The political life of mangroves
department or school: Arts, Faculty of
department or school: Geography, Department of
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Irvine-Broque, Audrey
issued: 2023-01-04T17:27:42Z
issued: 2022
related degree: Master of Arts - MA
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: “Limb for limb, the mangrove is perhaps the most important tree species on Earth,” declared Conservation International in a recent update. Detailing the abilities of these trees to palliate the threats of a warming and degraded planet, this piece appealed to a now-dominant logic of conservation practice: that protecting nature might not only be a problem to solve, but a solution itself. The ascent of the mangrove forest as a “nature-based solution” marks a shift towards climate and conservation policy that promises to remedy numerous social, ecological, and economic crises at once. But what kind of approach to managing socio-ecological problems does this solution reproduce? In this thesis, I aim to historicize this solution by following the political life of mangroves: how the fate of the mangrove forest became entangled with the ideology of the Washington Consensus, first as its victim, and now as its savior. Through historical research, interviews, and document analysis, I follow the mangrove through its most significant period of decline, its subsequent emergence as an object of international conservation concern, and its current articulation with finance capital as a leading market-based environmental solution. In Chapter 1, I trace how mangrove loss becomes explained as an issue of improper values, a problem that requires solving via the financial revaluation of the mangrove ecosystem, which obfuscates broader political economic drivers of mangrove degradation. In Chapter 2, I show how a lack of state capacity and structural limits on access to capital frame the problem of the financing gap for nature, a gap that subsequently justifies the need for private financial investment in mangroves. I argue that such conservation finance projects should not be understood simply as technical fixes to generate more funds, but as political economic projects with specific aims beyond mangrove conservation. Further, I show how “the mangrove”, as a dominant policy solution, p…
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/83557
note: THE POLITICAL LIFE OF MANGROVES by Audrey Irvine-Broque B.A., American University, 2016 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Geography) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) December 2022 © Audrey Irvine-Broque, 2022 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the thesis entitled: The Political Life of Mangroves submitted by Audrey Irvine-Broque in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Geography Examining Committee: Dr. Jessica Dempsey, Professor, Department of Geography, UBC Supervisor Dr. Sara Nelson, Research Manager, Centre for Climate Justice, UBC Supervisory Committee Member iii Abstract “Limb for limb, the mangrove is perhaps the most important tree species on Earth,” declared Conservation International in a recent blog post. Detailing the abilities of these trees to palliate the threats of a warming and degraded planet, this piece appealed to a now-dominant logic of conservation practice: that protecting nature might not only be a problem to solve, but a solution itself. The ascent of the mangrove forest as a “nature-based solution” marks a shift towards climate and conservation policy that promises to remedy numerous social, ecological, and economic crises at once. But what kind of approaches to managing socio-ecological problems does this solution reproduce? In this thesis, I aim to historicize this solution by following the political life of mangroves: how the fate of the mangrove forest became entangled with the ideology of the Washington Consensus, first as its victim, and now as its savior. Through historical research, interviews, and document analysis, I follow the mangrove through its most significant period of decline, its subsequent emergence as an object of international conservation concern, and i…
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2023-05
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0422953
language: eng
degree discipline: Geography
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
contributor: Dempsey, Jessica, 1977-
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/83557