention to exactly who is using such economic discourse and how it is combined with other discourses. Prior researchers have proposed tripartite frameworks for categorizing discursive strategies around pro-economic, anti-economic, and non-economic metaphors, which are here applied to eight U.S. environmental advocacy organizations’ press releases. An original text-analytic dictionary of pro-economic, anti-economic, and non-economic discourse is used to distinguish between the proposed discourse strategies. This analysis indicates that economics-oriented discourse strategies are more complex and varied than previously suggested. A more nuanced framework is proposed. © 2019
Critical discourse analysis In recent decades critical discourse analysis (CDA) has become a well-established field in the social sciences. However, in contrast with some branches of linguistics, CDA is not a discrete academic discipline with a relatively fixed set of research methods. Instead, we might best see CDA as a problem-oriented interdisciplinary research movement, subsuming a variety of approaches, each with different theoretical models, research methods and agenda. What unites them is a shared interest in the semiotic dimensions of power, injustice, abuse, and political-economic or cultural change in society. CDA is distinctive in a) its view of the relationship between language and society, and b) its critical approach to methodology. Let us take these in turn by first exploring the notions of ‘discourse’ and ‘critical’. The term ‘discourse’ is used in various ways across the social sciences and within the field of CDA. In the most abstract sense, ‘discourse’ ...
The discourse-historical approach (DHA) belongs in the broadly defined field of critical
discourse studies (CDS), or also critical discourse analysis (CDA) (Reisigl&Wodak,
2001, 2009; Wodak, 2011, 2013). CDS in general investigates language use beyond the
sentence level, as well as other forms of meaning-making such as visuals and sounds,
seeing them as irreducible elements in the (re)production of society via semiosis. CDS
aims to denaturalize the role discourses play in the (re)production of noninclusive and
nonegalitarian structures and challenges the social conditions inwhich they are embedded.
Treated in this way, discourses stand in a mutual relationship with other semiotic
structures and material institutions: They shape them and are shaped by them.
In contrast to the early 1970s, in the early 1990s the environment does not seem to wither away from public and political agendas and even seems to be entering the ‘economic agenda’. It can be hypothesised that the environment is on its way to becoming a crucial factor in the widely discussed transformation of modernity. To what extent do environmental considerations and interests contribute ‐ or may contribute in the future ‐ to the restructuring of production? Ecological modernisation theory is a valuable starting‐point for analysing the contemporary reflexive reorganisation and transformation of production along ecological criteria. The discretion on the basic tenets of this theory emphasises the major differences with competing theories on environment and modernity as well as some of the central points of criticism raised against it.
This paper adopts the concept of `environmental imaginaries' to explore the influence of environmental discourses upon supporters of Australian environmental movements. Rather than investigate knowledge, values, attitudes or behaviour, as is often the focus of research into public environmentalism, this study analyses the presence, absence, influence and interactions of different environmental discourses at the interpersonal scale. The relative acceptability and familiarity of different environmental philosophies, with their radically different approaches to nature, has important impacts upon the political strategies, actions and directions adopted by environmental movements. Through conducting a series of ongoing discussion groups with self-identifying `environmentalists' it is found that nature is constructed predominantly through the language and concepts of sustainable development, although this discourse coexists with a number of concurrent and oppositional viewpoints. The power of sustainable development is self-sustained through the normalisation of particular languages and modes of expression. Alternative ideas and discourses are inhibited by a lack of language and familiarity and consequently disempowered and relegated to subordinate positions within discussions. The paper concludes by arguing that the lack of acceptance of alternative ecocentric ideas within the environmental community risks de-radicalising the movement and limits the diversity of political strategies and options that it could potentially adopt.
This paper provides a critical exploration of the journey metaphor promoted in much business discourse on sustainability—in corporate reports and advertisements, and in commentaries by business and professional associations. The portrayal of ‘sustainability as a journey’ evokes images of organizational adaptation, learning, progress, and a movement away from business-as-usual practices. The journey metaphor, however, masks the issue of towards what it is that businesses are actually, or even supposedly, moving. It is argued that in constructing ‘sustainability as a journey’, business commentators and other purveyors of corporate rhetoric can avoid becoming embroiled in debates about future desirable and sustainable states of affairs—states of affairs, perhaps, which would question the very raison d’être for some organizations and their outputs. ‘Sustainability as a journey’ invokes a subtle and powerful use of language that appears to seriously engage with elements of the discourse around sustainable development and sustainability, but yet at the same time, paradoxically, may serve to further reinforce business-as-usual.
Ecosystem services research has been focused on the ways that humans directly benefit from goods and services, and economic
valuation techniques have been used to measure those benefits. We argue that, although it is appropriate in some cases, this
focus on direct use and economic quantification is often limiting and can detract from environmental research and effective
management, in part by crowding out other understandings of human–environment relationships. Instead, we make the case that
the systematic consideration of multiple metaphors of such relationships in assessing social–ecological systems will foster
better understanding of the many ways in which humans relate to, care for, and value ecosystems. Where it is possible, we
encourage a deliberative approach to ecosystem management whereby ecosystem researchers actively engage conservationists and
local resource users to make explicit, through open deliberation, the types of metaphors salient to their conservation problem.
Although studies of organization certainly need to include analysis of discourse, one prominent tendency within current research on organizational discourse limits its value for organizational studies through a commitment to postmodernism and extreme versions of social constructivism. I argue that a version of critical discourse analysis based on a critical realist social ontology is potentially of greater value to organization studies, and I refer in particular to the contribution it can make to research on organizational change.
In managing environmental problems, several countries have chosen the management by objectives (MBO) approach. This paper investigates how focus group participants from the Swedish environmental administration used metaphors to describe the mode of organization needed to attain environmental objectives. Such analysis can shed light on how an MBO system is perceived by actors and how it works in practice. Although the Swedish government intended to stimulate broad-based cooperation among many actors, participants often saw themselves as located at a certain "level," i.e., "higher" or "lower," in the MBO system--that is, their conceptions corresponded to a traditional, hierarchical interpretation of MBO. Prepositions such as "in" and "out" contributed to feelings of inclusion and exclusion on the part of MBO actors. However, horizontal metaphors merged with vertical ones, indicating ongoing competition for the right to interpret how the system of environmental objectives should best be managed. The paper concludes that any organization applying MBO could benefit from discussing alternate ways of talking and thinking about its constituent "levels."
The term ''neo-liberalism'' denotes new forms of political-economic governance premised on the extension of market relationships. In critical social science literatures, the term has usurped labels referring to specific political projects (Thatcherism, Regeanomics, Rogernomics), and is more widely
used than its counterparts including, for example, economic rationalism, monetarism, neo-conservatism, managerialism and contractualism.
Neoliberalism--the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action--has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. Writing for a wide audience, David Harvey, author of The New Imperialism and The Condition of Postmodernity, here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage. Through critical engagement with this history, he constructs a framework, not only for analyzing the political and economic dangers that now surround us, but also for assessing the prospects for the more socially just alternatives being advocated by many oppositional movements.
The now-classic Metaphors We Live By changed our understanding of metaphor and its role in language and the mind. Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by"--metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them.
In this updated edition of Lakoff and Johnson's influential book, the authors supply an afterword surveying how their theory of metaphor has developed within the cognitive sciences to become central to the contemporary understanding of how we think and how we express our thoughts in language.
The book identifies the emergence and increasing political importance of ?ecological modernization? as a new language in environmental politics. In this conceptual language, environmental management appears as a ?positive sum game?. Combining social theory with detailed empirical analysis, the book illustrates the social and political dynamics of ecological modernization through a study of the acid rain controversies in Great Britain and the Netherlands. The book concludes with a reflection on the institutional challenge of environmental politics in the years to come. The book is not only seen as a ?modern classic? in the literature on environmental politics but is also renowned for its application of discourse analysis to the study of the policy process.
As our great economic machine grinds relentlessly forward into a future of declining fossil fuel supplies, climate change and ecosystem failure, governments are at long last beginning to question the very structure of the global economy. In this fresh, politically charged analysis, Jonathon Porritt wades in on the most pressing question of the 21st century: can capitalism, as the only real economic game in town, be retooled to deliver a sustainable future? Porritt argues that indeed it can, and it must, as he lays out the framework for a new 'sustainable capitalism' that cuts across the political divide and promises a prosperous future of wealth, equity and ecosystem integrity.
Winner of the Christine L. Oravec Research Award in Environmental Communication, as given by the Environmental Communication Division of the National Communication Association. Scientists turn to metaphors to formulate and explain scientific concepts, but an ill-considered metaphor can lead to social misunderstandings and counterproductive policies, Brendon Larson observes in this stimulating book. He explores how metaphors can entangle scientific facts with social values and warns that, particularly in the environmental realm, incautious metaphors can reinforce prevailing values that are inconsistent with desirable sustainability outcomes. Metaphors for Environmental Sustainability draws on four case studies-two from nineteenth-century evolutionary science, and two from contemporary biodiversity science-to reveal how metaphors may shape the possibility of sustainability. Arguing that scientists must assume greater responsibility for their metaphors, and that the rest of us must become more critically aware of them, the author urges more critical reflection on the social dimensions and implications of metaphors while offering practical suggestions for choosing among alternative scientific metaphors.
In this study, Richard Alexander presents a series of original and empirically based case studies of the language and discourse involved in the discussion of environmental and ecological issues. Relying upon a variety of different text types and genres - including company websites, advertisements, press articles, speeches and lectures - Alexander interrogates how in the media, press, corporate and activist circles language is employed to argue for and propagate selected positions on the growing ecological crisis. For example, he asks: How are ecological and environmental concerns articulated in texts? What do we learn about ecological 'problems' through texts from differing sources? What language features accompany ecological discourse in differing contexts and registers? Attention is especially directed at where this discourse comes into contact with business, economic and political concerns.
Summary Developments in ecological theory indicate that ecological processes have major implications for sustaining biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services. Consequently, conservation actions that focus solely on particular species, vegetation communities, habitats or sites (‘assets’) are unlikely to be effective over the long term unless the ecological processes that support them continue to function. Efforts to sustain biodiversity must embrace both ‘assets’ and ‘process‐oriented’ approaches. Existing knowledge about ecological processes, incomplete though it is, has not been adequately considered in government decision making. It is, therefore, necessary to consider how to build consideration of ecological processes into legislative and institutional frameworks, policy and planning processes, and on‐ground environmental management. Drawing on insights from interviews, a facilitated workshop, and a literature review, this paper identifies a suite of policy priorities and associated reforms which should assist in ensuring that ecological processes are given more attention in policy‐making processes. It is concluded that a multi‐pronged approach is required, because there are no ‘silver bullets’ for sustaining ecological processes.
‘Sustainability’ provides the dominant frame within which environmental policy debate occurs, notwithstanding its divergent meanings. However, how different discourses combine to shape understanding of the environment, the causes of environmental issues, and the responses required, is less clear cut. Drawing primarily on the approach to critical discourse analysis (CDA) developed by Fairclough, this paper explores the way in which neoliberal and ecologically modern discourses combine to shape environmental policy. Environmental scholars have made relatively little use of this approach to CDA to date, despite the significant interest in the discursive aspects of environmental issues, and its wide use in other areas of policy interest. Using the case of environmental policy-making in Victoria, Australia, this paper illustrates how neoliberalism and weak ecological modernization represented sustainability in ways that seriously limited the importance of environmental issues.
‘Sustainability’ provides the dominant frame for environmental policy debate, even though there is considerable debate to as to what sustainability is, why is it needed, and how can it be progressed. From 1999 through to 2010, Victoria was governed by Australian Labor Party (ALP) led governments that, at times, actively pursued the goal of sustainable development. This culminated in the stated ambition for Victoria to be ‘world leaders in environmental sustainability debate and practice’. This paper explores the way in which sustainability was enacted by Victorian Labor while in government. The evidence indicates that the potential of Victorian Labor's vision was never realized, and that it failed to significantly reform the neoliberal policy settings it inherited.
In the following pages I reflect on the nature of natural resource management by exploring some of the metaphors used during planning, implementing, and reflecting on two watershed management projects. Metaphors are used to understand one idea through another, and their use in everyday dialogue can provide a means to understand the conceptual frameworks that underpin behaviours. Within the case studies presented here, natural resource management was conceptualized variously as journeying, revealing a picture, and treating watershed illness. Understanding the world through each of these conceptual frameworks appears to have influenced the planning, delivery, and evaluation of natural resource management activities undertaken in the case-study areas. The qualitative, interpretive study of conceptual frameworks presented here helps to explain participant behaviours, and could be used to predict the acceptance or otherwise of particular program approaches within these and similar projects.
Several of the preceding contributions to this special issue have raised critical comments and questions on the concept and research agenda of ecological modernization. It is our impression that these comments not only reflect academic ingenuity, but also a broader and growing hesitation about the concept and its usefulness, as similar scepticism was also expressed by participants at the international workshop on ecological modernization in Helsinki. As the term ecological modernization has grown popular among leading politicians and policy-makers, so has the dilution of it. In this paper, we make an attempt to move away from the purely heuristic use of ecological modernization, by clarifying both its origins and meanings. For connoisseurs of the concept, our paper may be seen as a recapitulation, rather than as an innovation; our mission is not to reinvent a concept, but to clarify its origins and connected dilemmas. In essence, ecological modernization refers to a specific type of foresighted and preventive environmental policy, which is closely related to the precautionary principle and, therefore, involves long-term structural change of the patterns of production and consumption. The agenda for ecological modernization, and for an associated ecological tax reform, was promoted by scientists outside of the economics profession, but helped breathe new life into the dormant discipline of environmental economics. In recent years, much of the debate on the opportunities of ecological modernization have been ‘captured’ by economists, who tend to perceive it in the vein of conventional efficiency measures. In view of the serious environmental problems facing the global community in the 21st century, ecological modernization as a concept, in our opinion, only makes sense if reserved for a reference to more radical structural changes that promote ecological consistency rather than ordinary efficiency. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Sustainable development, although a widely used phrase and idea, has many different meanings and therefore provokes many different responses. In broad terms, the concept of sustainable development is an attempt to combine growing concerns about a range of environmental issues with socio-economic issues. To aid understanding of these different policies this paper presents a classification and mapping of different trends of thought on sustainable development, their political and policy frameworks and their attitudes towards change and means of change. Sustainable development has the potential to address fundamental challenges for humanity, now and into the future. However, to do this, it needs more clarity of meaning, concentrating on sustainable livelihoods and well-being rather than well-having, and long term environmental sustainability, which requires a strong basis in principles that link the social and environmental to human equity. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
Amongst intellectuals and activists, neoliberalism has become a potent signifier for the kind of free-market thinking that has dominated politics for the past three decades. Forever associated with the conviction politics of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the free-market project has since become synonymous with the 'Washington consensus' on international development policy and the phenomenon of corporate globalization, where it has come to mean privatization, deregulation, and the opening up of new markets. But beyond its utility as a protest slogan or buzzword as shorthand for the political-economic Zeitgeist, what do we know about where neoliberalism came from and how it spread? Who are the neoliberals, and why do they studiously avoid the label? Constructions of Neoliberal Reason presents a radical critique of the free-market project, from its origins in the first half of the 20th Century through to the recent global economic crisis, from the utopian dreams of Friedrich von Hayek through the dogmatic theories of the Chicago School to the hope and hubris of Obamanomics. The book traces how neoliberalism went from crank science to common sense in the period between the Great Depression and the age of Obama. Constructions of Neoliberal Reason dramatizes the rise of neoliberalism and its uneven spread as an intellectual, political, and cultural project, combining genealogical analysis with situated case studies of formative moments throughout the world, like New York City's bankruptcy, Hurricane Katrina, and the Wall Street crisis of 2008. The book names and tracks some of neoliberalism's key protagonists, as well as some of the less visible bit-part players. It explores how this adaptive regime of market rule was produced and reproduced, its logics and limits, its faults and its fate. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/management/9780199580576/toc.html
This article applies some ofthe insights from framing studies in policyresearch, metaphor analysis, and the history ofmedicine to a cultural understanding ofagriculture, using the 2001 outbreak of footand mouth disease in the UK as a case study.The article will show how metaphors of war wereused as a rhetorical frame by the media andas an implicit action frame by policy makers.It will be argued that although the war framemight initially have been useful in rallyingsupport for the slaughter policy, the metaphorlater backfired, when a metaphorical war turnedinto a literal holocaust. This might haveencouraged the public to perceive the policy asmedieval, brutal, and misguided, thuspotentially undermining the willingness ofsections of the public to support the slaughterpolicy in future outbreaks. If, on the otherhand, a vaccination policy were adopted in thefuture, care would need to be taken to avoidmetaphorical linkages with other controversiesover vaccination in other domains.
Sumario: The new politics of pollution -- Idioms of analysis -- The politics of ecological modernisation -- Controlling pollution in the round -- Turning government green -- Implementation, economic instruments and public participation -- The international dimension -- Beyond the tragedy of the commons?
At the time of its introduction in the end of the 1980s, the concept of natural capital represented new, more ecologically aware thinking in economics. As a symbol of novel thinking, the metaphor of natural capital stimulated a debate between different disciplinary traditions on the definitions of the concept and research priorities and methods. The concept became a means to control the discourse of sustainable development. In this paper, I focus on the power/knowledge implications of the use of the concept, and I follow the career of the concept of natural capital in ecological economic publications between the years 1988 and 2000. The main interests are(1) in the use of the concept to affect the rules according to which claims concerning sustainable development can be made and (2) in the constitution of objects of environmental knowledge.
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