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Friends of the Earth: Market Mechanisms Are a False Solution to Biodiversity Loss
NAGOYA, JAPAN - With only one day of negotiations left at the Convention on Biological Diversity's summit in Nagoya, Japan, Friends of the Earth International urgently calls on governments to reject false solutions to halt biodiversity loss, such as trading biodiversity credits and other market-based mechanisms.
The silhouettes of guests are pictured at a dinner reception for the high-level ministerial segment of the 10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP10) in Nagoya, central Japan, on Oct. 27. Friends of the Earth sounds the alarm about market based solutions in which nature is commodified in order to be valued. (Yuriko Nakao/Reuters) "It is
urgent that the world ministers meeting in Nagoya take immediate action
to preserve biodiversity. Nearly half of the world's forests and around
one-third of its species have been lost in the past three decades. The
failure to meet the 2010 goals and targets that have been agreed under
the Convention on Biological Diversity is unacceptable. But market based
mechanisms now being discussed in Nagoya will not address the root
problems of biodiversity loss," said Isaac Rojas, the coordinator for
Friends of the Earth International's Forest and Biodiversity Program.
More than 100 representatives of environmental non profit organizations and local communities met in Penang, Malaysia from October 14 to 17 for a conference on Forest, Biodiversity, Community Rights and Indigenous Peoples, organized by Friends of the Earth. They came up with a statement for governments and corporations, asking them to stop the promotion of destructive projects and start taking real action to tackle biodiversity loss. The most important issues addressed in this statement are the commodification of biodiversity and the rights of communities and indigenous peoples.
One of the false solutions on the agenda for discussion in Nagoya is the Green Development Mechanism (GDM), modeled after the destructive Climate Development Mechanism, developed within the climate change negotiations. This market based scheme would create tradable biodiversity credits and make it possible to offset biodiversity and ecological loss instead of preventing it.
"We cannot and should not rely on market mechanisms to do the job that governments should be doing. Commodification and privatization of nature and biodiversity are false solutions. Biodiversity is not for sale. Existing financial incentives usually harm biodiversity conservation rather than supporting it, and often violate the rights of local communities," said Isaac Rojas.
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29 Comments so far
Show AllI'm sorry but we've heard it all before. This market based talk is just a repeat of the old "cap and trade" argument. As soon as anyone starts to talk about implementing such a scheme, the people who proposed it will denounce it.
Friends of the Earth International is an interesting organization. It was started by David Brower after he was bounced by the Sierra Club. Its organizational structure was intended from the start to be decentralized-- FOE is actually the name for an umbrella group of disparate local environmental organizations around the globe. The idea was to give a focus to grassroots people who in turn function with a great deal of autonomy.
How successful they have been in this regard, and whether they still adhere to this model, I am not qualified to say.
Brower also founded the League of Conservation Voters and the Earth Island Institute.
For much more than you ever wanted to know about the operations of GreenPeace and Friends of the Earth International, google "Vanessa Timmer Agility and Resilience".
Hi and thanks for the useful info. Great stuff!
But doesn't the invisible hand of the free marketplace fix everything....
Yes, that's what the Corporate Media Oligopoly, neo-lib D/R duopoly, and neo-lib dominated education system (especially most university econ courses) would have us all believe. Even Adam Smith saw the limitations of the market, he was a moral philosopher after all.
I personally do think that the Capitalist Free-Market can internally regulate, but the scope of goods and services available within the Free-Market itself must have strict limitations. These limitations must be based upon the social vs. individual benefit each product or service represents. Products and services that are not driven by individual personal interests, but rather universal social interests (such as clean water, fire departments, national security, health care, ecological integrity etc) must not be submitted to the forces that drive the free market.
Conversely, the products and services available within the (externally & trasnparently) strictly regulated market arena (which is *internally* As-Free-As-Possible) should always be non-essential goods and services, so the use of competitive market-tactics to increase profitability and demand cannot take advantage of naturally arising need and misery. Enhanced or optional versions and upgrades of socially administered products & services would be available within the 'Free (As-Possible) Market', ensuring that those with the means and/or simply the desire to acquire them are not denied their right to do so (within reasonable standards). There are very good reasons why we *want* a 'Free (As-Possible) Market'. It does in fact serve a universal social good, and the providing of an open, safe, fair, and non-intrusively managed marketplace should be in itself considered one of our most treasured social services.
But the marketplace cannot rule over the rest of our lives, as it is under the current system, where there really is no more public space. Our whole country has sadly become a wild-wild west style marketplace, where fairness and any true Freedom can hardly survive the night.
PS
I'd like to add that I consider this planet's biodiversity, and the bio-engineering, patenting and/or profiting off of living organisms to certainly not be capable of being regulated by the self-correcting 'Free-Market'. Meat production as well, due to the fact that the market cannot factor in the suffering of the animals involved, should be much more highly regulated than it is within the free-market.
Thanks for this post. I recently asked a free-market blog website that generally has good analysis, how free-market proponents would deal with the problem posed by Garrett Hardin in his article "The Tragedy of the Commons." Things like nuclear energy cannot be regulated by the free market. The best evidence for this is that private insurers refuse to underwrite insurance policies, because the exposure is so massive that the company would be likely be instantly bankrupt after a single incident. The only reason we have nuclear power here is that the US Congress jammed through the Price-Anderson Act.
According to Wikipedia:
"The Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act (commonly called the Price-Anderson Act) is a United States federal law, first passed in 1957 and since renewed several times, which governs liability-related issues for all non-military nuclear facilities constructed in the United States before 2026. The main purpose of the Act is to partially indemnify the nuclear industry against liability claims arising from nuclear incidents while still ensuring compensation coverage for the general public. The Act establishes a no fault insurance-type system in which the first $10 billion is industry-funded as described in the Act (any claims above the $10 billion would be covered by the federal government). At the time of the Act's passing, it was considered necessary as an incentive for the private production of nuclear power — this was because investors were unwilling to accept the then-unquantified risks of nuclear energy without some limitation on their liability."
The question I have, and the one I think the free-market people can't answer is: where is the limiting mechanism in the free-market for "products" that enable a producer to reap all the rewards of a venture, and offload all of the costs onto the larger society? Everywhere I look, I see both people and animals suffering the health costs of pollution, be it in the Gulf states in the wake of the BP disaster, the dramatic increase in autism and other chronic debilitating conditions like diabetes and autoimmune diseases, and the (hopefully self-limiting) problems brought about due to endocrine and immune system disrupting chemicals.
I don't see that the "free-market" and the "invisible hand" (or is it the non-existent hand? Or perhaps the Rothschild hand?) will do anything other than to do exactly what it has been doing for the last 30 years: transferring wealth into a smaller number of hands.
But, and I think this is the real question: what do you do when the people who are supposed to be the regulators in this system, are actually - through the revolving door relationship between business and government - the same people who are to be regulated? This is why fascism doesn't work. It is so successful at getting what it wants that it kills its host. We are the host.
I don't claim to have the technical or financial expertise necessary to go into the fine details such an immense/delicate undertaking would entail.
But I suppose there would need to be an internationally sanctioned scientific committee set up to determine which resources, products and services can or cannot, by international law, be used/sold/exploited/profited-off of in the international free-market, and to regulate how those marginally essential products deemed fitting or safe enough to be allowed into the private marketplace are obtained, dispersed and sold across the globe (products such as petroleum). This committee must be staffed by scientists, economists and political experts dedicated to the struggle against the marketing of sentient (a term needing specification) life-forms and the protection of earth's basic natural resources essential to human life, and the unimpinged health of each currently viable species and ecosystem on Earth, according to its own natural inclination.
Philosophically speaking, I believe a necessary distinction needs to be made between what are essentially exploitative vs. creative profits in the marketplace. Creative profits derive solely from the imagination and from skilled labor - they do not take from a natural, and what should be collectively owned, resource pool, and therefore are not susceptible to social regulation and constraint (barring criminal offense). However, profits derived by obtaining resources such as oil, should be heavily taxed because that resource ultimately should belong (naturally does, I'd argue) to the collective of humanity. Simple access to the means of extraction is not an ethical basis to award full benefit to the extractors, and denies fair benefit to the rightful collective owners of that resource (those who didn't get big checks from the recent petroleum industry windfall).
Just as today we have international cooperation and laws against the marketing of humans, certain weapons and certain chemicals/drugs/organisms (lax or ineffective as they may be), so must similar steps be taken towards an even wider range of goods/resources. Systems to aid and assist the cooperation between nations would also need to be developed, as well as the creation of an international central command center, with similar intents to an alliance such as NATO, but driven by a purpose not to identify human threats, but to identify specifically environmental and ecological threats to our collective humanity.
My consistent hope is that action of the kind we are discussing will actually seriously begin taking place soon, simply due to the unavoidable historical exigency of our global situation. Throughout the past and up until now the threat humans posed to most of the worlds limited resources was negligible. As a species we've only recognized there were limits in the last few centuries, and are only feeling some of the effects of this finitude in the last few decades. Our cognitive evolution still needs time to catch up to the rapid shift in our condition, meanwhile the threat approaches at an even faster pace.
I do think humanity is finally starting to awaken to this reality. Let's hope that's not a naïve and fantastically optimistic assumption.
Thanks for your post. I did my best to address some of your points, but I'm not sure if I'm honestly able to fully do so for all. Enjoyed the Wiki article.
–SS
Not anymore. http://www.onlinesentinel.com/news/First-Wind-cancels-initial-stock-offering.html
Additionally the offering was expected to be between $18-$20 and shortly after the trading commenced the IPO was pulled. Here is what happened.
http://quotes.nasdaq.com/asp/SummaryQuote.asp?symbol=WIND&symbol=GS&selected=WIND
"But doesn't the invisible hand of the free marketplace fix everything...."--stringbean
yeah, strinbean, the fix is in! i'm wondering if you've read, "invisible hands, the making of the conservative movent" kim phillips-fein, does a great job researching the philosophical evolution of "business conservatives" from the new deal through reagan. and now, here we are in this crazy mixed up world of the monopolistic citizens united! sadly, we the people of this world don't have enough money allowing us air breathers to speak on such issues.
i found the center for biological diversity here at cd became a card carrying member. the center has brought a law suit against bp, so i sent them a wee thankee check although i know bp will file delays, stall, stall, stall and end up paying a mere fraction of the damage they've caused.
from a cd regular i got a link to http://www.treeshaverightstoo.com/the-planetary-rights and check the web page this morning. i like it; they provide lots of research leads. here's a thumbnail sketch of their bill of right for all plants and animals.
The Planetary Rights
1) The Right to Diversity
2) The Right to Ecological Integrity
3) The Freedom of the Natural Cycles of Life
4) The Right Not To Be Polluted
5) The Right to Restorative Justice
6) The Freedom of a Clean and Healthy Environment
i do admire greenpeace for the willingness to employ civil disobedience. after all, the healthful environment of this planet isn't political. politicians obviously, are in great need of input from living, water drinking, breathing citizens. they're just too confused by profit-seeking corporate "experts" to know it.
Thanks for the book recommendation--I've placed it on hold at the library.
hummingbird,
****"monopolistic citizens united"****
Trees were the catalyst for my activism. They were cutting down the hardwood old growth in the Shawnee and the rangers were protecting them. Imagine, taking the biggest and best from a crown jewel of biological diversity like the Shawnee National Forest.
Thanks for the link, the return favor concerns civil disobedience for biophiliacs.
Dave Foreman's "Confessions of an Eco-Warrior"
just don't tell anyone where you heard about it
Buck
thanks, buck!
Your post, being sarcasm, says a lot in a single line. It highlights the massive gap between capitalist ideology, which we have all be reared on, and reality.
It works well in the supply side with the following provisors:-
* if you are not being super exploited.
* if you are one of those benefiting.
* if we are not exhausting an important finite supply.
* if we are not destroying shared wealth such as the environment.
* if money can not control the media.
* if money can not control the government.
* if money does not generate a war industry.
* if money does not generate a prison industry.
But:-
* It never worked at all on the waste disposal side.
* It clearly does not work well for medical insurance.
* Money terribly distorts a "justice" system.
* It is most likely a bad thing for education. (we will soon find out).
Liberation theology is just capitalist ideology, with the last remaining bits of socialism removed.
Where is webwalker when you need him?
(See Friends of the Earth under Progressive Newswire.)
To ensure that there is enough air to breathe in an uncertain future, we are launching an Oxygen Commodities Trading Arena with an aftermarket in Oxygen-Based Derivatives.
OCTA and OBDs will enable market forces to find the real value and set the correct price for air, generating investment capital with secure returns in a sustainable economy.
Our model organizes trillions of chaotic red blood cells into a rational market that prioritizes investment of limited air resources to their most productive overall use.
Breathe Green Air: let the market decide, for a sustainable future.
It would seem the satire and irony genes of the CD habitues have been rendered inoperative (I suspect television as the culpable agent). Too bad. I still think it was a great post...and even better with the editing.
I left this country when that rat bastard lying zombie actor Reagan was elected and returned after he was out of office. Big mistake. I am getting out now. I invite anyone with any common sense to leave now before you are enslaved in the camps of the damned and poor and non-neoliberals.
bye, and thanks for getting out of the way so that real Americans can cope with real problems without your interference or distraction.
Gotta note that, in a thread dealing with world wide issues, your formulaic, trite and suspicious post is even more out of place.
A pity that the once great and rich USA,
cannot make war on world species losses.
No war protects biological diversity,
if it is worth nothing to capitals bosses.
The basis and substance of life itself
is not by market wealth compensated
Never mind our species may drop and die
soon after the last forest world is ablated.
When the last whale is gone from the ocean world,
Our own songs by the heavens will be hated.
There is no possibility of sustainability--none--based on anthropocentric environmental ethics. So-called market-based solutions are a charade.
The Street will trade in polar bears. If they haven't seen a species then it doesn't exist to Biodiversity Street.
Polar bears are already bred in zoos. They will not go extinct even in the wild, because they eat at human garbage dumps. Polar bears are like the 1500 pound rats of the Arctic. Biodiversity Street will find a way to trade their futures anyways.
Millions of microspecies are going extinct, things that our eyes haven't seen, things that can't walk 1000 miles north, little things in the soil, under the pack ice, 10,000 feet down in the ocean. Going, going, gone. That's the big problem.
For those of you who missed it, check out;
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/10/13-6
on our "common' future
The U.S. is run by a race of Polyphemuses who have no depth perception or anything but a savage single-mindedness: profit-accumulation, profit-accumulation, profit-accumulation. How did Odysseus defeat one of these beasts? By slipping out between its legs and identifying himself as 'no man'. Disengaging? Dropping out? Refusing to work or buy from the monster? Boycotting? Becoming 'invisible'? Of course, Odysseus has to poke its one eye out first!
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
The spirit of the Penang call is good, but it ignores some very stark and grim hard realities:
(1) The world is severely over-populated with resource hungry people.
(2) Their hunger for resources is deliberately intensified by the world's dominant neo-liberal capitalists who psychologically intensify people's material desires with propaganda infotainment imagery and advertisements designed to make them try to achieve the already unsustainable affluent lifestyles of the rich in the West, Japan, India and China.
(3) For the ideas in the Penang call to be achieved would require a planned, humane, gradual reduction in human over-populations coupled to a planned, global capitalist "grow-down" which is a concept alien to capitalism which has historically operated on the premise of environmentally unlimited "development."
(4) Even if capitalists and their political puppets were interested in such a historically unprecedented population and economic down-growth, their wantonly subjective, self-serving political decision making system regarding the allocation of the worlds renewable and finite resources is too hopelessly corrupt to effect the objective science-based decisions that would have to be made on an internationally cooperative, democratic basis to achieve the desired goals in a timely manner.
Nice synopsis.
i've got friends who are like, "Why are you so cynical? Don't you see anything good?"
i see plenty of good. But i don't refuse to see the basic state of things.
People don't want to see the implications - not just the big planetary implications, but the personal ones. Who wants to face this?
But not facing it, only keeps feeding it.
Glad you liked it. A lot of folks across the political spectrum who post on this sight still live very sheltered lives and cannot yet distinguish neo-liberal shit from old New Age wishes.