Carbon Forests at the Margins of the State: The Politics of Indigenous Sovereignty and Market Environmentalism in the North-eastern Hills of India

In the north-eastern hills of Meghalaya, the Khasi Hills project, self-advertised as ‘one of the first Redd+ initiatives in Asia to be developed and managed by indigenous governments on communal lands’, is often presented as one of the rare success stories of India’s recent experimentation with market instruments as part of its forest governance. This article uses this example to extend existing discussions on the neoliberalization of forest governance, and its intersections with the cultural politics of resource control. Unlike mainstream forestry projects criticized for being too concentrated in the hands of the Forest Department, this project explicitly taps into the particularities of a region located on the margin of the Indian nation-state, where, crucially, ownership and control of the land lie formally with the people rather than with the state. The article explores the politics of this curious marriage of (formal) indigenous sovereignty with market environmentalism, showing, first, the centrality of these assumed cultural and ecological specificities within the regime of justification of such market project; second, how the aspirations of project proponents for community engagement unravelled in practice; and, third, the limits of their endeavours due to larger structural social inequalities and the requirements of such market projects. I conclude with the idea that far from being anecdotal, this case brings interesting perspectives in the context of the struggle for the recognition of forest rights in the rest of India.

Private finance and governance of REDD+ projects in Indonesia

<p>This thesis explores the role of private finance within REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) programmes in Indonesia. Since its debut in 2007 as a potential investment opportunity, enterprising and innovative private sector actors have moved to establish REDD+ projects within a voluntary carbon market, while the United Nations Convention on Climate Change continues negotiations to establish a comprehensive global mechanism. These profit-seeking actors have invested millions of dollars developing REDD+ projects within a rapidly evolving voluntary market that has emerged alongside the turmoil of global climate change negotiations. This dynamic market context brought about a wide variety of expressions of REDD+ in Indonesia, which this research seeks to untangle and illuminate. The thesis yields insights into the workings of market environmentalism, and complicates widespread notions of ‘private finance’ as a homogenous and predictable category of actor. In order to better understand the emergent REDD+ industry in Indonesia, and the role of private finance in shaping it, this research draws on the global value chain (GVC) framework to analyse processes of commodification and governance within REDD+ projects and ‘supply chains’. This approach identifies key private finance actors, and explores why they are involved across motivations for social, environmental and financial outcomes. It also reveals REDD+ projects as a produced commodity and provides insight into the multiple ways they are valued. The research thus highlights how private finance actors evaluate REDD+ commodities as they engage with them. These logics, and the profit-seeking rationale of private finance actors, are seen to have important governance implications in shaping the characteristics of REDD+ projects and the networks of actors involved in them. However, simultaneously, the malleable and selective characteristics of the REDD+ commodity itself shapes certain governing implications of private finance. This thesis contributes to debates concerning the commodification of nature within market environmentalism and the neoliberalisation of nature, providing insights into the nature and agency of private finance.</p>

Private finance and governance of REDD+ projects in Indonesia

<p>This thesis explores the role of private finance within REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) programmes in Indonesia. Since its debut in 2007 as a potential investment opportunity, enterprising and innovative private sector actors have moved to establish REDD+ projects within a voluntary carbon market, while the United Nations Convention on Climate Change continues negotiations to establish a comprehensive global mechanism. These profit-seeking actors have invested millions of dollars developing REDD+ projects within a rapidly evolving voluntary market that has emerged alongside the turmoil of global climate change negotiations. This dynamic market context brought about a wide variety of expressions of REDD+ in Indonesia, which this research seeks to untangle and illuminate. The thesis yields insights into the workings of market environmentalism, and complicates widespread notions of ‘private finance’ as a homogenous and predictable category of actor. In order to better understand the emergent REDD+ industry in Indonesia, and the role of private finance in shaping it, this research draws on the global value chain (GVC) framework to analyse processes of commodification and governance within REDD+ projects and ‘supply chains’. This approach identifies key private finance actors, and explores why they are involved across motivations for social, environmental and financial outcomes. It also reveals REDD+ projects as a produced commodity and provides insight into the multiple ways they are valued. The research thus highlights how private finance actors evaluate REDD+ commodities as they engage with them. These logics, and the profit-seeking rationale of private finance actors, are seen to have important governance implications in shaping the characteristics of REDD+ projects and the networks of actors involved in them. However, simultaneously, the malleable and selective characteristics of the REDD+ commodity itself shapes certain governing implications of private finance. This thesis contributes to debates concerning the commodification of nature within market environmentalism and the neoliberalisation of nature, providing insights into the nature and agency of private finance.</p>

A Free-Market Environmentalist Transition toward Renewable Energy: The Cases of Germany, Denmark, and the United Kingdom

Renewable energy (RE) is one of the most popular public policy orientations worldwide. Compared to some other countries and continents, Europe has gained an early awareness of energy and environmental problems in general. At the theoretical level, free-market environmentalism indicates that based on the principle of private property rights, with fewer state interventionist and regulation policies, entrepreneurs, as the driving force of the market economy, can provide better services to meet the necessity of offering RE to protect the environment more effectively. Previous studies have revealed that Germany, Denmark, and the United Kingdom have made some progress in using the market to develop RE. However, this research did not analyze the three countries’ RE conditions from the perspective of free-market environmentalism. Based on our review of the principles of free-market environmentalism, this paper originally provides an empirical study of how Germany, Denmark, and the United Kingdom have partly conducted free-market-oriented policies to successfully achieve their policy goal of RE since the 1990s on a practical level. In particular, compared with Germany and Denmark, the UK has maintained a relatively low energy tax rate and opted for more pro-market measures since the Hayekian-Thatcherism free-market reform of 1979. The paper also discovers that Fredrich A. Hayek’s theories have strongly impacted its energy liberalization reform agenda since then. Low taxes on the energy industry and electricity have alleviated the burden on the electricity enterprises and consumers in the UK. Moreover, the empirical results above show that the energy enterprises play essential roles in providing better and more affordable RE for household and industrial users in the three sampled countries. Based on the above results, the paper also warns that state intervention policies such as taxation, state subsidies, and industrial access restrictions can impede these three countries’ RE targets. Additionally, our research provides reform agendas and policy suggestions to policymakers on the importance of implementing free-market environmentalism to provide more efficient RE in the post-COVID-19 era.

Politics of Water Flows: Water Supply, Sanitation, and Drainage

Since the late 20th century, water and sanitation management has been deeply influenced by ideas from economics, specifically by the doctrine of neoliberalism. The resulting set of policy trends are usually referred to as market environmentalism, which in broad terms encourages specific types of water reforms aiming to employ markets as allocation mechanisms, establish private-property rights and full-cost pricing, reduce (or remove) subsidies, and promote private sector management to reduce government interference and avoid the politicization of water and sanitation management. Market environmentalism sees water as a resource that should be efficiently managed through economic reforms. Instead of seeing water as an external resource to be managed, alternative approaches like political ecology see water as a socio-nature. This means that water is studied as a historical-geographical process in which society and nature are inseparable, mutually produced, and transformable. Political ecological analyses understand processes of environmental change as deeply interrelated to socioeconomic dynamics. They also emphasize the impact of environmental dynamics on social relations and take seriously the question of how the physical properties of water may be sources of unpredictability, unruliness, and resistance from human intentions. As an alternative to the hydrologic cycle, political ecology proposes the concept of hydrosocial cycle, which emphasizes that water is deeply political and social. An analysis of the politics of water flows, drawing from political ecology explores the different relationships and histories reflected in access to (and exclusion from) water supply, sanitation, and drainage. It portrays how power inequalities are at the heart of differentiated levels of access to infrastructure.

Free market for the environment

The tragedy of the commons is responsible for many, if not all, of the environmental problems concerning natural resource preservation that we face in modern society. The tragedy of the commons describes a situation in which resources held “in common”, namely, public resources, are depleted or mistreated by collective action. Basically it means lack of private ownership and almost inevitably leads to a misallocation of resources. And yet, the predominating kinds of solutions proposed to solve these problems involve increased government regulation—effectively expanding the scope of the very tragedy of the commons which lies at the heart of the problem in the first place. The present paper advocates an alternative: free market environmentalism. It is not a contradiction in terms, despite how that phrase sounds to the modern ear. In this paper we attempt to demonstrate that laissez-faire capitalism is our last best hope for protecting the environment. Free market environmentalism centers around private property rights and thus a decentralization of environmental decision-making. Effective choices made about scarce resources must be based upon free market price signals and incentives. The lack of laissez-faire capitalism applied to earth’s natural resources distorts both of these indicators—causing poorly made and oftentimes destructive decisions. A free market solution to the environment creates the most value for society, allows for open and continuous entrepreneurial innovation, and economically empowers those who are the most environmentally vulnerable.

Resilient or Not: A Comparative Case Study of Ten Local Water Markets in China

Despite the global expansion of water markets, their resilience has received little scholarly attention, even though they are vulnerable to external and internal disturbances. Since the 1990s, the water market has been actively promoted by China as an important institutional coordination mechanism for efficient water use. This article examines what contextual factors, in configurations, contribute to the resilience of water markets in China. We distinguish between resilient and factitious water markets as two outcome variables and distil four conditions from market environmentalism to explain the variance in their outcomes: ownership of water entitlements, market intermediaries, water pricing, and spot/forward trade categories. Using crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis (csQCA), we analyzed seven resilient and three factitious water markets in China. Our findings show that a water market’s framework is multidimensional and complex and that no necessary conditions contribute to resilience. Two sufficient solutions display the configurational complexity of water markets’ resilience. Path 1 includes strong intermediary, uncompetitive price, and forward water trade. Path 2 includes privatization of water entitlements, spot contracts, and competitive pricing. Weak intermediary together with forward water trade determines factitious water markets. The QCA results reveal that there exist multiple paths that a resilient water market can follow and develop. Therefore, policymakers must be cautious about pushing for water market indiscriminately, especially by over-privatization and unlimited investment in water banks.