Arts, Faculty of
Geography, Department of
DSpace
UBCV
Irvine-Broque, Audrey
Master of Arts - MA
University of British Columbia
“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, promises that socioecological wellbeing can take place within the current structure of the global economy, while creating solutions that selectively narrate which conditions of socioecological inequality and vulnerability are in need of repair.
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 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, promises that socioecological wellbeing can iv be achieved within the current structure of the global economy, while creating solutions that selectively narrate which conditions of socioecological inequality and vulnerability are in need of repair. v Lay Summary Mangrove forests are one of the most threatened ecosystems globally. Today, conservationists, policymakers, and economists argue that mangroves must be conserved and restored, both for their immediate local impacts, such as flood prevention and increased fisheries, as well as their global impacts as a carbon sink. One idea for how to accomplish this task is to put a dollar value on these benefits and allow them to be traded on a market. This idea is often accompanied by a narrative: that while mangroves were once thought to be “worthless swamps,” humanity is now able to recognize their true value and integrate this value into better economic decision-making. In contrast, this thesis argues that there are highly political drivers of mangrove decline, which must also be reckoned with if the root causes of this problem are to be addressed. vi Preface This thesis is the original, unpublished work of Audrey Irvine-Broque. Data (interviews and ethnographic data) were collected by Audrey Irvine-Broque and approved by UBC’s Behavioral Research Ethics Board (certificate #H16-00271, “Biodiversity Capital”). vii Table of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iii Lay Summary .................................................................................................................................v Preface ........................................................................................................................................... vi Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................ vii List of Tables ................................................................................................................................ ix List of Abbreviations .....................................................................................................................x Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... xi Introduction: The Most Important Tree Species on Earth ........................................................1 0.1 Following the Mangrove ................................................................................................. 9 0.2 Chapter Outline ............................................................................................................. 20 Chapter 1: The Worthless Swamp, Here to Save the World ...................................................23 1.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 23 1.2 Outcast Surplus ............................................................................................................. 32 1.2.1 What Drives Mangrove Decline? .......................................................................... 36 1.3 Official Valuation ......................................................................................................... 55 1.3.1 Valuation ............................................................................................................... 56 1.3.2 Blue Carbon emerges at COP15 in Copenhagen (2009) ...................................... 64 1.4 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 68 Chapter 2: Brackish Conditions .................................................................................................72 2.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 72 2.2 The Financing Gap ........................................................................................................ 76 viii 2.3 Overcoming Barriers ..................................................................................................... 80 2.3.1 Theme 1: Lack of state funds and state capacity poses investment barriers ......... 88 2.3.2 Theme 2: Documents lack transparency about how revenues are shared ............. 97 2.3.3 Theme 3: Co-benefits define distribution of revenues to community ................ 101 2.4 Wall Street Conservation ............................................................................................ 107 2.5 Brackish Conditions .................................................................................................... 115 2.6 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 120 Conclusion: Shifting Political Economic Baselines .................................................................123 References ...................................................................................................................................128 ix List of Tables Table 1. Mangrove projects in the VCS Registry ......................................................................... 82 Table 2. Investment barrier descriptions in VCS mangrove project documents .......................... 92 x List of Abbreviations CBD Convention on Biological Diversity CBDR Common but Differentiated Responsibilities CDM Clean Development Mechanism COP Conference of Parties DFN Danone Fund for Nature FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations GHG Greenhouse Gas IFI International Financial Institution IMF International Monetary Fund IPBES Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services IUCN International Union for Conservation of Nature NbS Nature-based Solution NGO Non-governmental Organization PES Payments for Ecosystem Services PD Project Document REDD Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation SDG Sustainable Development Goal TNC Transnational Corporation UN United Nations USD United States Dollar VCS Verra Carbon Standard VR Validation Report WB World Bank xi Acknowledgements In light of what could have been a particularly isolating and challenging time, there are so many people to thank for making this process lively and collaborative instead. At the top of that list is my supervisor, Jessica Dempsey. Capturing what Jess’ mentorship has meant to me during this process might be the hardest writing task of all (though luckily, I’ve got a few more years to perfect it). Working with Jess, I have been challenged, and genuinely supported to take on those challenges, in ways that have helped me grow far beyond the bounds of this thesis, and for that I am endlessly grateful. I also have Sara Nelson to thank, for agreeing to be my second committee member and for providing so much thoughtful advice, intellectual and otherwise, throughout this process. Along with Jess and Sara, our research team – Patrick Bigger, Fernanda Rojas-Marchini, Jens Christiansen, and Elizabeth Shapiro-Garza – has influenced my thinking and the content of this work considerably, while also making this process generally more fun and life-affirming. Making it to this point was also predicated on the support of Adriana DiSilvestro, Nick Gandolfo-Lucia, and Yardain Amron. Above all, I want to thank Adriana for treating graduate school like a team sport and for treating Eric and me as family. Nick, for frequently and patiently inhabiting my world of ideas, and for every time he said, "I think that's the right question." While the rest of us were asleep below deck, Yardain was keeping watch out over the sea. He made sure we were never alone and never dragged too far off course. Far off on some distant shores were my friends Lissa Vanderbeck, Meredith Naughton, Grace Glynn, Anna Rahel Fischer, Margaux Lander, Sam Tripp, and Darrow Feldstein, who kept me inspired and grounded in all the most crucial ways. Likewise, my family, who have seriously engaged with my work and ideas for as long as I can remember, and the Hagen family, who took xii me in when the border with Canada closed, both went to great lengths to make sure I was well supported to start this program from afar. I’d like to express my gratitude to all of them by promising to never work on family vacation ever again. There is a much longer list of people who indirectly influenced this project, and many of them will know who they are. The nature of both intellectual endeavors and political movements is that this list extends longer than I could ever name and further than I could ever really know. Thank you. In the end, of course, nobody has given more to this project than Eric Hagen: from racing a snowstorm across the continent in order to immigrate to a new country in the middle of a global pandemic (!), to the less dramatic, but equally heroic, efforts of workshopping every presentation and reading every draft. Thank you for, among so many other things, believing that this was a thing worth doing, and for believing in me. 1 Introduction: The Most Important Tree Species on Earth “Limb for limb, the mangrove is perhaps the most important tree species on Earth.” The above proclamation was made by Conservation International in a recent blog post (Price, 2020). Such a bold statement, setting mangroves atop a hierarchy of species, may seem out of place for an organization concerned with the protection of natures across the globe. But today, the mangrove is frequently imbued with a unique charisma and significance in its media appearances, described as “multitalented” (Knight, 2021), a “supertree” (Barclay et al., 2019), and even the “key to saving the Earth” (Zimmer, 2021). Such superlative language is often framed as a triumph over an unenlightened past, in which mangroves were considered to be “worthless” swamps (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Board, in Nelson, 2017, p. 41). A 1974 review of mangrove ecology put it this way: that the literature revealed “attitudes that consider mangroves an academic curiosity at best, a nuisance at worst, and, in general, of little value to man [sic] and his works” (Lugo & Snedaker, 1974, p. 39). But no longer. How did the mangrove go from a “worthless swamp” to the “key to saving the Earth”? The story goes like this: swamps, marshes, and other wet and unruly places were once governed primarily as wastelands – impediments to development, lands with no economic value. But today, conservationists, policymakers, and economists increasingly sing the praises of these ecosystems, arguing that they provide critical services for humanity and deserve to be valued as such. Across popular media, academic articles, and even global macroeconomic reports, this narrative echoes out: what were once thought to be wastelands could now be a salvation from the 2 problems humans have wrought. The revaluation of mangrove ecosystems, however, is not only rhetorical, but also financial, made so via attempts to monetize the impact of their “services”: estimated billions in flood risk prevention, ten times the carbon sequestration potential of terrestrial forests, and improved livelihoods for coastal communities (Price, 2020). Through carbon offsetting, insurance mechanisms, and other forms of ecosystem service credits, the hope of financializing the mangrove is that it might “pay its own way,” (Dempsey, 2016, p. 240), that is, directly fund its own protection. And across the conservation community, return-generating investment in mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrasses (together termed “blue carbon”) is touted as “a trickle of blue that many anticipate will soon become a flood,” (Jones, 2021). Mangroves, it would seem, are having a moment in the spotlight. With back-to-back United Nations climate (COP27) and biodiversity (COP15) negotiations in 2022, the mangrove became a symbol of the interlocking nature of these crises, as well as their solutions; ahead of these conferences, the Group of 20 attended a mangrove planting ceremony in Indonesia, in which mangrove saplings were planted to spell out “G20” in the sand (Abdullah, 2022). Scientists have even written journal articles likening the plight of these ecosystems to that of Cinderella, describing their story as one about “unrecognised value, neglect and, ultimately, recognition and triumph” (Boon, 2012, p. 844). And in a sense, this official story does read something like a fairy tale: as a result of these ecosystems' hard work, finance capital will materialize out of thin air to save the day before the clock strikes ecological disaster. But it’s worth asking if this story can be taken at face value. Despite ongoing efforts to “value” ecological systems for their services, dating back decades, finance flowing to industries that degrade ecosystems continues to outpace finance flowing to conservation to the tune of trillions (Portfolio Earth, 2020; Global Canopy, 2021; Deutz et al., 2020). Making biodiversity 3 conservation a return-generating endeavor has scarcely made a dent even in the “financing gap” for nature, with issues of scalability, high risk-return ratios, and low liquidity keeping this asset class in a state of “arrested development” (Dempsey & Suarez, 2016; Suttor-Sorel & Hercelin, 2020). Meanwhile, despite a slowing rate of loss, each new year sees a net loss of mangroves globally (Leal & Spalding, 2022). Despite the flashy headlines and the monetary values now attached to their services, mangroves remain in peril (Ibid.). Such an outlook ought to prompt us to look behind the curtain of this official story in order to evaluate the circumstances that produce it. This directs our attention instead to the conditions under which this ecosystem has been degraded, and subsequently rendered in need of financial revaluation. How were mangroves initially ordered as wastelands, only to later become a supposed asset for financiers? What had to happen for coastal ecosystems – which have existed as part of the web of life for far longer than the institutions who now exalt them – to be rediscovered as a “solution”? And precisely what problems does this solution claim to fix? This thesis traces what I call the political life of mangroves: the process through which mangrove ecosystems come to be understood as a solution to a series of socioecological problems in the current period of global environmental governance, roughly from the 1980s to present. By this I mean how and why these particular natures become positioned as tools for addressing key global ecological – and political-economic – problems, as well as what kinds of approaches to such problems these solutions reproduce. The political life of mangroves, I argue, runs counter to what one might call the technical life of mangroves, in which mangrove loss and recuperation is understood as a managerial, or calculative, problem within markets and decision-making systems. In this thesis, I make the case for why weaving the political nature of these 4 problems back into the story is important both on its own terms, and to address the problem of ecosystem loss more comprehensively. In opposition to this technical life, I show how the financial revaluation of mangroves becomes positioned as a policy solution to three intimately related and highly political problems: first, to the crises of degraded natures and global climate change. Second, to limited state capacity to secure the restoration and reproduction of these ecosystems in the Global South (where mangroves primarily occur). And third, to critiques that capitalist development is in perennial conflict with social and ecological justice. This last problem is both broad – responding to generalized critiques of the wealth inequality and ecological destruction capitalism produces (“Time for transformation,” 2022) – but is also expressed through ongoing contestation over return-generating conservation finance. Where previous iterations of conservation finance and forest-based carbon offsetting came under scrutiny for threatening biodiversity and community land rights (Holmes & Cavanagh, 2016; Asiyanbi & Lund, 2020; Miles, 2020), return-generating mangrove projects promise “co-benefits'' for local communities in the form of “natural infrastructure,” “poverty reduction” and “food security,” (IUCN, 2012), as well as a higher percentage of carbon sequestration per land area (Jakovac et al., 2020). The financial revaluation of mangroves works to manage these criticisms of carbon offsetting projects, not to the extent that they are truly “solved,” but such that the financialization of nature’s biophysical processes and social relations continues to be promoted as a key solution to these interrelated problems. The mangrove, as the leading edge of the project of “nature-based solutions,” works as proof of concept for their ability to manage these interwoven political problems, even as these solutions remain materially marginal in terms of scale. 5 This political life is not orchestrated from on high, but amassed through decades of debate within conservation reports, academic articles, high-level forums, political critiques, and local movements. But despite the collaged nature of this story, the political life of mangroves, I argue, has become dominated by a primary affiliation with an approach to managing nature through attracting private, return-seeking finance into its conservation and restoration.1 Significantly, this approach is not unique to biodiversity, but part of a broader strategy to meet public objectives through private investment. Cohen, Nelson and Rosenman (2022) ironically call this approach to finance “reparative accumulation,” defined as “an emerging mode of regulation that attempts to stabilize contradictions inherent to capitalism...by which socio-ecological harms are transformed into problems amenable to financial solutions.” This reflects a key conceptual intervention of this thesis: that the historical degradation of mangroves, which positions them as in need of conservation and restoration efforts, is also what makes them available as an opportunity to generate returns. That is, the harmful outcomes of uneven development and capital accumulation become available as opportunities for further investment, this time under the guise of “social” or “green” finance. For Cohen, Nelson and Rosenman, the reparative nature of this accumulation is in certain instances material (a positive social or ecological outcome) but in a broader sense is ideological, displaying capitalism’s ability to create beneficial socio-ecological outcomes – to internalize and address the negative outcomes that it produces. This ideological function helps to maintain the legitimacy of this system despite its production of crises, including that of degraded natures and 1 I use the term “return-seeking” here because official counts of private finance flowing to biodiversity conservation typically include private philanthropic capital. This philanthropic capital does play an important role in the project of return-generating biodiversity finance (discussed in Chapter 2), but here I am indicating the specific effort to attract private capital in search of returns from investments in nature. 6 a warming planet. Such mechanisms aim to show that capitalist accumulation itself can be reparative, and therefore that the best way to manage problems such as nature loss and social inequality is through capitalist development. Crucially, the recognition of this ideological work does not negate the significance of the material impacts this approach may produce in specific locales (e.g., hectares of restored mangroves, new resources for education efforts about mangroves), even when these material impacts remain wrong-sized for the full scope of the problem. Yet in contrast to the constant refrain that figuring out how to “scale” impact is the largest barrier to achieving full potential of reparative accumulation, this thesis argues against reducing the conversation only to issues of scale. Instead, I hope to draw attention to how such projects may not address the underlying conditions driving such problems, exposing in the negative space that which is not reckoned with through such a solution. Need it be said explicitly, my intention is that this work will ultimately be in service of those who seek to address the underlying drivers of ecological degradation and socioecological injustice. In the first part of this thesis, I ask: what is inside and outside the frame of this official story of mangrove devaluation? By laying out the historical context of this degradation, I compare the structural forces that lead to the conversion and disruption of mangrove ecosystems against the notion that mangrove degradation arises from a crisis of cultural value, that is, of a lack of understanding of the “proper” value of mangrove forests among individuals and decision-makers who disrupt them. By structural forces, I mean the policies promoted, and occasionally mandated, by International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and wealthy states in response to the global debt crisis of the 1980s, a suite of interventions known as the Washington Consensus. I show how the processes of economic liberalization and export-oriented development, promoted 7 by these financial institutions, set up the mangrove as “outcast surplus” in pursuit of foreign exchange earnings for primary commodity exports, namely: shrimp. The expansion of shrimp aquaculture – one of, if not the, most substantial drivers of mangrove loss – was supported, both politically and financially, by development banks and Northern states, setting up mangrove ecosystems as (perpetual) collateral damage for a highly unequal integration into the global economy. Such a process drove the crisis of mangrove loss, leading to the need for solutions to mangrove conservation and restoration. As such, I document how the solution to mangrove loss becomes an articulation with private finance (via carbon markets, though not limited to this), and what forces were at play in this transition. In the second part of this thesis, I move from high-level conservation discourse to the actually-existing projects of return-generating mangrove finance. Through project documents, I examine their internal logics, showing how degraded natures and degraded state capacity are both rendered as dependent on private finance for their restoration. I show how this solution has been designed to fit the political-economic conditions created through the Washington Consensus; conditions which are in turn stabilized by the deployment of these solutions. I conclude by assessing the current changes in this discourse to emphasize co-benefits and community livelihoods within the framework of return-generating conservation investment, and where this interest in co-benefits may be heading for the mangrove and other blue carbon ecosystems. In total, I make three observations about what is outside of the frame of “the mangrove” as a policy solution: (1) how the degradation of these natures by post-colonial economic liberalization produces the mangrove as in need of restoration (2) how the associated pattern of state austerity and disinvestment sets up this project of conservation and restoration as in need of 8 private finance and (3) how the combined result is a turn towards the de-risking state as the primary means of securing stable social and ecological conditions after periods of disinvestment. I therefore argue that treating mangrove conversion, or any form of deforestation, as a matter of individual values elides these political economic systems and pressures under which land use change happens, systems which must remain in the frame if such problems are to be adequately reckoned with. I argue that both parts of this story – first, that mangrove decline is driven by misguided values, and second, that ecosystem degradation is driven primarily by a lack of adequate conservation financing – obscure the political economic drivers of mangrove loss, “rendering technical”, apolitical, the problem of deforestation (Li, 2007). Ultimately, the project of “the mangrove” may deliver on certain types of ecological management, and certain types of justice, but these outcomes are decoupled from major structural conditions that drive both ecosystem loss and social inequality (i.e., those found within the organization of the global economy). The consequence of this decoupling is that these financialized solutions to the crisis of mangrove loss depend on a retrenchment of the unequal fiscal conditions that have indirectly driven ecosystem degradation, rather than their repair. This critique is not only made in the spirit of historical reckoning but is also relevant to current debates about how the biodiversity crisis should be managed, who should be responsible for the costs associated, and how to pay for restoration in the face of growing ecological and sovereign debts (Dempsey et al., 2021). In the face of these questions, decades-old calls for payment for ecological debts have been renewed, with calls for many types of redistribution and reparations at play in current debates over climate and ecological crises (Táíwò & Bigger, 2022). 9 Such a conjuncture is an invitation to see the articulation of both crises and solutions as contestations over what is inside and outside of the frame of the problem. The problem of the value of the mangrove, then, gives way to a fuller spectrum view of the conditions that placed mangroves in such a position. Working backwards from this story, we are given an opportunity to understand how the crisis of mangrove loss was provoked, how the problem of deforestation was severed from other matters of global inequality, and how the solutions that get attached to this problem may or may not address the full scope of drivers. 0.1 Following the Mangrove “The mangrove”, of course, is not one tree species, nor even a genus or family of plants. It is instead a functional definition for a group of distantly related vascular plants which may have evolved independently as many as 15 times (Spalding, 2010). This means these plants are not in a taxonomic family, like beeches or maples, but are instead described by what they do: survive where other woody plants cannot, in tidally inundated places surrounding the equator.2 Outside of this shared circumstance, this group is morphologically diverse, occurs on five continents and has contested taxonomic boundaries (Webber et al., in Inniss & Simcock, 2017). And while the functional classification of mangroves is scientifically well-founded, the flatness with which “the mangrove” is presented as a policy solution can be full of slippages. For example, headlines claiming that mangroves “can store up to 10 times more carbon than forests” (McVeigh, 2021) disregard the geographic unevenness of this pattern (Rovai et al., 2018; Brinck et al., 2017; 2 The term “mangrove” is also used as shorthand for the ecosystem as a whole, like how “Redwoods” can be used interchangeably with “Redwood Forest,” with both terms describing more than just the Redwood trees. 10 Jakovac et al., 2020), which is often dependent on other factors such as hydrology (Sasmito et al., 2020), overall species diversity and abundance (Bai et al., 2021; Rahman et al., 2021; Atwood et al., 2015), and even bacterial interdependence through root microbiomes (Alvarenga et al., 2015). That one of the largest conservation organizations in the world has rebranded the (at least) 70 species of mangroves (Spalding, 2010) into one demonstrates the abstraction that makes “the mangrove” available as a global policy option in the face of overlapping socioecological problems. As the diversity of mangrove ecosystems and their relations becomes organized into a singular phenomenon, these disparate ecosystems are able to become a global (rather than site-specific) object of concern, and subsequently, are available as a solution to that which are deemed “global crises”. But amidst the excitement that mangroves might be proven valuable enough to protect, there has also been significant concern about the process by which some kinds of nature come to be “saved.” Writing in 1999, scholar Kathleen McAfee presciently warned that the risk of this type of marketization is that it “abstracts nature from its spatial and social contexts and reinforces the claims of global elites to the greatest share of the earth's biomass and all it contains” (McAfee, 1999, p. 133). For McAfee, considering nature as an abstract planetary resource does not return it to some global commons, but instead concentrates elite power over such natures further, allowing these natures to be used to secure conditions desired by ruling classes. Who nature is being saved from, and for, are therefore contested political questions, not simply scientific or managerial ones. By becoming an ecosystem of global concern (and subsequently “value”), mangrove forests and those who live with them become exposed to intervention by a series of international actors and conservation strategies, with differing local implications, as has been taken up by many scholars (See Barbesgaard, 2017; Hiraldo, 2017). 11 In this thesis, I aim to understand what ideas and ideologies become consolidated when this abstraction takes place. I use the singular of “the mangrove” in this thesis to describe the consolidation of mangrove forests as an object of international conservation attention and policymaking, and to differentiate this idea from actually-existing mangrove forests. While staying attuned to how local ecological relations are constitutive of global conservation discourse (i.e., not treating what becomes “the mangrove” as only a top-down imposition), I am primarily concerned with how a dominant narrative of mangrove devaluation and revaluation emerges. I try to understand this narrative as conjunctural (See Hall & Massey, 2010), that is, to see the story of the mangrove as emerging from many different forces and interests whose alignments are neither premeditated, nor fully aligned, but which still come together at various moments to form a consensus; a reverse delta in which many ideas filter and merge into a coherent (though still in motion) body. Methodological approaches to studying global conservation efforts has been the topic of much debate in the field of political ecology and in related disciplines. Researchers have closely tracked the outcomes of market-based environmental governance through the use of case studies, including elements of ethnographic, interview and survey-based methods. Especially in the context of conservation projects funded and carried out across North-South relations, this research faces the persistent challenge of theorizing agency and distributional outcomes in contexts where power is highly unequal. These case studies fulfill a crucial role in two registers. On the one hand, they have been key in demonstrating how market-based programs can have deleterious social and ecological impacts (Holmes & Cavanagh, 2016; Miles, 2020), resisting narratives of “win-win-win” scenarios promoted by some project developers and international environmental organizations. On the other, they have made important interventions within the 12 critical scholarship, resisting high levels of abstraction of capitalist power, and emphasizing the possible "surfaces of engagement" (Escobar, 1999, cited in Shapiro-Garza et al., 2020) that these projects open up for contestation, which contrasts theorizations of market-based environmental governance as neoliberalism “all the way down.” These latter case studies challenge conceptions of market-based environmental governance as an inflexible hegemonic force, which can risk preemptively foreclosing possibilities for the insurgence of counter-hegemonic values at all scales (Bétrisey et al., 2018). As this project does not follow the case study approach, there are risks of speaking of the revaluation of mangroves as a top-down project without the inclusion of the communities in which mangrove restoration is happening on the ground as “sites in the production of global processes in specific spatio-historical conjunctures, rather than as just recipients of them” (Hart, 2018, p. 373). Glossing over community agency by ascribing project design to only the state or the market elides the role the state and local communities play in shaping and contesting such projects. This, too, has been explored in the literature, with scholars pointing to recognitional justice as a key means by which “traditional practices of territorial management, planning and governance are made legible as conservation activities, with potential strategic value for communities” (Nelson et al., 2020, p. 42; See also Bétrisey et al., 2018). Shapiro-Garza et al. (2020) detail how, in addition to monetary compensation, the strength of the state-led PES program in Mexico was the ‘reconocimiento’ (recognition) given to rural peoples by those in urban areas for their management practices. Emphasizing the non-market values internalized in this process, they argue that “local actors inevitably adapt PES to better ‘fit’ within their own epistemologies and practices of human–nature relationships, concepts of value and understanding of the root causes of and solutions for environmental degradation” (Shapiro-13 Garza, 2020, p. 11). This is in contrast with scholarship which assumes that environmental subjects are made through market-based conservation schemes, thereby risking a reinforcement of the idea that values of environmental stewardship are only ever imposed from the top-down (or North-South), rather than also emerging from the bottom-up in the various processes of negotiation over conservation goals. Critiques invoking governmentality – such Dunlap and Sullivan’s (2020) claim that enrolling local participation in PES projects naturalizes a sense of “intrinsic motivation” that amounts to “social engineering” on behalf of green governance – risk oversimplifying how these values may exist on the ground or be contested and shaped by local actors. Case studies, here, offer invaluable context to the real social implications of market-based conservation schemes as they are negotiated and enacted on the ground. Totalizing analyses of market-based environmental projects may also misdirect attention away from the role of states and other governing institutions in negotiating, securing, and maintaining these schemes and their attendant social and ecological impacts. As Dempsey and Robertson (2012) warn, research on ecosystems services ought to avoid the “caricature that has bedeviled some work on neoliberalism – whereby, for example, neoliberalism is equated with the reduction of state interventions” (Dempsey & Robertson, 2012). While some market-based ecosystem service projects focus on functions that are valued (and can be traded) outside of that particular locale (emissions credits, biodiversity offsets), others emanate from state or state-philanthropy action to protect a locally or nationally important resource through market-based governance – and both require some involvement of the state to create or allow such markets. Shapiro-Garza (2020) emphasizes that the field of market-based conservation projects is variegated precisely because of the conceptual tension “between ecosystem services as a commodity to be bought and sold through markets versus a public good and human right” (p. 14 212). In a payments for ecosystem (PES) services project in Mexico, she finds that the active participation of the Mexican state has led to public good being emphasized over commodification, and that protests and resistance have been able to uniquely shape the orientations of market-based PES projects (Ibid.). These entanglements with the state are not unreservedly in service of procurement for the public, however: in Colombia, Nelson et al. (2019) show that the “regulatory shifts that rescale environmental governance” for a PES water fund are undertaken to the overwhelming benefit of agribusiness and manufacturing. The function of “public” regulations or infrastructures to both procure life-giving services (such as water for citizens) as well as facilitate economic expansion (such as water industry) are clearly not always straightforward in design or outcome. The struggle, however, is for generalization from a broad field of case study literature, much of which does not follow a similar method or scale of observation and must contend with the diversity of market-based environmental programs and their contexts. This generalization has often come in the form of review papers, which have synthesized across case studies to find trends among them (Milne et al., 2019; Calvet-Mir et al, 2015). These reviews, for example, have reinforced the awareness that political context (i.e., strong or weak tenure, institutions, collective action, and state legitimacy) often modulates the overall outcomes of many market-based ecosystem service projects. However, even studies conducted in the same geographical or programmatic area may have diverging results, complicating the ability to draw clear conclusions. For example, in a case study of Indonesia’s REDD+ program, Setyowati (2019) describes how the program presented local communities with an opportunity to “renegotiate political authority, territory, and citizenship,” which meant greater local control over forests and recognition of their customary territory. And yet, studying the same program, Miles (2020) found 15 that the 2014 discontinuation of international funding led to mass encroachment and destruction of local lands. These contradictions point to the often-mixed results of such projects, due in no small part to the fact that the communities implicated within them are not homogenous, and as such benefit from or relate to projects from diverse positions. While keeping the limitations of both micro-scale and macro-scale approaches to studying market-based conservation close at hand, this project seeks to gain insight into the project of for-profit mangrove finance from a view that is somewhere in between the two. One method employed by geographers and other critical social scientists towards this end has been to “follow the object” across a series of contexts and aim to understand the relational nature of its various meanings, whether it is as commodity (Bair 2009), pest (Mitchell, 2008) or gift (Tsing, 2018). But “following the mangrove” in this case must mean following not only the ecosystems classified as “mangrove forest”, but also lifting “off the ground” to follow the abstracted idea of “the mangrove” that exists as part of a broader policy agenda. To do this, I employ the “distended case-study” approach articulated by Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore (2012) as a method to research "global" policy ideas “not simply as fast-traveling, silver-bullet solutions, or as unidirectional ‘vectors' of global policy rationality, less still as some `tsunami' of unidirectional transformation, but as policy prototypes that are moving through mutating policy networks” (p. 22). This requires taking an approach that understands mangrove ecosystems (including their social relations) not simply as recipients of global policy (or market forces) from above, but as constitutive parts of "the mangrove" as a policy model, without dismissing the power relations that do act hierarchically within this relationship. “Following the policy” in this case requires working “laterally” while remaining “attentive to hierarchical and nodal sources of power, asymmetries in capacities and resources" (Peck & Theodore, 2012, p. 25). Such a method 16 provides the opportunity to see the relational specificity and adaptability of a policy idea, while neither overemphasizing these relations in one particular locale nor succumbing to the temptation to ascribe all dimensions of an idea to global capital interests. In the case of this thesis – and likely for any such study of an ecosystem or species in decline – “following” that which is in peril also requires following that which threatens its persistence. In my case, this has meant that “following the mangrove” also meant “following the shrimp.” Like the mangrove, “the shrimp” has been a global policy solution, and one that plays a significant role in setting up the mangrove as in need of restoration. With the understanding that policy is not only constructed through rational choices, but is instead itself a site of political struggle, this approach leads one to try to understand prevailing or dominant ideas within the milieu of those involved in a policy’s creation, and to understand these perspectives as always partial and subject to change. This calls for two key methodological choices which are both employed in this study: (1) a genealogical method, which can situate the historical forces that produce current policy options, and (2) the use of in-depth interviews in which the researcher does not take explanations at face value, but instead calls such explanations into question in ways that may be intentionally disruptive in order to better understand the logic behind such explanations (Ibid.). Further, to take a more meso-scale approach, I also analyze a dataset of mangrove carbon offsetting projects through their publicly available verification documents. This approach is not without its methodological and practical challenges. While case studies on mangrove forest projects are referenced, I do not claim substantial insight into the local dimensions of this policy and its diverse applications. Further, networks are by nature hard to bound or follow completely, the result of which is that “methodological `saturation' is practically unattainable” (Ibid., p. 25). This is to say that knowing where a global policy idea 17 begins and ends is nearly impossible. As a result, I follow the people and institutions who have been central to the creation of this policy idea, and work out from that relative center of gravity. Without falling prey to determinism, my objective is to historicize the emergence of this particular policy within this particular conjuncture in order to understand what ideas or interests are represented within this solution, and what is left out. I aimed to understand this solution by entering into the world of mangroves and their valuation through industry reports, webinars, and interviews over video calls. The documents analyzed in this research include industry or NGO reports and literature regarding mangroves, blue carbon, or nature-based solutions as well as a close review of project documents from one third party verifier (Verra Carbon Standard) regarding all 24 of their projects taking place in mangrove ecosystems. I conducted 5 semi-structured interviews with individuals who are professionally involved in work regarding mangroves or other coastal ecosystem valuation, though these interviews mostly provided background and historical information. “The mangrove” is implicated within a number of other policy discourses, most notably that of “blue carbon” (the term for the carbon stored in mangroves, seagrasses, and salt marshes), and “nature-based solutions,” a term that is broadly used to describe the use of ecosystems to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Despite this broad usage, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has trademarked the term, stating that: “Nature-based SolutionsTM leverage nature and the power of healthy ecosystems to protect people, optimise infrastructure and safeguard a stable and biodiverse future” (IUCN, 2022). Along with this trademark, IUCN has developed a standard to which they believe “true” nature-based solutions ought to be held. And while nothing within the IUCN definition of nature-based solutions indicates an articulation with private finance, this term is very often used as shorthand for 18 ecosystem protection which is funded through return-generating finance (See Herr, 2020; United Nations Environment Programme, 2021; TNC, 2019). The conclusions of this thesis, therefore, ought to be situated within these larger discussions about nature-based solutions in general, especially as they become the latest point of conflict over the abstraction and financialization of nature. Today’s most dominant public debates regarding “nature-based solutions” (NbS) are concerned with the efficacy of such efforts, in terms of both their biophysical and social outcomes. Some civil society groups, environmental justice organizations, and Indigenous organizations are among those who warn that NbS are “false solutions,” that distract and delay from needed emissions reductions, often while facilitating “green grabbing” or other forms of neocolonial relations. For some of these groups, to fall prey to such an idea is akin to being “hoodwinked” (Amorelli, Gibson & Gilbertson, 2021). Such claims are underpinned by decades of research on, and experience of, REDD+ and other forest carbon offsetting schemes that saw detrimental or contested social and ecological impacts (Asiyanbi & Lund, 2020; Miles, 2020). Yet controversy around these schemes does not originate only from progressive environmental groups or academic researchers; in 2020, Bloomberg Green magazine published a cover story admonishing “phony carbon offset markets” (Elgin, 2020) for their lack of measurable, additional impact on atmospheric carbon. Meanwhile, carbon capture and removal technology firms vie for further attention and funding by citing the struggles of biotic carbon offset markets to verify negative emissions (See Charm Industrial, 2021). The struggle of nature-based solutions is therefore set up on this terrain, in which the axis of analysis often runs from sham to savior, as demonstrated by headlines such as “Nature Can Save Humanity From Climate Doom” (Wired, 2021) and “Carbon Offsets are a Scam” (Greenberg, 2021). Though diverse in 19 their vantage points, many are invested in understanding whether this project will work, as well as in challenging the parts of it that they find to be misleading, unjust, or both. The scholarly literature has documented these two poles as well. In a paper analyzing the 2019 United Nations Climate Action Summit and 25th Conference of Parties, Melanidis and Hagerman identify two strands of discourse around nature-based solutions, claiming that participants in their research either felt positively about “leveraging the power of nature,” or else felt that nature-based solutions were a “dangerous distraction” (Melanidis & Hagerman, 2022). These categories, coded through a number of interviews, as well as document analysis, may likely have represented the interests involved in these forums where NbS were being contested. But this study also points to a limitation within the discourse on nature-based solutions: an underemphasis on how nature comes to be repackaged as a solution, and what conditions this solution seeks to address. I mean this not (only) in an epistemological sense, but also in practical terms: what are the conditions under which a “nature-based solution” is made? What part of an ecosystem being kept intact or returned to prior functions elicits some to decry it as fake, phony or false, and others to demand that nature will “save us” from climate change? Part of the answer, I wager, lies in how this “new” relation to nature is structured, in political-economic terms. Who creates, funds, controls, and benefits from this relation to an ecosystem? Who loses, is excluded, or bears disproportionate risks? These questions bring the political-economic dimensions of “environmental” problems and solutions to the fore, rather than treat them as incidental barriers to be overcome or assuaged. Answering these questions in individual cases, but also in aggregate, is necessary for us to understand what is at stake in the debate about turning nature into a solution. By following the mangrove, I seek to do just that. 20 0.2 Chapter Outline Chapter 1 asks: how does mangrove degradation become a problem, one in need of solving via private investment? While mangrove decline is driven by a number of threats, “forest clearing and pollution originating from aquaculture and agriculture are the single biggest factor, accounting for around 47% of global mangrove forest loss” (Bhowmik, 2022). Such land use changes have resulted not simply from individual devaluation, but from patterns of economic liberalization and export-oriented development (Martinez-Alier, 2001), which itself has been facilitated by International Financial Institutions and Northern governments (Hamilton, 2011). Contrary to the hegemonic framing of mangrove revaluation, I argue that it is not a misunderstanding by individuals who live proximate to mangroves that is the main driver of mangrove decline, but rather the political economic restructuring that has transformed the pressures upon mangrove habitat. I do this to situate cultural and economic revaluation as a dominant solution to mangrove destruction and analyze the success of this strategy. This chapter subsequently describes the emergence of the term “blue carbon” and its articulation with finance capital as a solution for this revaluation of mangroves. Chapter 2 explores the political-economic conditions under which actually-existing mangrove carbon projects are crafted, and therefore the economic logics they reproduce. Here, mangrove carbon projects function as a solution to the global “funding gap” for biodiversity conservation, as well as the immediate limits on state capacity and funding for ecosystem conservation and restoration. Examining project documents, I show how these framings of austerity and underinvestment inform return-generating mangrove projects and their structure, as well as the implications of such solutions for how ecosystem degradation is managed. Instead of challenging the conditions that produced such austerity and disinvestment in socioecological 21 systems, these conditions are reproduced through a macro-financial project that responds to finance capital's power over state sovereignty by de-risking private investment in public goods, what Gabor (2021) terms the new “Wall Street Consensus.” As large conservation finance groups (Deutz et al., 2020; Business for Nature, 2022) begin to make calls for state action along these lines, there is renewed reason to be tracking the project of conservation finance and the political economy it seeks to create. Finally, I consider how the mangroves’ socioecological relations are becoming further enrolled in attempts to renew the social license and economic promises of nature-based carbon offsetting, and what this might mean to those concerned with equity and justice within ecosystem conservation and restoration efforts. In conclusion, I argue for attention to what I call shifting political economic baselines, the tendency to take this context, laid out above, as a given, rather than challenging these conditions. Of particular concern is how this project is capable of selectively narrating, and therefore enshrining through agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, which conditions of inequality and ecological destruction need to be repaired, and which can remain. I argue that even as certain notions of climate and biodiversity “justice” are emergent in mangrove carbon projects (and nature-based solutions more broadly), these types of justice are decoupled from the conditions that produced or reproduce the injustice in the first place, i.e., those that exist in the structure of the global economy. Under its current trajectory, I argue that this amounts to what Nancy Fraser (2017) describes as “progressive neoliberalism”: in which the emancipatory political projects, such as the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities, are weaved into the project of economic liberalization and free market capitalism. In her historical analysis of the concepts of ecosystem services and natural capital, Sara Nelson argues that how the problem of “nature” is negotiated is constitutive of, and not merely 22 subject to, debates over economic doctrine and governance. That is, “the environment” is “a political problem that entails ongoing negotiations over the legitimacy of market rule, the role of the state in relation to the market, and the value of ecological stewardship” (Nelson, 2017, p. ii). Rather than seeing the mangrove simply as subject to current political-economic debates, I wager that following the mangrove exposes the broader stakes of such debates, which extend far beyond the current political cachet of mangroves as “nature-based solutions.” The debate over what is to be done about “the most important tree species on earth,” I argue, is therefore also a debate about how global ecological crises incurred under capitalist development ought to be managed, and which types of solutions will be up for the task of “saving the world.” 23 Chapter 1: The Worthless Swamp, Here to Save the World 1.1 Introduction How does the mangrove go from a worthless swamp to the key to saving the earth? This chapter takes up this question in two parts. First, how does mangrove devaluation become understood as a problem? And second, how does mangrove revaluation become understood as a solution to this problem? To do this, 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. Through an analysis of conservation reports, academic literature, and grey literature, I demonstrate how the problem of individual values comes to be framed as the indirect driver of mangrove loss, obfuscating broader political economic drivers of mangrove degradation. The second part of this chapter describes how the consensus around this problem – devaluation3 – meets its solution: economic revaluation.4 I show how the ascent of the mangrove as an object of policy attention is concurrent with the articulation of its potential financial value and characterize the various forces at work that enabled such a transformation. In total, this chapter explains how the devaluation of the mangrove comes to be understood as a problem, one that can be resolved primarily through mangrove revaluation – specifically via investment into private financial mechanisms – and what this frame excludes from the official story of mangroves. What is 3 My use of the term “devaluation” departs from the typical usage in political ecology, where it references the devaluation of assets in responses to surpluses of capital. Rather, as expanded on later in this chapter, I use this term to describe the narrative that mangroves are converted because some group of people has devalued their importance – seen largely as a matter of microeconomic miscalculation rather than intentional recalculation. 4 Similarly, I use the term “revaluation” to describe the process through which mangroves are seen to be a renewed value, both cultural and financial. Though these terms are imperfect, they are the most accurate ones that I have been able to find to characterize this narrative, and, I think, also reflect the vagueness with which the concept of “value” is deployed in mangrove discourse in general. 24 excluded, I show in this chapter, are the drivers of mangrove loss that are rooted within broader political economic structures, structures which are most clearly enshrined during the turn towards economic liberalization and export-oriented development that drove the most substantial period of mangrove conversion. Tracing the process by which these narratives and policy ideas about the mangrove emerge (and what is included or excluded along the way) allows us to understand what their material consequences are or might be; therefore, the second chapter picks up on this question to assess how this discourse manifests in today’s efforts for repairing mangrove degradation through the project of return-generating conservation finance. Central to this chapter, then, is an argument about how the indirect drivers of mangrove loss are understood and communicated, and why that might matter. While identifying proximate or direct drivers of extinction and ecosystem loss has typically been the purview of the physical sciences, social scientists often aim to uncover underlying or indirect drivers that shape socioecological systems. These scholars take a variety of approaches to understand how and why environments are produced. Dominant within the social sciences, and within certain policy discourses, is an emphasis on how individuals and communities relate to, or conceive of, the more-than-human world. Many scholars follow an approach stemming from environmental sociology, which is concerned with how nature is viewed and valued differently by different social domains. Broadly, this approach is concerned with how these social domains “share jurisdiction over the same nonhuman environment, yet they ‘see’ nature in different, and often contradictory ways” (Scoville, 2020, p. 9). These scholars argue that, despite our shared material world, “nature” occupies a specific position or function within differing worldviews, which can lead to conflicts over the management of lands and resources, but may, once recognized, also be leveraged for more effective or equitable environmental management. This perspective, and 25 those like it, is useful in some important registers: namely, it can help to unseat a belief in one correct or universal orientation towards our shared material world, and it can also work to legitimize the significance of “nature” to people beyond capitalist social relations or economistic measurement. As a result, whole fields of study have emerged to document and measure the cultural (Griffiths et al., 2020), spiritual (Cooper et al., 2016), and relational (Chan, Gould & Pascual, 2018) values of nature. Most recently, the momentum behind elucidating these multiple values of nature lead the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Values Assessment to release a report with the headline: “Decisions Based on Narrow Set of Market Values of Nature Underpin the Global Biodiversity Crisis” (IPBES, 2022a). This scholarship has been able to find uptake within international fora for these ideas, especially in critiquing past environmental policymaking for ignoring the knowledge and value systems of Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLC), and successfully making these other value systems more legible within negotiations over conservation at all levels. The emphasis on these differentiated worldviews towards the environment has, however, occasionally been taken up without consideration for the structural forces that produce or affect them.5 The risk here is that an emphasis on “culture” or “values” is not able to fully interrogate 5 Thinking cultural values and structural conditions together is no easy task, particularly at the level of a global assessment. The tension between ascribing values and interrogating how those values inform structural forces and vice versa, can be seen in the IPBES Values Assessment, which calls into question “the predominant focus on supporting short-term profit and economic growth [which] typically relies on macroeconomic indicators like gross domestic product” (2022a) and goes so far as to endorse degrowth as a potential pathway for shifting away from such a focus. Thus, while there is evident critique of political and economic decisions (such as those that prioritize growth), the general theory of change of this assessment is that providing guidance to decision-makers on these multiple values (and “enhancing the institutional and technical capacities to monitor and assess nature's contributions to people” to do so [IPBES 2022b, p. 5]) will produce more just and sustainable outcomes. Though noting that this was not the objective of the document, the assessment stops short of asking what political and economic structures might confine or prevent decision-makers from acting upon such an awareness of values. Thus, while a disruptive document, especially for the context in which it was produced, one can see how the lack of 26 the conditions that shape what choices are available or whose values win out. What happens when these values cannot be expressed or established? When the sacred site has already been flooded by the dam, or the pipeline approval steamrolls community consent? Incorporation of multiple values cannot alone correct for power differentials produced within political economic systems. In many other corners of the social sciences, this consideration is already treated as straightforward: If someone chose not to pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to attend college, or for a hospital procedure, or to buy a home, researchers would likely not swiftly conclude that they do not value education, healthcare, or housing. The extent to which one’s values can be fully expressed under the constraints of our current political economic systems and the uneven power within it is, obviously, limited. Political ecology is the field that has taken up these questions with regard to the environment, with a fundamental assertion that our environment, and the values relating to it, is produced through political-economic, i.e., power-laden, processes, which includes cultural norms and preferences but does not stop there. This field emerged as response to a dominant Western environmentalism of the 1960s and 1970s, which decried overpopulation and the use of finite resources, but without analysis of how the distribution of resources or the production of the environment was determined through political processes of class formation, racial capitalism, colonialism, and other social struggles (Perreault et al. 2015). This type of environmentalism, along with the fields of cultural ecology and hazard studies, are what Perreault et al. (2015) define under the umbrella of apolitical ecology: approaches in which questions of distribution or information or proper consultation on values must be understood within the broader political context that allows certain values to be acted on (or not). 27 vulnerability were obscured in favor of generalized truths about the relationship between nature and society. In response, the field of political ecology emerged with the objective of understanding environmental problems beyond proximate explanations for environmental change (e.g., the forest is gone because the local community wanted to cut down the trees) and instead emphasizing the underlying, often political economic explanations (e.g., the state has reduced the resource base of the community, increasing pressure on this particular forest). To the political ecologist, cultural values are not irrelevant, but are one constitutive piece of socioecological relations, intermingling with the political economic structures that pertain to particular environments. Moreover, “environmental values” are not fixed, and can even be shaped as a result of such relations. Significantly, political ecology rejects the isolation of the “environment” from all other parts of life, instead seeing the environment as central to social relations in general, including as the basis for formal economic relations (what Marx referred to as “metabolism”). Perreault et al. also note that political ecologists tend to demonstrate a shared “theoretical commitment to critical social theory and a post-positivist understanding of nature and the production of knowledge about it, which views these as inseparable from social relations of power […] [therefore] some understanding of the place-based, historically sedimented social relations of production and exchange, and environmental practices is crucial for political ecological analysis" (2015, p. 7). Thus, in addition to analyzing political economic forces in debates about the environment, political ecology’s emphasis on the relations of production and environmental practices also foregrounds “the environment” as a fundamental element of political processes, rather than treating it as the fixed background upon which social practices occur. 28 Political ecology therefore recognizes that the forces that produce the environment are not stagnant or geographically even, meaning that periodization plays an important heuristic role. This thesis is placed in time between the 1980s and the present, meaning that the political economy of the neoliberal transition, and the political philosophy that underpins it, is foundational to how the environment and “environmentalism” is understood in this period. This era, and the tools of governance it produces, is typically referred to as “neoliberal environmentalism”, though terms more specific to ecosystems and biodiversity may also be used, including “neoliberal natures” and “neoliberal conservation”. Major debates within these subfields have to do with how neoliberal doctrine is applied to conservation efforts, including: the commodification of new and different elements of nature, market-based conservation mechanisms, the privatization of lands or resources previously held as public or within the commons, and deregulation regarding environmental impacts (Castree, 2010; Bakker, 2010; Igoe & Brockington 2007). Like political ecology research in general, these scholars are concerned with how the technologies of neoliberal governance distribute the risks and benefits associated with conservation action, as well as the extent to which they are able to attenuate the underlying contradictions and crisis tendencies of capitalism. But where some scholars have tracked how neoliberal ideologies subsequently come to influence environmental management, others contend that the problem of ecological decline was constitutive of the making of the neoliberal era in general. Writing about the transition to neoliberal modes of governance during the latter half of the 20th century, Sara Nelson traces the genealogy of “the environment” as a political problem, situating the emergence of the idea of ecosystem services within a broader contestation of what a post-industrial economy would look like (Nelson, 2017, p. 65). Nelson argues that this shift is contingent upon a context of post-29 Fordist decline: a cultural and economic rupture in which new forms of domestic and international economic organization were conceptualized, including those premised on the idea of "human capital" and the “service economy.” These concepts, and the economy predicated upon then, came to answer “the question of how public and private resources might best be invested in the social networks and institutions necessary for the production of a flexible and adaptive post-industrial labor force” (Nelson, 2017, p. 62). That is, the idea of an economy organized around “services” came forth to resolve the decline of the prevailing mode of regulation and replace it with a new one. Under these conditions, the end of the family wage for manufacturing ushered in other ways of reflecting the value of “women's work”, or social reproductive labor, by positioning “human capital” as central to these new relations of production. But for Nelson, the shift towards the concepts of “ecosystem services” and “natural capital” also ran parallel to this emergence of “human capital,” rather than being incidental to it. She writes that: “While theorists of post-Fordism have focused on the transformations of labor undertaken through the analytics of human capital, they have not attended to the parallel process taking place with regard to nonhuman nature. At the same time that the traditional category of labor was being reconceptualized in terms of human capital, the category of land was being reformulated in terms of natural capital in the new fields of ecological and environmental economics. In both fields, the notion of ‘services’ served to link an expanded analysis of economic behavior with an understanding of new productive forces: on the one hand, those located in the relational milieu of “qualitatively upgraded labor,” and on the other, those located in the more-than-human relational capacities of ecosystems” (Nelson, 2017, p. 63). To many, these categories are therefore indicative of the neoliberal transition, associated as it is with bringing what were previously the conditions for capitalist development (social reproductive labor and ecosystems) into the foreground of capitalist accumulation (“new 30 productive forces”). Within the critical social sciences, there has been much emphasis placed on how the abstraction, commodification, or formal economic valuation of nature exposes those natures (and humans, too6) to the whims of the market, making them more vulnerable, rather than more protected or valued. But, as scholars Rosemary Collard and Jessica Dempsey have argued, this type of analysis “often implies that this non-capitalist ‘outside’ is radical, oppositional to or at least other than capitalism, not itself constructed and woven into – even supportive of – hegemonic capitalist formations” (20120). This is to say that even natures considered “outside” of capitalist accumulation are often still under the influence of capitalist social relations, calling into question whether commodification is the only or most significant dimension of understanding the social relations of nature under capitalism. The approach of Collard and Dempsey, situated within feminist political ecology, expands a narrow focus on the formal sphere of production towards the broader conditions of reproduction for capitalist accumulation. Their typology of value positions (2017) within capitalist social relations – officially valued, the reserve army, the underground, outcast surplus, and threat – helps to identify how structural forces shape these relational positions in addition to (and often alongside and/or in contradiction with) individual preferences or cultural norms. While natures that are officially valued are those that are brought into the foreground of the economy, Collard and Dempsey define “outcast surplus” nonhumans as: “those whose presences do not even register to 6 This has also been a contentious debate within the field of Feminist Political Economy (FPE) and feminist movements more broadly: the extent to which bringing social reproductive labor into the foreground of capitalist accumulation represented further exposure to exploitation of the labor upon which production depends. FPE was established to present a feminist analysis of capitalism, one that does not relegate gender or gendered exploitation to the realm of “ideology, the superstructure or culture” (Mies, 2014, p. 1); instead, it argued that reckoning with non-waged labor should transform political-economic analysis in general. While the comparison between “women’s work” and the “work” of ecosystems is fraught, thinking together with these categories and the roles they occupy within capitalist social relations can be useful, leading to the emergence of the field of “Feminist Political Ecology.” 31 capitalism, those of ostensibly no use to it and thus ignored, allowed to live or die, depending on species (or even gender or age) and how it is affected by environmental change” (2017, p. 91). This is not to say that these surplus populations are not relevant to capitalism, but that they are relevant by the very nature of being surplus – their perceived abundance or resilience is valuable under capitalism because it facilitates appropriation (and, in the case of ecosystems, often destruction), particularly at low or no cost. The category of “wasteland” makes this point clear: if the land is, by definition, without value, it is easier and cheaper to appropriate towards more profitable ends; compare, for example, the difference between appropriating a plantation of a high-value commodity, versus lands without apparent formal economic value. These positions help to challenge mangrove “valuation” or “devaluation” as totalizing categories and orient towards how the position of mangroves under (changing!) capitalist social relations also determines the conditions of mangrove decline or repair. When considering the relational positions of nature vis-à-vis capitalist development, another key tension within the literature is what to make of, on the one hand, increasing attempts to make capitalism compatible with abundant and diverse natures and, on the other, the continued erosion of those natures by capitalism. The degradation of these systems spurred by capitalist development is what James O’Connor termed “the second contradiction of capitalism” (O’Connor, 1991) – a contradiction between capitalist production and the conditions for its reproduction. This contradiction exists because of the tendency towards the underproduction of nature; “under” produced because in his analysis the demands upon nature do not allow for critical natural systems to be reproduced at a rate that can maintain the dependencies upon them. Crucial to O’Connor’s argument is that this is a systemic problem within the organization of capitalism, not the result of bad capitalists or otherwise bad actors, but rather baked into the 32 internal logic of capital accumulation. Though for O’Connor and other eco-Marxists the question was when these contradictions would reach a point at which they were so severe that the system could not continue, other scholars have refuted the idea that such a rupture would prove inevitable, with some arguing that capital’s ability to monetize its own negative outcomes will mean that a true crisis is never provoked (See Burkett, 2006). Without weighing in too much on that debate, the associated concept of underproduction is useful for thinking about how value positions for various natures may change as a result of such a contradiction. In the next section I argue that the underproduction of nature is part of what eventually transforms the value position of the mangrove from “outcast surplus” to “officially valued” within capitalist social relations. How this underproduction is narrated, then, becomes the primary inquiry of this chapter. 1.2 Outcast Surplus My argument in this chapter is that for financial revaluation to become the solution for mangroves (and a series of other crises), devaluation had to become understood as the underlying problem. To understand how this consensus comes about, I identify how mangrove degradation becomes understood as a global crisis, as well as how this crisis becomes narrated through conservation reports, academic articles, international negotiations, and other fora. If degradation and conversion are understood as the direct drivers of mangrove decline, how does devaluation become understood as the indirect driver? What other ideas about mangrove decline circulate or emerge during this time? What this account shows is that structural political economic drivers of mangrove loss were once well-identified by many civil society groups who contested mangrove decline in many places, calling into question the narrative of a universal devaluation. Why does this narrative persist, then? While this dominant narrative is at times ambivalent, filled with 33 mixed messages and actors of many affiliations, the consensus around value does become hegemonic, at least at the critical moment in which the financialization of the mangrove ecosystem is established. It’s worth outlining what I mean by devaluation in this context. This thesis takes for granted that devaluation of more-than-human ecosystems is neither a transhistorical fact of human societies, nor a particular set of actions in relation to the more-than-human world. That is, the use of the more-than-human world by humans cannot be neatly equated with a lack of value or appreciation for it. As this research makes apparent, value is a slippery term; I continue to use it because it is the word that is often used (perhaps for the very reason of its vagueness) within reports about mangrove conservation. The devaluation narrative I am particularly concerned with is that which positions mangrove conversion or degradation as a matter of personal or communal preference, and often occurs either as a pure microeconomic trade off or as an expression of disgust, frustration, or ignorance. Under this narrative, the evidence of mangrove destruction or conversion is seen as a result of these (implicitly or explicitly misinformed) preferences, rather than of uneven political economic forces which determine who has the power to drive the production of nature. To illustrate what I mean by the problem of mangrove devaluation, it is worth reviewing a few examples of how this narrative shows up in policy, as well as public-facing (i.e., conservation organization communications) academic and multilateral reports on the subject. Consider, for example, how Conservation International narrates a generalized attitude towards mangroves, in a piece penned by their then-Senior Director of Communications, Andrew Kolb: “‘I love mangroves.’ That’s a phrase you’ve probably never heard anyone say. Mangroves don’t inspire awe and wonder the way coral reefs, rainforests or wide-open 34 grasslands do. In many parts of the world, they’ve long been frowned upon as dirty, mosquito-infested tangles of roots that stand in the way of an ocean view” (Kolb, 2016). A lack of awe and wonder are to blame for mangrove’s lack of adequate conservation – nobody would say they love mangroves. For Conservation International, these ecosystems have not captured the attention of the global conservation community, which results in their lack of protection (though it's worth questioning if the coral reefs, rainforests, and grasslands are faring that much better). These are the types of narratives of devaluation that are on display throughout conservation communications about mangroves, which call upon a global citizenry to reevaluate the worth of a mangrove. “Until the global community understands the full value of mangroves to humanity,” writes Jennifer Howard, Senior Director of the Blue Carbon Program at Conservation International in a recent piece, “these trees will continue to be felled for short-term gain” (Howard, 2022). But disdain for the mangrove is obviously not the only force at play – a lack of love for an ecosystem does not alone convert it to a different use. To varying degrees, the direct drivers of mangrove loss – shrimp aquaculture, shoreline development, and pollution – do come up in the literature on mangrove decline, notably more so within the scientific literature, and less so within public communications or reports on behalf of conservation efforts. But while direct drivers of mangrove loss are not absent from the conversation, indirect drivers – the conditions that facilitate direct drivers – are less clearly addressed. Sometimes with the same report, the underlying drivers of mangrove decline will be chalked up to a lack of awareness to their worth (and an awareness by whom, we might ask, and situated where in the world), even as they cite drivers of decline which are highly political (and geopolitical) processes: land development, agricultural expansion, and resource use. We can see this in dynamic at play in a news update 35 from Global Landscapes Forum, a Development Bank and Conservation partnership,7 which launched the Blue Carbon Initiative alongside Conservation International at COP21 in Paris in 2015: “Partly due to their mysterious, inaccessible nature, mangrove forests across the globe have historically been undervalued and treated as wastelands – areas ripe for high-impact development, such logging or tourism, or transformed into highly-pollutive aquaculture enterprises such as shrimp farms” (Global Landscape Forum, 2020). This quote names the direct drivers of mangrove decline but ascribes the underlying drivers of that decline to the “mysterious and inaccessible nature” of mangrove forests. Rarely are these discourses specific about who holds these misguided perspectives, and who makes these decisions about value. For example, it is not uncommon for a scientific assessment on mangrove carbon to open with a set up like this one, from the opening lines of a journal article titled “Assessment of blue carbon stock of mangrove vegetation in Infanta, Quezon, Philippines”: “Mangrove stands are perceived as muddy wastelands, but they actually provide a vast range of ecosystem goods and services” (Nesperos et al., 2021, p. 48). But whose waste, and whose knowledge of the services? When the “wasteland perspective” is in fact ascribed, it is often to an abstract local community (or government) who sees the other uses that such land could have: “Even in rural areas, the conservation of natural spaces is often seen as a luxury that has little to do with the well-being of local people—a swamp, for example, might be viewed as wasted land, whose only value is in the crops that could be planted if it were to be drained” - Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Living Beyond Our Means: Natural Assets and Human Well-being (2005, p. 6). 7 Global Landscapes Forum “is led by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), in collaboration with its co-founders United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank and Charter Members” (Global Landscapes Forum, 2022). 36 I am particularly interested in what this dominant narrative leaves out, and how this consensus around devaluation comes into existence in tandem with efforts to conserve mangroves by ascribing them a financial value. For, as seen below in a statement in one of the most prominent global reports on Mangroves (led by mangrove expert Mark Spalding of the Nature Conservancy), this recognition of value is what many of these powerful actors believe will finally protect mangroves: “When the full value of mangroves is clearly understood—by local people, by leaders, and the wider global community—recognition of the need for their conservation will outstrip demands for their continued destruction and conversion” - State of the World’s Mangroves 2021 (Spalding & Leal, 2021, p. 62). I am concerned with how this narrative ascribes values to certain actors, and “local people” and their governments, and with its theory of change in general. And while I don’t seek to dispute whether Andrew Kolb has only met people who detest mangroves, I do find it important to consider the evidence to the contrary of this broader argument, that mangroves faced and face decline because they were not valued. 1.2.1 What Drives Mangrove Decline? Estimates on the drivers and amounts of mangrove loss, including historical loss, are often changing as new data and technology becomes available for estimate (Leal & Spalding, 2022). This section aims to paint a picture of the discourse on mangrove decline, though it cannot attend to all the nuances within these estimates over time. Suffice it to say, whichever dataset one is using to measure mangrove loss, these calculations are significant enough to have provoked a generalized sense of crisis among those involved in mangrove conservation efforts and are today considered one of the most threatened ecosystems globally. 37 Mangroves are said to have once covered around 75% of all tropical coasts and inlets (Farnsworth & Ellison, 1997, p. 328), with most mangrove loss having occurred during the second half of the twentieth century. Despite the lack of consistent data and monitoring, a group of mangrove scientists report that “mangrove losses during the last quarter century range consistently between 35 and 86%” (Duke et al., 2007, p. 41). This range is large, but points to the significant surge in drivers of mangrove loss occurring during this time period; in their review of direct drivers, Farnsworth and Ellison note that “many of the problems we identify have emerged relatively recently, within the memories of our colleagues'' (1997, p. 333). In comparison, the State of the World’s Mangroves (2022) finds a 26% loss of mangroves up until the year 1980 and 10% for up until 1990; between 1996 and 2020 this rate slowed, and there was a 3.4% net loss of mangroves (Leal & Spalding, 2022, p. 20). While the rate of loss is slowing, this rate is relative to present baselines, leading mangrove conservation efforts to call both for protection of the existing remaining mangroves, but also for restoration of half of the mangrove area that has been lost worldwide (Leal & Spalding, 2022). The drivers of these losses in the last quarter of the 20th century are relatively well established and agreed upon. Notably, in their 1974 review paper, Lugo and Snedaker’s perspective on mangrove destruction is far more limited than what would become the dominant narrative of mangrove conversion in the decades to come, providing an important reference point for when mangrove conversion began to be understood as a generalized crisis. Instead of coastal development, aquaculture, or forest cutting, that paper focused only on the potential threats to 38 mangroves from hurricanes and herbicides,8 also indicating that these drivers had not yet become significant threats. In contrast, Turschwell et al. (2020) summarize well what is today the most common description of mangrove deforestation: “Mangrove forests are one of the worlds most threatened ecosystems (Friess, 2016). Mangrove loss is caused by a range of activities such as aquaculture, agriculture, urban development and harvesting of forest products. (Alongi, 2002; Giri et al., 2011; Richards and Friess, 2016; Friess et al., 2019). Beyond direct land conversion, multiple indirect pressures such as climate change (Gilman et al., 2008; Sippo et al., 2018) and associated sea-level rise (Lovelock et al., 2015), altered hydrological regimes, and increased pollution (Alongi, 2002, Alongi, 2012), further compound the stress placed on mangrove forests.” Thus, while some of the drivers of mangrove loss are a result of their direct uses (cut for fuelwood or wood chips) the majority involve mangroves being converted such that the land can be repurposed for other activities. As such, mangroves are not primarily destroyed because of their value as a commodity (though this differs based on geographical context), but because the land is perceived to be more valuable when enrolled in other activities. Indeed, the revaluation of land (and water), the greater value without mangroves, was key to rendering these ecosystems as outcast surplus, and as areas that were more valuable without mangroves than with them. And one of the most valuable re-uses of this land was intensive shrimp farming. Patil (1999) writes celebratorily that "Land previously defined as ‘wasteland’ and left idle is now being developed for shrimp culture. Moreover, since the advent of shrimp farming, coastal land prices have allegedly risen dramatically in Thailand, India, Indonesia and other shrimp farming nations 8 The herbicide in question was Agent Orange, which was deployed by the United States Military in the Mekong Delta to defoliate the jungle during the Vietnam War. According to Lugo and Snedaker, “about 20% of South Viet Nam's half million hectares of mangroves was destroyed by herbicides during the Viet Nam war” (1974, p. 58), though subsequent estimates would be higher. 39 (Barraclough and Finger-Stich, 1996)” (1999, p. 31). But valuable to whom? Land value is, within liberal capitalist systems at least, not a value that is spread out evenly across a population, particularly in comparison to the ways in which access to the commons might be. According to Armitage (2002), among the many imperatives at play in the drive to begin intensive shrimp farming were “state-sanctioned and sponsored worldviews and ideology supportive of intensive aquaculture production and privatization of resource use over traditional resource use and common property systems.” While it would be challenging to give detailed accounts of each nation’s trajectory of mangrove loss, shrimp farming factors into most, apart from coastal African nations where shrimp farming never reached scale. And what is particularly significant about this driver is that it began, in earnest, with a concerted effort to promote and expand it in the 1980s.9 In Indonesia, for example, “The rate of mangrove loss started to dramatically increase in the 1970 when exploitation shifted to new areas outside Java, particularly in Kalimantan and Sulawesi, encouraged by government policies to boost timber production, followed by policies to expand tambak [shrimp ponds] in 1980s and large scale tambak development triggered by increased shrimp price during Asian financial crisis in 1997” (Ilman et al., 2016). The authors note that they expect aquaculture to continue as the largest driver of mangrove conversion, followed by 9 Shrimp farming has a fascinating and well-documented history, confined as it has been to only the last several decades (compared to terrestrial animal agriculture, for example). For a history of the technical discoveries that precipitated intensive shrimp aquaculture, see Chamberlin, in Alday-Sanz (2010). This historical account notes, for instance, that the United States was actually one of the first places that chose to invest in intensive shrimp aquaculture, with a pilot project launched in Panama City, Florida, in 1968. This operation failed to reach profitability. See also Harrison (2012) on the impact of the global shrimp trade on shrimp fishers in the United States following the 2008 financial crisis. 40 palm oil plantations (Ibid.). Globally, this period witnessed a massive increase in farmed shrimp as a share of the global market. As of 2009: “Among fisheries, shrimp is the most traded seafood product internationally and continues to be the main fish commodity traded in value terms, representing about 14% of the total value of fishery products. The contribution of farming to global shrimp production increased by 63% in 34 years, rising from 6% in 1970 to 36% in 1998 and to 69% in 2004 (FAO 2004a)” (Rivera-Ferre, 2009). Thus, while estimates of mangrove loss and drivers vary, shrimp farming is regularly acknowledged as the most significant driver of mangrove loss, especially when accounting for direct losses (rather than loss due to climate change or pollution). Shrimp aquaculture development has also been highly concentrated among certain coastal nations in the Global South: "According to FAO’s most recent aquaculture statistics, the major global producers of farmed shrimp are Thailand, Indonesia, India, China, Philippines, Ecuador, and Taiwan. These seven countries contributed approximately 86 percent of the global cultured harvest in 1995" (Patil, 1999, p. 16). Another source examining a longer time frame states that, from 1990-2004, the top 14 shrimp producers in the world (in order from greatest 2004 production) were China, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Brazil, Mexico, Bangladesh, Ecuador, The Philippines, Malaysia, Myanmar, Colombia, Honduras, and Venezuela (2009, p. 304). Because shrimp farming is so consistently listed as one of the most significant direct drivers of mangrove decline (Spalding & Leal, 2021), it is the driver that I chose to focus on in this thesis. With widespread acknowledgement of these direct drivers in the scientific literature, how do negative attitudes towards mangroves come to be understood as the key indirect driver of these processes? The dominance of this narrative is such that it seems to crop up in even the most contradictory of places. In their review article titled “Mangroves and people: Lessons from a 41 history of use and abuse in four Latin American countries,” López-Angarita et al. (2016) write that “the history of society’s perceptions towards mangrove systems has evolved only recently from being considered as a barren wasteland of unhealthy soils, to being complex ecosystems upon which humans depend” (p. 152, emphasis mine). And yet, in the section immediately following this narration of the present-day renaissance of mangrove revaluation, the authors plainly state that “mangroves played a crucial role in the way of life for many coastal societies,” including sacred rituals and material sustenance for long before this supposed revaluation. The abundance of mangrove forests was so great, according to these authors, that it allowed for some of the first instances of sedentism – the ability to transition from nomadic lifeways – in the areas that they study. That is, the abundance provided by mangroves was important enough, and the ecosystem productive enough that people chose to predicate their lives and settlements upon them. How can this contradiction stand unmentioned? In what is otherwise a rich resource about the many ways that people have depended on mangroves, we are left to wonder how this myth of detestation can coexist with a rigorously researched history of mangrove deforestation in Latin America.10 It of course does not coexist neatly. There is one other key contradiction within this paper that is worth drawing out: that “since 1990, despite increasingly positive attitudes towards 10 López-Angarita et al. (2016) give this insightful detail about how even the colonial forces recognized mangroves for their uses: “On the American continent, the first Spanish chronicler to describe mangroves from a botanical standpoint was Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo in his ‘General and Natural History of the Indies’ in 1531, placing emphasis on their usage by indigenous communities: “Mangrove is one of the best trees in these lands, and it is common in these islands (Greater Antilles) and in Tierra Firme (mostly the Isthmus of Panama). Its wood is one of the best ones around for building shelves, poles, posts for houses, fences, window frames, and doors and other small things…the bark of these mangroves is singularly good for tanning cow leather in a short time” (de Oviedo y Valdés 1535).” This is not to say that there is not a long and documented history of vitriol and destruction of mangroves from settlers/colonists and the governments they formed (See Lugo and Snedaker 1974) but that this perspective is not necessarily homogenous. 42 mangroves and their inclusion in protected areas and conservation policies, mangrove cover has continued to decline due to expanding human activities (agriculture, aquaculture, coastal development), even in the presence of laws prohibiting their removal” (Ibid.). If negative views about the value of mangroves are the dominant indirect driver of loss, why would positive attitudes towards mangroves not be enough to stop their conversion? Across the story of the mangrove, there is often an unresolved ambiguity about whose values are able to change which decisions. It can be seen as well in the Global Landscapes Forum piece (quoted above), which, after detailing the undervalued nature of mangroves, states that “this disdain for mangroves has historically extended to those who make use of them: the women – mostly Indigenous and Afro-Colombian – who harvest piangua [Anadara tuberculosa], a small black clam that lives in mangrove mud” (Global Landscape Forum, 2020), by which they mean that both mangroves and the people who made livelihoods within them were the subject of disdain. Both pieces seem to describe a universal perspective of disdain, while simultaneously acknowledging that Indigenous people were often outside of this perspective – making the question of “who” is disdainful a challenging one to pin down. Eventually, however, López-Angarita et al. hint at the “who” in this framework of otherwise generalized negative attitudes towards mangroves: local governments, with an “ignorance of the value of mangroves in terms of provision of ecosystem services, or merely the attraction of short-term financial gains” and the World Bank and the International Monetary fund who encouraged these attitudes (Ibid.). While the lack of clarity about whose values drove decisions about mangroves is revealing, the issue is not (only) that the “values” up for discussion are presumed to be universal from the position of those in power, but that this entire notion of positive or negative “values” towards mangroves obscures the much more significant ideologies and structures which 43 facilitated mangrove conversion. Across the nations most impacted by mangrove decline, the World Bank and other development agencies promoted and funded the development of the shrimp sector as an export-oriented growth strategy that fit within their objectives of creating greater prosperity through economic liberalization. As Martinez-Alier (2001) writes, “shrimp aquaculture was strongly supported by the World Bank until the mid 1990s as part of the drive for nontraditional exports to repay external debts and to enter the path of export-led growth.” Throughout Southeast Asia and Latin America, shrimp aquaculture was promoted and financed by International Financial Institutions as part of economic liberalization agendas (Martinez-Alier, 2001; Patil, 1999; Rivera-Ferre, 2009). Developments in Africa lagged behind this trend but were continuing to be explored into the early 2000s with funding from bilateral aid agencies (also known to mandate trade liberalization as a condition for aid [Hoekstra and Koopman 2010]) and even corporate partnerships; In 2003, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) “partnered with Shell Oil on a development program for export shrimp aquaculture expansion in Nigeria” (Rivera-Ferre, 2009, p. 306). Shrimp farming fit within this model of economic liberations because it was a way to increase foreign exchange earnings; these foreign exchange earnings were crucial to repaying the international debts (which must be paid in hard currency) that nations had accrued in order to undertake such a development agenda (Rivera-Ferre, 2009). According to Tokrisna and Benheam, “Foreign exchange earnings from export of frozen shrimp increased rapidly during the later half of 1980s and early 1990s'' (Tokrisna & Benheam, 1995), and these earnings often made up a significant share of total foreign exchange earnings from fisheries. In India, for example “marine exports were the second largest foreign exchange earner in 1994-1995 primarily because of high value shrimp exports to Japan, Europe and the United States. Shrimp (captured and 44 cultured) constituted 70.2 percent of total Indian marine export value in 1994-1995 which slipped slightly to 67.3 percent in 1995-1996 due to fluctuations in export prices'' (Patil, 1999, p. 13). The orientation towards the short-term profits and foreign exchange earnings, while certainly revealing about the political orientation of the governing powers at the times, is crucially not only driven by a general sense of short-termism or a misunderstanding of certain values by the government, but also by real pressures exerted by the structure of the global economy upon nations facing balance of payments crises. Many of these balance of payments crises were themselves a result of the colonial structure of national economies around certain commodities, the subsequent fall in price of these commodities (Jayaweera, in Sparr, 1994), as well as biological crises of production. This arrangement was widespread in post-colonial contexts and extended beyond shrimp to other primary products (Veuthey & Gerber, 2012). In Ecuador, for example, shrimp farming was only one of many attempts at transforming socioecologies to meet the needs of export-oriented growth. Veuthey and Gerber (2012) write that: “Cacao was the main export product from 1860 until the beginning of the 1940s. However, from 1920 onwards, a crisis of the production, due to various plagues and falling prices, weakened Ecuador's fragile insertion into international markets. From 1948 until 1972, bananas became the main export products, but, from 1965 onwards, various diseases spread out and brought the production down. The banana boom engendered major transformations in Ecuador's economy and society: the national market got stronger and unified while state institutions and urbanisation developed (Acosta, 2006). The increasing monoculture areas led to drastic land-use changes characterized by the loss of most natural ecosystems in the coastal region (Larrea Maldonado, 2006)” (Veuthey and Gerber, 2012, pp. 614). But instead of responding to the crisis tendencies of these monocultures with diversification, shrimp became the next in this series of export dependencies: 45 “Shrimp is now the most important internationally traded fishery commodity in money terms (Gillett, 2008). The global production of farm-raised shrimps has increased over the last two decades at a faster rate than any other aquacultural products. By 2009, it represented about one third of the amount of shrimps consumed worldwide (Fishstat, 2011). Because of its high economic return, shrimp farming has been encouraged to boost the economy of tropical developing countries. Promoters believe that it can contribute to the world's food supply by compensating for decline in capture fisheries and generate significant foreign exchange earnings” (Veuthey and Gerber, 2012, pp. 614). Despite the instability of reliance on a single crop, using shrimp to resolve these balance of payments problems was marketed by “aid agencies, international financial institutions, and governments as a means by which to increase economic growth, reduce poverty, and improve food security” (Latorre, 2013), and this promotion was often accompanied by financial support for the expansion of shrimp farming industries in the form of loans from development institutions such as the World Bank (Hamilton, 2011) in order to expand economic liberalization, and subsequently manage debt crises and the related 1980s recession. Investment in shrimp farming was therefore a fix to global and national economic crises, balance of payments issues, and production crises from the collapse of other unsustainable and unstable monocultures and fisheries practices. And, as Stonich and Bailey describe, shrimp farming was itself a way to manage the fact that wild-capture fisheries were declining worldwide (Stonich & Bailey, 2000). As a result of this investment, “By 1982, Ecuador had the world’s largest area dedicated to shrimp production, and in only 30 years following the construction of the first shrimp ponds in 1969, 57% of Ecuador’s mangroves had been cleared for shrimp farming. This rapid deforestation was the result of the high international demand for shrimp and the economic incentives provided by the government” (López-Angarita et al., 2016). Expanding shrimp production for international markets became a part of the playbook for a number of coastal 46 nations undergoing trade liberalization and restructuring towards an export-oriented economy (Martinez-Alier, 2001). In many cases, shrimp farming did not emerge alone, but was packaged as part of a suite of interventions made through the World Bank and other development banks on behalf of the project of economic liberalization – of integrating nations in the Global South into a freer world market. The case of Sri Lanka is illustrative here. In 1977, the government of Sri Lanka elected to undergo an IMF and World Bank structural adjustment policy package, which included transitioning from Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) and strong welfare policies to economic liberalization and export-oriented development through a reduction of tariffs, incentives for investment in export industries, privatization of public sector operations, and disinvestment in welfare and social infrastructure (Jayaweera, in Sparr, 1994). Like in Ecuador, the structure of Sri Lanka’s economy had already been shaped around plantation-based commodity exports under colonial rule, in this case tea, rubber and coconut. But under this new political economic structure, shrimp aquaculture was one emergent industry that would take hold as a new method of export-led development, especially as commodity prices for previous exports had dropped, precipitating stagnation (Ibid.).11 Shrimp farming was therefore part of a broader effort to integrate post-colonial nations into the global economy, not only so that exports would flow, but also so that trade protectionism would end, and foreign direct investment could reach these countries. However, as with many other nations undergoing this process of liberalization, the volume of imports increased, the result of which for Sri Lanka was that “terms of trade 11 Like Ecuador, shrimp farming took off in Sri Lanka. By the mid-2010s, Sri Lanka was “Just outside the world’s top ten producers,” with shrimp accounting for “approximately 50% of the total export earnings from Sri Lankan fisheries.” Today, "More than 90% of the harvested cultured prawns are exported, going mostly to Japan” (Huxham, 2015). 47 deteriorated, the deficit in the balance of payments increased, borrowing was accelerated, and debt service rose from 19.3 per cent in 1981 to 27.6 per cent in 1986” (Jayaweera 1994: 101). Sri Lanka was not alone in growing increased levels of external debt. According to Rivera-Ferre’s study, of the top 15 producers of shrimp exports (listed above) external debt increased in all, 99% on average, except for Vietnam (2009). The World Bank still found this project to be a success, however, and advocated for the further privatization of publicly run sectors and increased private capital in Sri Lanka (“Report No. 20430-CE, Sri Lanka, Recapturing Missed Opportunities”, 2000). The objective of shrimp farming was not only to strengthen trade, according to the governments and institutions who promoted it. Often listed in tandem with the goal of foreign exchange earnings in documents from the World Bank, Northern Aid Agencies, and other promoters, was the idea that this expansion of shrimp aquaculture would also contribute to sustainable development and provide increased protein sources for local communities. These goals were explicit: of a 22 million USD investment in 1986 in The Shrimp Project in Bangladesh, the World Bank wrote that the purpose of the investment was to “intensify the production of shrimp, thereby improving shrimp exports, farm incomes and nutrition in coastal areas” (“Bangladesh - Shrimp Culture Project: Credit 1651 - Credit Agreement - Conformed (English),” 1986, p. 15). But with the growing market for shrimp in developed economies and external debts that needed reimbursement, much of this industrially produced shrimp was destined for foreign markets. Part of what made shrimp aquaculture so profitable is that there was a market for it in the North; consider that the shrimp cocktail was a post-war symbol of affluence and leisure in the Global North despite a lack of domestic production, and subsequently became a part of the trend 48 towards “low-fat” diets promoted in the United States and elsewhere. And despite the cheap cost of shrimp in the developed world, they made a significant export commodity for those who ramped up production: “Shrimps are a particularly high value commodity with huge demand in rich markets and they currently account for 1% of the global trade in fishery products by weight, but about 20% of world fishery exports by value” write van Mulekom et al. (2006). Josupeit (in Alday-Sanz, 2010) writes that “shrimp is the most important seafood commodity traded internationally” (p. 838), with 75% of total export value coming from developing countries between 1976-2006, and imports flowing to the USA, Japan, and the EU (Ibid.). Shrimp aquaculture, then, was not only a development-bank sponsored project to capitalize on existing markets for shrimp, or existing fish culture practices, but to create entirely new supply chains, and new ways of relating to this resource and the ecosystem that it was found within. As Rivera-Ferre writes: “In this context, shrimps cultivation was regarded positively by the World Bank (WB) as a potential industry to enhance fish exports from developing countries and promote foreign direct investment. This implied a change in the treatment of shrimps by agribusinesses, food industries, and international institutions, more as industrial products than food (Lebel et al. 2002)” (Rivera-Ferre, 2009). This push towards a more industrial system of shrimp farming not only required the conversion of mangrove ecosystems into shrimp ponds, but also disrupted the existing social relations of production for shrimp. Despite the express purpose of these commodity markets to increase rural incomes and protein sources, smallholder fishing operations began to lose out to bigger operations with high levels of investment, which were oriented towards industrial production for export (Rao, 2004). Where prevailing methods of shrimp farming had relied (typically) on more extensive and sustainable aquaculture without need for major inputs, this new type of production 49 demanded a vertically integrated industrial operation, often with corporate backing. According to Rivera-Ferre “This has contributed to the transformation of a traditional system of shrimp captured at sea and taken to local market into a globalized industry requiring massive inputs of feed, fertilizers, and chemicals with the shrimp being directed into a world consumption system flowing from developing to developed countries” (2009). Evaluating the situation in Thailand, Gronski wrote that "Whereas small growers may benefit initially, large companies and outside interests remain able to relocate operations when intensive developments eventually degrade and collapse a given coastal area” (2001, p. 369). Against the stated purpose of these investments, then, to increase rural livelihoods and wellbeing, these industrial shrimp farms tended instead to produce concentrations of wealth among those who were involved with these vertically integrated corporate operations (including with affiliations with Mitsubishi and British Petroleum – the latter of which is now a partner in a mangrove carbon project that will be examined in Chapter 2) (Ibid.). Such a transformation was untenable without large sums of initial investment, which in the case of developing countries came primarily from external lenders and donors, with this assistance “originating from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Asian Development Bank, African Development Bank, and Japanese Development Bank'' (Hamilton 2011, p. 36), though multilateral assistance for “food security” also contributed significantly to this expansion. Between 1988–1995, development banks provided $686,550,000 USD (Over $1.2 billion in 2022 USD) to aquaculture development, or 69% of total investment (Hamilton & Stankwitz, 2012), leading Hamilton to conclude that aquaculture in developing countries “is heavily subsidized by the international community” (2011, p. 40). In India, for example, "Donor agencies such as the World Bank and Asian 50 Development Bank have approved over US$500 million in loans since 1986 to develop approximately 1.5 million hectares of public coastal wetlands and over 122,000 hectares of coastal land for Indian shrimp aquaculture” (Patil, 1999, pp. 12-13). Thus, the push towards shrimp aquaculture, and therefore mangrove conversion, in the Global South was not only through structural adjustment policy, but also material investment.12 What should be clear from this recounting is that there was a coordinated effort to promote and finance shrimp aquaculture expansion as an explicit strategy for integration into the global economic system and the acceptance of structural adjustment. This rise in the leading driver of mangrove decline would not have been possible without the investment of the international financial community and Northern governments.13 It also seems unlikely that this situation would have emerged without the colonial orientation of economies (already dependent on commodities which were vulnerable to price changes, as well as disease and other outbreaks that arise from monocultures) and the associated constricted fiscal space in developing countries, often due to high levels of debt. While it's hard to speak in general terms without disregarding the differences between all these cases, the economic crises that led to economic liberalization and export-oriented development, and their aftermaths, were a major driver in mangrove 12 For more precise numbers on development bank assistance: “From 1978 to 1983, development banks provided 52% of the assistance to aquaculture expansion initiatives and aid agencies provided the other half (Nash 1987). […] Later, from 1988 to 1995, development banks accounted for 69% of the total external funding and supported 40% of the total projects. By the end of the period, development banks were supplying roughly 92% of external funding, while bilateral and multilateral sources provided only 3 and 5%, respectively (FAO 1997). During that period, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) policy was simultaneously pushing to open the marine and coastal environments of developing countries for production of high-value export oriented marine products and the New Economic Policy of 1991 was approved” (Rivera Ferre, 2009, p. 305). 13 This included aid agencies of nations who were major importers, including Japan, EU, Norway, USA, and Canada (Rivera Ferre, 2009, p. 305. 51 conversion.14 Tellingly, nations with enough fiscal space to avoid making this trade-off often did: in 1996 the Indian Supreme Court passed a ruling to close all coastal shrimp farms, finding “that the costs of the harm done to coastal environments and coastal communities far outweighed the value of any benefits including foreign-exchange earnings, that could be attributed to the shrimp industry” (Martinez-Alier, 2001), though the Indian legislature overturned this ruling next year (Chamberlin, in Alday-Sanz, 2010). The level of exports produced by many nations also required vulnerable monocultures and the underproduction of nature. For example, exports in Ecuador fell from 26% of total private exports to 6% from 1998 to 2001 due to diseases in the shrimp ponds (Rivera-Ferre, 2009, pp. 304-305). Thailand, at one point the world’s leading exporter of black tiger shrimp, experienced a similar crash because of disease, which thrives in the heavily polluted intensive shrimp ponds, with similar collapses in Taiwan and China (Gronski, 2001). Sri Lanka also experienced losses from these outbreaks (Munasinghe et al. 2010). Gronski (2001) describes upshot of this predicament well: "Even though foreign exchange earnings are realized by exporting countries, Skladany and Harris point out that this global restructuring creates two principal contradictions: 1) economic development is based on the super-exploitation of natural resources; and 2) governments must rely on transnational corporations and their highly mobile factors of production as the vehicle of development. They question the ability of a nation-state to manage these contradictions effectively; national policies are usually overwhelmed by the international scope of the industry’s fluid structure. Skladany and Harris foreseen effective strategy to deal with the negative consequences associated with shrimp culture. State power is significantly redefined as TNCs and national firms direct the shape and trajectories of a new global regime” (2001, p. 396). 14 This is not a marginal opinion: “According to the WB [World Bank] and the FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations] Circular No. 343, the growth of aquaculture and its successful establishment as a viable global industry was dependent principally on the effective application of financial assistance and of private investment rather than on other factors (Nash 1987)” (Rivera-Ferre, 2009, p. 305). 52 Thus, as industrial shrimp aquaculture drives the underproduction of nature (in part because intensive shrimp ponds have an average five-year life cycle before new ones must be created [Rivera-Ferre, 2009]), and intensive monoculture leads to disease outbreaks that threaten foreign exchange to pay back loans, governments and local communities become increasingly reliant on the transnational corporations (TNCs) invested in shrimp production to remain. The collapse of these shrimp ponds, and subsequent exits by major producers, can leave local communities struggling and in debt (for the non-corporate shrimp farmers that have taken out loans to pay for the conversion of mangroves into shrimp ponds or other inputs [Gronski, 2001]), and nations struggling to recoup the foreign exchange earnings on which they depend, especially to ensure they do not fall deeper into debt to external lenders. This debt trap can force nations to continue to underproduce their natures, having limited options for earning short-term hard currency and meeting debt repayment schedules. According to O’Connor, there are two connotations to the underproductions of nature, both of which are applicable in this case: on the one hand, real threats to the inputs to production (i.e., shrimp ponds cannot be maintained for more than a handful of years, leading aquaculture to move into new areas) and on the other, the social consequences of the fact that other people want that space for non-capitalist ends (i.e. local resistance). Both have limited the expansion of shrimp farming and called the practice into question. Across the tropics, there was substantial community-based resistance to this enclosure of mangroves, with some groups even going so far as to destroy shrimp ponds and replant seedlings as a symbolic gesture (Martinez-Alier, 2001). In Ecuador, the government act of legitimizing formerly illicit shrimp ponds incited backlash from communities, who felt this “suppressed 53 discussion about the historical illegitimacy of shrimp farming, that is, about the loss of common-pool resources through an illegal enclosure movement led by dominant classes” (Veuthey & Gerber, 2012). In Thailand, “Local and international protests call[ed] for a halt to shrimp culture in Thailand and other major producing areas” (2001, p.369). And in India, the supreme court ban responded to resistance movements by environmental groups and landless peasant organizations, including with the support of Vandana Shiva and Gandhian leaders (Patil, 1999). According to Patil: "Mr. S. Jaganathan, the octogenarian Gandhian and Sarvodaya leader led mass contact programs, protests and public meetings throughout the Thanjavur-Cauvery basin, Nagapatnam and Quaid-e-Milleth districts in Tamil Nadu. With a slogan, “prawn farms are prison farms” he built a vibrant resistance movement supported by thousands of landless labourers, marginal agricultural farmers and fisher-folk" (Patil, 1999, p. 38). There is a clear sense from these accounts that underlying drivers beyond “lack of awareness” have been understood by communities dealing with mangrove loss for quite some time. And moreover, that the value of mangroves is often not misunderstood by those living proximate to them (though it's worth considering how these conceptions of value might not map neatly onto those of various global conservation efforts at the time). For example, one 1997 study of ninety households in the Cambodian province of Koh Kong found that “villagers recognise that activities which destroy the mangroves will affect their livelihood” but that the encroachment on mangroves from shrimp farming forced their community to use the mangroves for charcoal beyond sustainable levels for two reasons: on the one hand, shrimp farming had decreased the total area of mangroves, and on the other, fish productivity declined in part due to this clearing and the pollution from the farms (EEPSEA, 1997). And so, in opposition to the dominant narrative, it should be clear that mangrove degradation is not born out of widespread disdain or 54 ignorance, but, at least in part, of the structures that position ecosystems as collateral damage for short-term profits, particularly to service debt payments and to promote economic growth. These accounts challenge the idea that mangroves are converted because of incorrect values, microeconomic miscalculations, or even because of “decision-making” systems that cannot include the correct values adequately. How do these underlying drivers continue to be obfuscated from mangrove conservation efforts? Of course, there are reasons why this “negative attitude” (López-Angarita et al., 2016) is easier to ascribe in general terms than specific ones, easier to chalk up to a flat terrain of values than political economic processes which have objectives beyond profit (food security, economic development!). Identifying proximate drivers is often relatively straightforward; one can look at aerial imagery and say that this or that mangrove patch was converted into a shrimp pond or hotel. But understanding the political and economic patterns that incentivize or mandate these changes is more challenging to concretely link, especially given the multiple forces that congeal behind them. If the dominant narrative of mangrove devaluation misses so much, why does it matter? I argue it matters because conflating the mangrove as “outcast surplus” under a capitalist value frame with a generalized disdain for mangroves (in contrast to mangroves as an already appreciated, utilized and productive commons) works to support the thesis that the best way to save mangroves is by moving them into the position of “officially valued”, keeping the political economic systems in which that valuation happens outside of the frame. As Rivera-Ferre observed in 2009, corporate-led efforts to create sustainable shrimp farming tended to focus only on the technical issues of environmental problems, while ignoring various matters of local and global politics. As she writes, “Technical solutions do not question the system itself, they rely on more technology and external knowledge to overcome the problems” (2009, p. 314). 55 Mangrove scientists, too, seemed aware of the larger problems at hand. Buried in the conclusion of Farnsworth and Ellison’s 1997 piece is one of the only scientific articles I have seen that so directly addressed the political drivers of mangrove loss. Their call to action to other scientists reads: “Where multinationals are involved in wholesale clearing of mangroves, international pressure must be brought to bear on national governments and international corporations, using the enormous weight of existing empirical evidence regarding consequences of coastal deforestation. Legislative reform is undermined by politically driven reductions in resources, climates in which scientists are discouraged from speaking out against "development," and poor communication among under-funded enforcement agencies” (p. 333). By laying out how this idea of devaluation of mangroves – partial and contradictory as it is – comes from, we can begin to see whose interests it serves before entering into debates about how it finds its solution in official valuation. What could it mean to “value mangroves” differently within such a context? 1.3 Official Valuation In the literature surveyed above, the solution to mangrove decline is often articulated in the same breath as the problem: the answer to devaluation is economic valuation. Under this logic, the past destruction of mangroves remains an issue of incomplete information, not an issue of political-economic power. That is, conversion of mangroves is a result of those who do not know their value, not a matter of political economic decisions and forces, which (as shown above) are driven by ideologies that were far removed from any individual disdain for mangrove trees. Even in instances where the pressures of development (e.g., shrimp farming) are articulated in the conservation discourse, how such changes to the environment are brought about remains a relatively flat process, one that can be solved by incorporating the “true” value of mangroves into 56 the current structure of the global economy. This section follows this idea of economic valuation, charting the winding course of the mangrove into a potentially return-generating investment opportunity. These solutions transform the mangrove under the categories of “blue carbon,” and “nature-based solutions”; both ways to describe actions and functions fulfilled by the assemblages of life that occupy these tidally inundated places in relation to human problems or objectives. These terms alone do not indicate any particular alignment to political economic structures. That is, ideas such as “blue carbon” do not inherently lend themselves to private financial mechanisms. But what this section aims to demonstrate is how these terms came to be aligned with financialization in their inception, and how this financialization aims to address mangrove decline. 1.3.1 Valuation Around the turn of the century, development banks, after coming under significant fire for the social and ecological consequences of structural adjustment programs (such as mangrove destruction) began to change their tune on nature. Michael Goldman’s Imperial Nature (2005), analyzes this trend through the World Bank’s turn towards “green neoliberalism”, particularly through the material and discursive channels it uses to create hegemonic solutions to the continuous “problem” of development. Goldman is particularly interested in tracking the ways in which the latest iteration of the Bank – one characterized by an emphasis on green outcomes and NGO partnerships – emerged as a way to quell unrest in response to the decades of World Bank projects that faced severe social backlash, shrimp farming included. Imperial Nature argues that the popular protests against the World Bank that defined the 1990s, “fundamentally altered the defining features of the Bank’s neoliberal agenda by adding as 57 a goal the restructuring and capitalization of nature-society relations that exist as uncommodified or underutilized by capital markets” (Goldman, 2005, p. 7). Their objective was not only to placate dissent, but to create a new raison d’être for the World Bank and similar international financial institutions to exist and expand. In articulating ecological crisis as such in their materials, and by naming themselves as the solution to these problems, they were able to perpetuate the need for their own existence and expertise to solve such crises. And one of the key ways that this dominance survives is through the idea that environmental services are underpriced and need to be revalued, while being brought into existing economic relations. Mangroves were not first on the list for this job. Despite their “talents”, the science of mangrove services had a long way to go to be included in such categories. According to Lugo & Snedaker, it was in 1888 that the first professional ecologist recognized the potential of mangroves to build shorelines, with key studies to demonstrate these characteristics following in 1903 and 1925 (1974, p. 44). By 1969, research characterizing the supportive role mangroves and other coastal ecosystems played in fisheries were common, which “catalyzed public initiatives to protect mangrove lands” (Ibid.). Further, Lugo & Snedaker note that their observations and research into the use of mangrove forests suggest “a pantropical economic importance of mangroves larger than might be surmised from the available literature” (1974, pp. 44-45). Thus, while perhaps not in the mainstream awareness, the benefits of mangroves, both directly (for timber and food) and indirectly (as shoreline protection), have been speculated within the scientific literature dating back to at least the 19th century. Scientific experiments would take some time to catch up to these statements, not the least because mangrove ecosystems demonstrate considerable variability across the globe. Whether in estimations of losses, drivers, or of ecosystem services, it seems from the literature that it was important to 58 produce conclusions about mangroves in general, despite their diversity. As just one example, Lee (1995) notes that while the benefits of mangrove productivity for offshore organisms had been postulated (and used as an argument for mangrove conservation) 25 years prior, hypotheses about these impacts were only beginning to be tested; he draws on over a dozen studies conducted worldwide to form conclusions about what the effect of mangroves, in general, are on their environment (Lee, 1995). With the sharp spike in the conversion of mangroves in the latter part of the twentieth century, scientific attention to mangroves begins to take on an advocacy role, investigating not only the biophysical elements of mangrove ecosystems, but also the social drivers of their conversion and degradation. In their 1997 journal article titled, “The Global Conservation Status of Mangroves”, Farnsworth and Ellison state that “despite considerable focus on mangroves in the scientific literature, an apparent universal appreciation for their biological and economic values, and the enactment of protect legislation, these tropical coastal forests continue to disappear globally, as a direct result of human activity” (p. 328). Their high-level conclusions are that “communication among biologists and lay people must be enhanced,” and that “government support for conservation and restoration must be strengthened” (Farnsworth & Ellison, 1997, p. 328). Many scientists and conservationists seem to take up this work. The book Mangrove Management and Conservation (2004) is one example: a volume of 21 chapters detailing issues of mangrove conservation and benefit, concluding with a “Mangroves action plan.” The foreword opens with a quote from American conservationist George Perkins Marsh’s 1864 book, Man and Nature: “Man has too long forgotten that the earth was given to him for usufruct alone, not for consumption, still less for profligate waste” (Vannucci, 2004, p. xix). It’s an odd choice: 59 to situate (tropical) mangrove management within the frame of nineteenth century American environmentalism. But more importantly, to signify the importance of the concept of waste from the outset, as a sort of rallying cry for the treatise on mangrove management that would follow. The book lists the pressures upon mangroves from extraction and development, placing the blame for mangrove loss primarily on state priorities, and their conceptions of waste; “most governments list mangrove areas as ‘wastelands’” they report (Ibid., p. xxi). But now these wastelands present an opportunity to governments, as they are soon to be turned into their opposite – valuable lands – for “from the remains of mangroves, under carbon-trading schemes, a new financial source can be tapped” (Ibid., p. xxii). In my research, this was the oldest document I found that mentioned the financial value of mangroves, should they be included in carbon-trading schemes. The bridge to this new future was, as ever, described as appreciation and enlightenment: “A new vision and appreciation of mangroves is needed to reverse this situation. This appreciation must extend to all levels of society – from small coastal communities, to megacities, to governmental policy makers. International agencies must also realize their potential role in enlightening people on mangrove issues, reversing destructive trends, and protecting the existing precious ecosystems” (Ibid., p. xxiii). This vision and appreciation would soon arrive under the darkest of circumstances. In December of 2004, an earthquake in the Indian Ocean triggered a tsunami which resulted in over 200,000 deaths. Eelgrass Scientist Carlos Duarte told me in an interview that “the immediate uptake of the concept of ‘blue carbon’ was due to the fact that in 2004 there was a major tsunami in the Indian Ocean that led to a quarter of a million people dying” (Duarte, personal communication, 2021, October 2). Duarte was a part of the assessment that showed that communities proximate to mangrove forests fared better than those whose mangroves had been cleared. And these 60 studies became the basis for increased attention to quantifying the economic benefits associated with mangrove protection in cases of extreme weather. By the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, it was well accepted that “wetlands provide many non-marketed and marketed benefits to people, and the total economic value of unconverted wetlands is often greater than converted wetlands”, a conclusion reached with “high certainty.” However, the path to official valuation through carbon markets would not be so simple. In 2006 the UNFCCC met in Kyoto, Japan and established the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) which enshrined the principle that money should come from Annex 1 countries or private companies to invest in projects in developing countries to reduce GHG emissions. This was a way of dealing with the issues of limits on emissions for developing countries, one that continued a market-based approach, emphasizing economic growth and the efficiency of carbon credits in developing countries. However, the full carbon sequestration of mangroves was not accepted within the CDM this year (they are counted as regular trees, without their below ground carbon sequestration). As one of my interview participants, also a leading coastal ecosystem scientist, told me, this was because of the challenges of measuring below-ground carbon in tidal systems, such that the science on mangroves’ carbon sequestration potential was not yet fully accepted (Anonymous, personal communication, August 17, 2021). But even though mangroves were seen as limited as a GHG emission reductions tool, the emerging understanding of their value stemming from the 2004 tsunami reports meant that they met the requirement of providing development opportunities for developing countries (a prerequisite for CDM projects), and certain studies begin to take this prospect up. In 2008, a group of Swedish authors consider which type of plants would be best for coastal restoration in Sri Lanka as a CDM project. “An interesting option would be to regenerate coastal land by planting mangrove”, write Mattsson et 61 al. (2009, p. 7), but “on the other hand, the carbon sequestration potential is the least and it would be costly and time consuming to afforest or re-afforest mangrove habitats.” As a result, mangroves don’t win out over coconut palms and home gardens, but narrowly edged out a “highly invasive” tree for third. But this is not the only way that mangroves were being deployed during this period. In the United Nations Sustainable Development Journal, Nurse and Moore (2007) pen a response to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from the viewpoint of Small Island Developing States (SIDS), in their cases, Barbados. They write that it is because ecosystems such as mangroves will be threatened by climate change (and despite the limited contributions to historical greenhouse gas emissions from SIDS) that emissions reductions ought to be more stringent for developed countries. Mangroves are not conceptualized as a potential new source of revenue, but as one of many “life-sustaining ecosystems” under immediate threat from the emissions of developed countries. Nurse and Moore call for a precautionary principle that respects common but differentiated responsibilities agreed to at Rio in 1992. 15 The threat to mangrove ecosystems at the global level was at this point well-established. Around this same time, a commentary in Science warned of “A World Without Mangroves” (Duke et al. 2007). The commentary summarized the proceedings of a meeting of world mangrove experts that had been held in Australia, in which scientists expressed concern that mangroves were “disappearing worldwide by 1 to 2% per year, a rate greater than or equal to declines in adjacent coral reefs or tropical rainforests” (Duke et al., 2007, p. 41). Sounding the 15 The principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) was agreed to by governments at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 but has remained a contested issue in environmental negotiations since. In the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, CBDR is interpreted through the language of Article 20 of the Convention, which describes how financial resources will be allocated to implement the Convention. 62 alarm on the possibility of mangrove extinctions and resulting loss of ecosystem services, the authors argue that what is needed are “effective governance structures, socioeconomic risk policies and education strategies” (Ibid.). Between increased storms, warming temperatures, and sea level rise, there is an increased understanding that coasts, one way or another, are facing threats. But there is also a notion that this concern is not even across coastal ecosystems. In 2008, Carlos Duarte et al. (2008) publish a paper in Estuaries and Coasts titled “The Charisma of Coastal Ecosystems: Addressing the Imbalance.” In the paper, they assess the track record of academic research on coastal ecosystems, finding that coral reefs dominate the category at 60%, with very little leftover for the seemingly uncharismatic mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrasses. The authors also note the lack of media coverage, in particular the finding that only 1.3% of media attention in their analysis was given to seagrass ecosystems compared to other coastal ecosystems. Whereas bright colors and species diversity led to a preoccupation with coral (no doubt spurred on by the 2003 film Finding Nemo, as the researchers note), the paper finds that: “The results presented conclusively show seagrass meadows to be, in contrast to charismatic coral reefs, the ‘ugly duckling’ of coastal ecosystem conservation” (Duarte et al., 2008). The paper goes on to present a figure comparing the rate of loss of seagrass, salt marsh, mangroves, and coral reefs to that of tropical forest loss – another dominant environmental concern of the time – demonstrating that the rate of loss was much greater in all coastal ecosystems than in tropical forests. What conclusion do these scientists draw from their results? That there is an important relationship between this representation and the fate of such ecosystems; they posit that “the lack of awareness of losses of less charismatic ecosystems results in the continuation of detrimental practices and therefore contributes to continued declines of coastal ecosystems” (Duarte et al., 63 2008, emphasis mine). Duarte, Boon (who asked, “will Cinderella ever go to the ball?” [Boon, 2012] of coastal ecosystems), and others who have presented this narrative are not wrong in their analysis of how coastal ecosystems have been treated; the “charisma gap” can be considered seriously, but the theory of change attached to it appears tenuous. Note, for instance, that coral reefs actually were listed as having the highest rate of loss despite having the outsized impact within the media and scholarship, calling into question whether increased media and conservation attention is what protects ecosystems from loss. And yet, the 2008 paper concludes that: “Only increased public understanding can ultimately inform and motivate effective management of these ecologically important coastal ecosystems” (Duarte et al. 2008). Duarte et al. put forward a number of recommendations for how to raise the profile of these coastal ecosystems: more academic articles, more media releases, a website with information and “high quality photographs of coastal habitats and associated organisms” (this was 2008, mind you). And to the immense credit of Duarte, he has seen this transformation through: in our interview, Duarte told me that today, seagrasses (along with mangroves and salt marshes) have gone from the “ugly duckling” of conservation, to the “beautiful swans” as a result of their many “superpowers” (Duarte, personal communication, 2021, October 2). However, in this 2008 report the words “economy”, “economic” or “finance” do not appear. Like the 2007 warning in Science, the 1997 plea in Ambio, and so many of the reports published during this time, the article concludes by recommending work in the fields of both education and governance. The terms “carbon” or “ecosystem service” are also absent from this discourse about coastal ecosystems. But, in part thanks to Duarte, that was about to change. 64 1.3.2 Blue Carbon emerges at COP15 in Copenhagen (2009) “This [inattention to coastal ecosystems] is perhaps because of a “charisma” gap, where these often submerged, out of sight coastal habitats, are not as appealing to the public as their terrestrial counterparts.” - Blue Carbon: The Role of Healthy Oceans in Binding Carbon (2009, p. 35) At the 15th Conference of Parties in Copenhagen, Blue Carbon makes its debut. Months earlier, the term had been coined by the authors of the report “Blue Carbon: The Role of Healthy Oceans in Binding Carbon.” On the cover, the report classifies itself as a rapid response assessment; in what follows, it makes the case for global attention to the estimated 50% of atmospheric carbon cycled through seas and oceans (Nellemann et al., 2009, p. 5). Despite these numbers, the authors point out that marine habitats had been passed up for terrestrial forests in international mechanisms such as REDD; “[t]he contribution of forests in sequestering carbon is well known and is supported by relevant financial mechanisms. In contrast, the critical role of the oceans has been overlooked” (Nellemann et al., 2009, p. 6). But this report hopes to usher in a new era. And despite its broad focus on the range of ocean-based carbon sequestration and storage, this report defines only three ecosystems as “blue carbon”: mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrasses (also known as eelgrasses). Based on my interviews with Duarte, this was a strategic move, done with the understanding that these coastal ecosystems' carbon sequestration and storage capacity could be more easily measured than other parts of the ocean system, such as seaweed, deep-sea sediment deposits, or even marine viruses (which, the 2009 report notes, “have a biomass equivalent to 75 million blue whales” and play an important but [at the time] undetermined role in the carbon cycle [Nellemann et al., 2009, p. 28]). Mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrasses were therefore up to bat in the global climate negotiations on emissions reductions. And while 65 Copenhagen was largely decried as a failure, these blue carbon ecosystems were, finally, more widely accepted during this meeting. Meanwhile, scientists and UN Negotiators were not the only ones at work on making nature pay. Danone (or Dannon) a multinational food corporation was also hard at work to make mangroves investable. The company’s 40-year anniversary video released in 2012, (“Danone: 40 years of a unique trajectory”, 2012) situates the story of Danone within history of May 1968, in which the youth were rising up against “consumer society, capitalism, and traditional values” (Danone, 2013). This is the context in which company head Antoine Riboud gives his “famous” 1972 speech in Marseilles, stating that: “growth has damaging effects on the community and on individuals. It has often sacrificed the environment and working conditions to criteria of economic efficiency. That is why it is contested and even at times, rejected as the supreme goal of the industrial age” (Ibid.). This speech, according to the video, marked a turning point from “the traditional, liberal company model as a producer of wealth” to become what we may now see as the model of the socially responsible business. Following this speech and the reorganization of the company missions around it in the early 70s, Danone became a leader in social business models, promoting investment funds in sustainable development goals, and marketing their new plants in the Global South (focused on nutritional yogurt and baby formula) as solutions to poverty and malnutrition. This continues into the new millennium (oil crisis be damned), and by the 2000s, Danone sets an early target for a net zero carbon footprint, leading to their interest in carbon offsetting as a part of a larger sustainable development agenda. But then, as the video dramatically narrates, it’s 2007 and the world economy is about to collapse. With the coming of this “veritable tsunami” and the fall of Lehman Brothers “Danone immediately decides to act” (Ibid.). 66 But this crisis is also an opportunity. In the video, Pierre-André Terisse, Chief Financial Officer of Danone, recounts: “We have always managed to adapt and react to crises and to leverage crises, to drive change. We have used crises to bring about change” (Ibid). He substantiates this claim with a prideful retelling of how the company leveraged the 2001 crisis in Argentina into a 20% market share in dairy – a stronger position than what they had been in prior to the crisis. And while the video doesn’t make this point explicitly, what follows after this montage is the footage of a Danone executive appealing to about the opportunity to invest in nature following the 2008 financial crisis: “We ask you today to give us your agreement to set up a development fund for our ecosystems” he says from his podium, delivering reassurance that the needs of shareholders (stressed in the wake of the recession) would still be a priority. The Danone Ecosystem Fund is established in 2009, the same year that blue carbon credits were accepted at COP15. With so little of the literature pre-2008 financial crisis mentioning private finance or carbon credits, what emerges after this moment is a significant pivot towards attracting private investment into conserving mangroves and other natures.16 In 2009, the Danone Fund for Nature put on a workshop with the IUCN and Ramsar called: “Achieving Carbon Offsets Through Mangroves and Other Wetlands” (Danone Fund for Nature, 2010). At this point, DFN already had a pilot project with mangroves operational in Senegal. And from this ongoing experiment in corporate social responsibility and social enterprise, we eventually arrive at the Livelihoods Carbon Fund (Livelihoods). Livelihood’s first carbon fund was launched in 2011 (the same year that the mangrove carbon accounting scheme 16 The global shrimp market also suffered in the 2008 financial crisis, with demand dropping in the major consumer countries (See Josupeit, in Alday-Sanz, 2010, including for detailed numbers on how imports changed across countries post-2008). 67 was finalized). Livelihoods frames their work as a triple win: help companies mitigate carbon impact, protect ecosystems, and support communities most at risk from climate change. This report, and the emergence of the first mangrove carbon projects through a multinational company, demonstrate that from the inception of the idea of “blue carbon”, it has been connected with the promise of financialization, and with carbon offsetting projects such as REDD.17 The introduction of this report weaves these ideas (of blue carbon and financial mechanisms for managing it) together as their 1-2 punch: “The aim of this report is to highlight the vital contribution of the oceans in reducing atmospheric CO2 levels through sequestration and also through reducing the rate of marine and coastal ecosystem degradation. It also explores the options for developing a financial structure for managing the contribution oceans make to reducing CO2 levels” (Nellemann et al. 2009, p. 6). Further, the fact that these ecosystems occupy very little land (compared to rainforests, to whom they are often compared throughout the report) is also important in making sense of their cost-effectiveness and lack of other constraints; to focus on “blue” carbon, in contrast, would be, “a very wise transaction with inordinate returns.” (Duarte, in Nellemann et al. 2009, p. 5). This is a narrative that would be picked up by popular media and blue carbon promoters. These ecosystems are small but mighty, and have, according to the authors, been overlooked for more charismatic ecosystems such as rainforests. As ever, public disinterest, or public devaluation is the force against which those hoping to protect coastal ecosystems must fight, rather than the political-economic conditions under which the conversion of mangroves became so drastic. 17 The first recommendation of the Blue Carbon report is that “blue carbon could be traded and handled in a similar way to green carbon – such as rainforests – and entered into emission and climate mitigation protocols along with other carbon-binding ecosystems;” (Nellemann et al., 2009, p. 8). 68 In the opening to Jessica Dempsey’s book Enterprising Nature, an executive from The Nature Conservancy sets up his problem: “No one cares about biodiversity outside of the birkenstock crowd” (2016, p. 1). As Dempsey goes on to say, this sentiment characterizes a dominant orientation to the biodiversity crises: that biodiversity is a niche issue, and only really a concern for those of upper classes. This executive’s orientation to biodiversity, as Dempsey goes on to show, drives much of the efforts to make nature “enterprising”; to have it pay its own way by becoming a return-generating investment. Only with this financial valuation, it is postulated, will people care enough about biodiversity to save it. But as seen through the resistance movements to mangrove loss, many people have shown that they “value” mangrove ecosystems and understand their fate to be bound up with global commodity chains, international trade, and economic policy, including patterns of debt and austerity. Where destruction for capitalist development is equated with a lack of care or appreciation, then only through official valuation will people begin to care about ecosystems. This theory of change is where this chapter leaves off; the next will travel further to see where this project of official valuation has led. 1.4 Conclusion This chapter began by reaching back to situate the position of mangroves as “outcast surplus” within capitalist social relations, and how various declines within this ecosystem type come to be understood as a global crisis of devaluation. It evaluated one significant driver of mangrove decline, shrimp farming, through the lens of political ecology, which sees the production of nature as occurring beyond individual values or preferences to include historical and contemporary political economic forces, including macro-financial policies of trade liberalization and export-oriented development. This chapter then traced the emergence of “officially valued” 69 mangroves as a type of “blue carbon” and how these ideas were born out of debates over how to finance, and who finances, emissions reductions through land use. In total, this chapter aims to explain how the devaluation of “the mangrove” comes to be understood as a problem, one that can be resolved primarily through enrolling mangroves as solutions via finance. Ultimately, framing the devaluation of mangroves as a matter of societal devaluation rather than of specific economic policies that produce increased resource extraction obscures the conditions that produced the “problem” of mangrove degradation to begin with. But by framing mangroves semiotic and material devaluation as a universal moral failing, the comeback narrative of the mangrove avoids giving attention to the actors or ideologies that have incited such conversion as well as the structure of the global economy that continues to create such pressures. Even as direct drivers such as shrimp farming are called into question, the underlying political economic drivers and the specific actors and institutions that demanded (and still demand) this kind of destruction are left out of the frame, rendering technical (Li 2007) the matter of deforestation, as well as the matter of reforestation, which is taken up in the next chapter. The “worthless swamp” and its “wasteland” description are, clearly, socially produced categories rather than transhistorical facts. In apprehending the shifting position of mangroves within capitalist social relations, a key insight from the lens of feminist political ecology is that the category of “waste” does not necessarily represent barriers to accumulation. As Collard and Dempsey argue: “to accumulate capital, capitalism needs the diverse materials and creative forces of natures ordered in a variety of positions within society, not just as commodities” (2017, p. 78). That is, the devaluation of mangroves serves a function under capital accumulation, though this function is different from the mangrove as an “officially valued” object of the formal sphere of production. Moreover, Vinay Gidwani reminds us that “waste…comes to connote not 70 only merely the uncultivated or untended but also the pointless, the misdirected, and the futile; the ineffectual, the foolish, and the worthless; the idle and the improvident; the excessive, prodigal, the improper, the inefficient” (Gidwani 2013); these cultural categories are all used to describe actions that are considered counter to the logic of capital accumulation. In Gidwani’s laundry list we could find a typology of wastes that are ascribed to the mangrove: they were once wasteful because they were not being productively managed through agriculture (uncultivated, untended, pointless), they were mysterious, hard to access, dangerous (ineffectual), and the communities that used the mangroves as the commons for their own reproduction were not maximizing for the full value that could be extracted from that area (prodigal, inefficient). Indeed, Vinay Gidwani (2013) argues that capitalism relies on wastes – like the outcast surplus mangrove – as new frontiers of accumulation, but also relies on the concept of eliminating waste as a cultural and material frame – like the empty shoreline in need of restoration – in justifying the necessity of bringing waste under the control of its logics, as a dominant if not total force. According to Jesse Goldstein, "understanding this shift, from common wastes to wasted commons, provides a key to understanding the production of terra economica as a universal condition of production" (2013, p. 357). Goldstein describes terra economica as “a landscape of wasted potential, in which all of the world is potentially, or not yet, capital” (Ibid., p. 358). The story of “the wasteland,” therefore comes to represent a wasteful orientation, one that can be reoriented towards more proper and efficient uses of the mangrove swamp. This “waste-to-value” pipeline (Dempsey & Bigger, 2019) is of course not smooth, often failing to live up to its promises. But this discourse directs our attention to waste and value as social relations with ideological and material consequences, rather than facts lying around to be uncovered via conservation finance modeling. 71 Tracing the idea of mangroves-as-waste to mangroves-as-value reveals these logics, as well as how they inform efforts on behalf of capital to “assert its normative superiority over and autonomy from other forms of value production that interweaves with it” (Gidwani, 2013, p. 773). This is a struggle, however: Gidwani argues that this “capitalist value-in-waiting” is also its “omnipresent logic of dissipation that evades or exceeds capital’s dialectic, threatening its legitimacy and existence” (Ibid., p. 778). The inability of capitalism to subsume the mangrove as outcast surplus entirely – i.e., the ways that mangrove ecosystems were already part of deep relations with communities, providing value as commons – is also a threat to the legitimacy of the system. Still, neoclassical economists maintain that every market failure is a human failure; the problem of mangrove devaluation is therefore not a problem of the system at large, but of the waste of local communities via unsustainable resource use, the way government administrations have been wasteful via the search for short term profits, the way past World Bank projects were misguided in their calculations because they hadn’t yet adequately priced nature. Understood this way, these past mistakes are also opportunities: problems that can be fixed through increased investment and technical assistance. In 2021, the World Bank ran a feature story on Indonesia’s mangroves, writing that “unfortunately, Indonesia experiences significant mangrove loss annually. The majority of loss is driven by mangroves being converted into aquaculture ponds, mostly for shrimp, in Kalimantan and Sulawesi” (World Bank, 2021), making no mention of their role in facilitating this shift in global production. Instead, the Bank celebrated the tools they were developing for the economic valuation of ecosystem services provided by mangroves. If there is a problem with the intensive aquaculture developments they promoted, then they will be the ones to solve it, if only they can figure out how to raise the capital to do so. 72 Chapter 2: Brackish Conditions 2.1 Introduction “‘What one must focus on is who has the wealth, how fast it is accumulating and what kind of instruments do the controllers of wealth want in order for you to take it. Do they want equity? Do they want to be liquid? Long? Short? Leveraged or not leveraged? Fixed or floating? That is especially what every government, private corporation and quasi-public institution has to figure out worldwide. And once you know that, creation of the instrument is child’s play.’” - Eugene Rotberg, Vice President and Treasurer of the World Bank (Institutional Investors, cited in Goldman, 2005, p. 66) "The mood dropped the last session...maybe it's finance." - Moderator at “Advancing Blue Carbon Action: Coastal Wetlands in NDCs and State Climate Policy” Conference at COP26 (2021) The last chapter described the emergence of market-based mechanisms as a policy idea for funding mangroves, and their associated socioecological impacts. This chapter builds off that story, by moving from the mangrove’s cultural and economic valuation in general to its financialized value in particular. As the excitement around finding new sources of funding based on mangroves services takes hold, how to measure the financial values of their impacts becomes a key preoccupation of those working in the field of coastal ecosystem science and conservation. But despite the impressive estimates of cost-savings on flood damage, increased fisheries, and carbon benefits of mangroves, creating instruments to make a market out of these diffuse calculations – finding a way for them to be owned, purchased, and traded – is not so straightforward. In addition to proving this financial value, then, those seeking to protect mangroves via markets for their services must also contend with the conditions of financial investment – of what investors require. This chapter details how these consequential matters of finance – what kind, on what terms, and from who – become entangled with the project of 73 mangrove conservation and restoration. Understanding how return-generating finance comes to be a dominant solution for mangroves, and under what conditions, in turn sheds light on what kinds of political economic certainties mangrove finance reproduces. In this chapter, I show how private finance becomes reinforced not just as one exciting policy option, but a necessary precondition for mangrove conservation and restoration. This involves turning to the conditions of specific mangrove carbon projects, and to the larger economic paradigms that influence them. In addition to analysis of conservation reports and participant-observation at blue carbon events, I take a meso-scale approach to mangrove carbon crediting projects by analyzing a dataset of publicly available project documents. Thus, where the previous chapter showed which global economic forces have driven mangrove decline, through these project documents, I aim to show how those same pressures position mangrove conservation and restoration as a solution in need of private financial investment. These pressures, as a precondition for for-profit mangrove conservation finance, drive the “business case” for investment in nature and render such approaches not just politically and economically tenable, but also as “the most equitable method” (PD 2842:11) for mangrove conservation and restoration. This chapter argues that there are three key moves that solidify the “common sense” of private finance for mangrove conservation and restoration. First, a context of broad state austerity and disinvestment and its accompanying narrative that, in the face of limited state funds and capacity, private financial mechanisms are the only option for solving the biodiversity crisis. Second, a specific validation of this lack of state funds and capacity for ecosystem restoration within a national context, used as justification for the additionality and distribution of carbon credits and finance within return-generating mangrove projects. Finally, the use of concessional 74 or grant finance to improve the risk-return ratios for investors, which enrolls states and non-governmental organizations into escorting private finance into funding what have historically been public goods and services, including the protection and sustainable use of biodiversity. These three moves demonstrate how “the mangrove” as a policy option is implicated in broader struggles over how both the environment and the economy will be organized. Crucially, these changes are not only being seen in the mangrove swamp. Across the globe, degraded natures are being turned into opportunities for private investment along such lines. For Bigger and Nelson, these overlapping processes produce “austerity natures”, defined by: “socio-ecological conditions by which private interventions on public lands become actionable and investable, in terms of producing landscapes in need of investment and of states that rely on private finance to do the restoration […] These conditions include not only amenable economic and ecological conditions, but the assembly of a consensual politics that can enroll previously disparate actors, united through the shared acceptance that austerity-as-practice has become so firmly ensconced that only private capital can solve the sundry issues bound up in austerity natures” (Bigger & Nelson, personal communication). There are two key points from Nelson and Bigger’s conceptualization of austerity natures that are useful here: first, that the promise of for-profit restoration requires, and is required by, contexts in which state austerity is prevalent; and second, that under these conditions, a consensus forms, “from previously disparate actors”, that attracting private capital is the only possible solution to ecological degradation. My aim in this chapter is to concretely link these concepts, through the example of the mangrove, and to demonstrate how these narratives are reflected and reproduced in actually-existing mangrove carbon projects. As Cohen, Rosenmann and Nelson (2022) write, one outcome of projects of reparative accumulation is that they can 75 cement a type of “capitalist realism” in which alternative solutions to socioecological problems are not seen as possible. Along these lines, I argue that how the barriers to conservation are perceived – from the narrative of the worthless swamp to the technical documents produced for carbon verification – is indicative of what kind of solutions are made. The result of the official mangrove frame, then, is that the solutions to conservation problems perennially focus on “mobilizing finance”, rather than on other approaches that could address the underlying conditions of this dependence on private finance, such as increasing fiscal space for the nations whose capacity is needed to support ecosystem restoration (and this is but one of the possible alternative approaches that is precluded). As attention is directed towards creating new assets and instruments that fit the needs of capital (as described in the first epigraph of this chapter), ecosystem degradation and conservation are placed outside of the realm of political problems, instead characterized them as technical problems, especially as it relates to the design of adequate private financial mechanisms. But as alluded to in the second epigraph, there is some ambivalence: such projects continue to struggle to attract the finance they claim will materialize, calling the certainties of this official story further into question. This chapter aims to break that certainty open a bit further, and consider what other kinds of biodiversity action might look like should they step outside of this frame.76 2.2 The Financing Gap The first move that solidifies the reliance on private finance for mangrove conservation is a context of broad state austerity and disinvestment and an accompanying narrative which states that only private finance can solve the biodiversity crisis. This is expressed most consistently through the problem of the “financing gap” for biodiversity conservation, which is repeated across NGO, academic, and multilateral reports, and conferences. This gap is often referenced as an explicit number, based on contested and changing calculations, but also as an idea: that current levels of government spending – which constitutes the vast majority of current biodiversity funding – are inadequate, and cannot be supplemented with increased government spending. The logic of the gap is that (1) increased funding for conservation is the most substantial way to protect ecosystems, (2) current government spending levels are a fixed reality, and (3) as a result, private finance is needed. The funding gap is usually conceptualized within influential reports from major conservation organizations (and often in concert with financial sector actors), but also makes its way into popular media, finance briefs, United Nations negotiations, and the academic literature (See Anyango-van Zwieten, 2019 for an analysis of 64 peer-reviewed articles on the topic of biodiversity financing). The calculation of the gap is also changing across time. For example, Global Canopy’s 2012 Little Book of Biodiversity Finance estimated the funding gap to be 100 billion dollars a year (Tobin et al., 2012). However, the most dominant number to be cited today comes from the 2020 Paulson Report, Financing Nature: Closing the Global Biodiversity Financing Gap, written by the Paulson Institute, The Nature Conservancy, and the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability. This report estimates this gap at between $598 billion to $824 billion, which would need to be met each year (Deutz et al., 2020). The Paulson Report, and 77 nearly every recent report that has quantified the current amounts of global spending on biodiversity (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2020; Convention on Biological Diversity, 2020b) note that public finance is currently the largest source of funding and will continue to play the most important role in meeting biodiversity objectives. Despite this, much of the “gap talk” still revolves around finding innovative financial mechanisms that can scale up private investment. The Paulson report, for example, states: “Government funding remains crucial for biodiversity conservation; however, with the increasing pace and extent of ecosystem degradation and global climate change stressors, the portfolio of mechanisms for financing biodiversity conservation needs diversification” (Deutz et al., 2020, p. 34). While government funding is recognized as crucial, it simultaneously is understood as needing to be supplemented with private financial mechanisms. Though its fixity is unquestioned, the assumption of lacking state funds is not unfounded. Such an outlook is the result of several decades of neoliberal policies and the embrace of the Washington Consensus – which both prescribed and required fiscal discipline from many governments, albeit with differing degrees of severity. In this context, biodiversity conservation is not the only activity to which a financing or funding gap is ascribed: across the international agenda for climate, infrastructure, agriculture, and more, the inability to fill funding gaps is framed as the rate limiting step for meeting national and international policy objectives (Gabor, 2021). Often, these gaps are put in conversation with the idea that new and innovative financial mechanisms can unlock or leverage new funding for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from the private sector (Ibid.), given the lacking fiscal space of so many governments to invest in these objectives. This approach is not only promoted by large conservation finance organizations or the financial sector. Recent debates on the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework of the 78 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) negotiations have focused on a number: an increased $200 billion dollars a year to fund global conservation (Convention on Biological Diversity, 2021). This number is calculated with an assumption that if all biodiversity-harming subsidies were arrested worldwide (estimated at $500 billion per year by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development [2020]), that there will be $200 billion left to cover. This $200 billion is no small change; consider, for example, the Paulson report finding that “Nature-based solutions and carbon markets” make up only $0.8-1.4 billion of global biodiversity conservation financing for the year 2019 (Deutz et al., 2020, p. 45). Compare this to $75-78 billion in domestic budgets and tax policy that flowed to conservation the same year (Ibid.). Recognizing the complexity of the task of raising these funds, The Convention on Biological Diversity has also commissioned reports on the topic of filling the funding gap – what is termed in this forum “Resource Mobilization.” The First Report of the Panel of Experts on Resource Mobilization (2020a) evaluated the strategy for resource mobilization and Aichi Biodiversity Target 20. This expert panel found a lack of progress in scaling up private sector engagement as a major roadblock to meeting resource mobilization targets, concluding that “a degree of realism is therefore needed about the limitations – under current economic and regulatory frameworks at least – of private sector finance to fill the gaps in funding for biodiversity and ecosystem conservation left by the public sector” (Convention on Biological Diversity 2020a, Paragraph 33). The Third Report of this body specifically recommends increasing public finance: “The public sector should continue to play a lead role in providing a sustained flow of resources for biodiversity conservation, sustainable use and restoration. The public sector should increase direct domestic expenditure in recognition of the level of ambition in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework for achieving the three objectives of the Convention. This will be an essential component of increasing resources for biodiversity, 79 recognizing that many biodiversity-positive projects will need to be financed out of public funds, given the fundamental nature of public goods, and an understanding that, while it will be important to increase private sector finance, this alone will never be sufficient for meeting all of the challenges of achieving the post-2020 global biodiversity framework” (Convention on Biological Diversity, 2020b, Paragraph 27, A). Despite this, in UN Convention on Biological Diversity negotiations, governments – particularly from developed economies – argue that private finance will be necessary for meeting global objectives, specifically because there are limited public funds to support international objectives through the principles of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities. This has meant that of the 200 billion gap, only 20 billion is earmarked to flow as public funds to all developing country Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. The difference, negotiators argue, will be made up via the private sector. The gap is therefore a framework for advancing ideas not only about funding biodiversity conservation, but about private financial mechanisms as a dominant solution to the biodiversity crisis. One might imagine that the acknowledgment of the need for public finance from the CBD Expert Reports would force the question: how do we open fiscal space for nations to invest more in public goods and services? But these accounts of the gap very rarely focus on what it would take for states to fund environmental protection more, including examining the conditions that limit public spending on social and environmental objectives. In contrast, across the different platforms that take up the financing gap, the biggest barrier to an abundant planet is often framed as the limited private financing flowing towards investable natures. What’s more, the rallying cry of the gap is that the public finance that is already on the table must be used strategically to escort private capital into funding state social and environmental objectives 80 (explored further in Section 2.4).18 The result is a widespread acceptance that there is not enough funding for biodiversity, and that private finance is the only way to fill this gap (i.e. the current levels of public finance will not increase). This establishes a common sense about an immutable funding deficit, one that is rarely called into question. As shown in the next section, the common sense of this idea plays an important role in structuring and legitimizing the actual carbon projects that bring this private or philanthropic capital into mangrove conservation and restoration. 2.3 Overcoming Barriers The second move that solidifies the common sense of return-generating mangrove finance is the validation of a lack of state capacity or funding as justification for the need for private finance, as well as the resulting distribution of the benefits from the sale of carbon credits. If the barrier to conservation writ large is conceived of as a global financing deficit, then individual states are where this dearth of available public finance must originate. In this section, I show how this assumption can be seen within project documents from Verra Carbon Standard (VCS, or Verra), the leading third-party verification system for the voluntary carbon market, including blue carbon projects. I argue that these project documents reinforce this more generalized logic of conservation finance – of a funding gap that must be met with private finance – while at the same time relying on its widespread acceptance to justify the additionality and distribution of carbon credits. But this more provincialized “gap talk” also goes one step further in that it facilitates the 18 The conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity is more than just a “state” objective, but as the CBD is a multilateral forum, CBD decisions do affirm state commitments. 81 ownership of carbon credits by investors and project developers, while communities most often receive only “co-benefits” associated with ecosystem restoration and protection as their compensation. Rather than being a source of conflict over carbon credit ownership, these project documents cite these co-benefits as evidence that this solution presents “the most equitable method” to manage the degradation and deforestation of mangrove ecosystems, as discussed further below. Taking a meso-scale approach to mangrove carbon crediting projects, I examined all project description documents for mangrove projects registered or seeking registration with the Verified Carbon Standard, to understand how these projects organize and conceptualize their efforts towards making mangroves investable. In 2020, Verra announced “the first major blue carbon conservation methodology approved under any major GHG program” (Verra, 2020), and in 2021 the organization verified its first blue carbon project: a 7,561-hectare effort in Colombia, developed by Conservation International with funding from technology company Apple (Yale 360, 2021). Verra also keeps a publicly available registry of project documents on their website, creating a useful data set through which to examine the inner workings of these projects as they are conceptualized and rationalized as policy solutions. The project documents were selected because they give information about the material consequences of projects (i.e., how risks and benefits are distributed), but also because they are sites in which logics about mangrove conservation and restoration (i.e., its drivers and the barriers it faces) are consolidated and reproduced. The examination began with a search of the Verra registry to identify all proposed 82 mangrove projects, of which 24 were found.19 Of these 24, only 4 projects had been fully registered by Verra, with the rest at various stages of the registration process (as shown in Column 5 of Table 1). However, it is important to note that even projects that have not yet been registered by Verra may already be well underway. All of 24 of the projects were included in the dataset (Table 1). Notably, a third of these projects (16 out of 24) are located in countries which were among the top 15 shrimp exporters from 1990-2004 (Discussed in Chapter 1; See Rivera-Ferre, 2009). The vast majority of them are developed by organizations located within the Global North (as shown in Column 2 of Table 1), however, the arrangements between these project developers, government agencies, local NGOs and local communities are not homogenous, with various project designs and funding arrangements represented within this dataset. These projects also represent a large range in size of estimated annual emissions reductions (in tons of carbon dioxide equivalent) as a result of various features such as size of the project, local geophysical processes, and the methodology used for measuring reductions (Column 4 in Table 1). Table 1. Mangrove projects in the VCS Registry. Project Name (and Verra Registry ID)20 Main Proponent (and Proponent Country) Project Location Est. Emissions Reductions/Yr (tCO2e) Verification Status 19 Despite releasing a methodology that covers the three main blue carbon ecosystems (mangroves, salt marshes and seagrasses) I found only one seagrass project currently in development, located in Virginia, USA, and no salt marsh projects. 20 In the following sections, excerpts from project documents are cited based on their Project ID, formatted as PD (for “Project Description):(ID):(Page). On occasion, I use “VR” to describe Validation Reports as well. 83 Carbon sequestration in mangroves of the south – central coastal zone of the state of Sinaloa, México (2518) ALLCOT AG (Switzerland) Mexico 3,123,836 Under development Blue Forest & Mozambique: Building Africa’s Largest Mangrove Restoration Project (3142) Blue Forest (United Arab Emirates) Mozambique 2,965,555 Under development Restoring Mangroves in Mexico's Blue Carbon Ecosystems (2842) BlueMX Mangrove A.C. (Mexico) Mexico 868,302 Under development Protection of mangroves and community developmental activities in the biodiversity hotspot of Colombia (2330) WeAct Pty Ltd (Australia) Colombia 460,000 Under validation Mangrove Restoration and Sustainable Development in Myanmar (2088) Worldview International Foundation (Norway) Myanmar 403,831 Registration requested Aztlan Blue Carbon Mangrove Conservation project - Conserving the Marismas Nacionales of Nayarit (2974) BlueMX Mangrove A.C. (Mexico) Mexico 323,590 Under development Restoration of degraded mangroves as a climate change mitigation and adaptation strategy in Asia CPA 1 (3333) Value Network Ventures Advisory (Singapore) Myanmar 322,622 Under validation Conservation and Restoration of the Mangrove Ecosystem in The Gambia through the REDD+ Mechanism (3223) Government of The Gambia and Ørsted Nature Based Solutions A/S (Denmark) Gambia 300,000 Under development Reforestation and Restoration of degraded mangrove lands, sustainable livelihood and community development in Myanmar (1764) Worldview International Foundation (Norway) Myanmar 184,006 Registered Mangrove restoration and coastal greenbelt protection in the East coast of Aceh and North Sumatra Province, Indonesia (1493) Livelihoods Fund (France) Indonesia 124,706 Registered 84 Mangrove Restoration Project with Sine Saloum and Casamance communities, Senegal (2834) WeForest ASBL (Belgium) Senegal 954,70 Under validation Developing climate resilience of the coastal communities of Sunderbans through Mangrove Afforestation (3360) Value Network Ventures Advisory (Singapore) India 935,33 Under development Niger Delta Mangrove Project (3155) everi GmbH (Germany) Nigeria 79,406 Under development Restoration of Degraded Mangroves and Sustainable Development in Myanmar (2792) Worldview International Foundation (Norway) Myanmar 77,130 Under development Climate Resilient & Community Driven Mangrove Afforestation Programme (3357) Value Network Ventures Advisory (Singapore) Sri Lanka 68,027 Under development India Sundarbans Mangrove Restoration (1463) Livelihoods Fund (France) India 51,249 Registered Blue Carbon Project Gulf of Morrosquillo “Vida Manglar” (2290) Conservation International Foundation (USA) Colombia 31,310 Registered The Haidar EL ALI Mangrove Initiative (HEAMI) (1760) ALLCOT A.G. (Switzerland) Senegal 30,170 Under development Livelihoods' mangrove restoration grouped project in Senegal (1318) Livelihoods Fund (France) Senegal 30,000 Registered Participatory Mangrove Afforestation & Restoration in the west coast of India (3361) Value Network Ventures Advisory (Singapore) India 14,097 Under development Zhanjiang Mangrove Afforestation Project (2343) Third Institute of Oceanography, China 4,020 Registered 85 Ministry of Natural Resources (China) Senegal and West Africa Mangrove Programme (SWAMP) (2406) ALLCOT A.G.21 (Switzerland) Senegal 2,547 Under development Hainan Lingshui Mangrove Blue Carbon Project (2568) Lingshui County Forestry Bureau (China) China 2,527 Registration requested Uh lu'umil Zazil-ha Blue Carbon Mangrove Conservation Project, Conserving Coastal Ecosystems in Quintana Roo to Support Life (2976) BlueMX Mangrove A.C. (Mexico) Mexico 1,718 Under development The project documents (PDs) were a useful tool for identifying themes across these projects as a whole, in part because project developers are required (by Verra) to follow a template for this document, and the PDs therefore have many similar sections which can be compared and analyzed for trends. The existence of this template also indicates the role that Verra plays in establishing some of the “common sense” of carbon crediting projects – for example, by requiring certain sections and certain types of research, which may not have been included without such a template. With that said, these documents were not all the same, and some had omissions – for example, certain segments of a project document might be left blank to be completed at a later date (if it was a draft) or there was reference to information in another document which was not publicly available on the registry website. In addition to the biophysical aspects of the carbon methodology, many of the project documents have substantial sections on community engagement, historical context, legal analysis, and financial analysis, which has been 21 In partnership with British Petroleum (BP) (PD 2406:38-39). 86 done prior to submitting this document. Overall, these project documents require significant background research and justification, meaning that some official project description documents reach over 300 pages long. For each project in the dataset, I closely examined three sections of the project document: ownership, baseline scenario, and additionality. I also manually searched for the terms “investment”, “finance”, “funding”, and “capacity,” to ensure I was not missing these themes in other sections of the PDs. The sections on ownership provided information about the agreements that had been reached between those holding the rights to the land and those developing the project, which included legal analysis about who owned the carbon credits in various jurisdictions. While not reported on here at length, these sections generally indicated how the rights to carbon credits had been shifted from those who own the land to those who develop the project, in order for the project developer to sell or retire the credits. This section brought my attention to relevant social context for the proceeding sections, for example, whether the land was owned by the state, in private ownership, or in other forms of collective ownership.22 This section also occasionally provided information about how the carbon credits were being distributed or monetized, and what was to be done with the associated revenues. Once the ownership of the carbon credits was established, the sections on baseline scenario and additionality presented the argument for why these carbon credits ought to be allowed to be sold as offsets. Proving additionality, defined as the ability of a project to prove that its carbon sequestration is more than what would otherwise occur without the sale of a 22 While not explored here, these contexts have been found to have differing implications for the social impacts of market-based programs – see the review by Milne et al. (2019) on this point. 87 carbon credit, requires demonstrating a baseline scenario of carbon sequestration, and presenting a credible argument that, without the income associated with selling carbon credits, these avoided or reduced emissions would not be possible (See the VCS Project Description Template V4.1, Accessed October 2022, for more). As stated in the VCS Standard: “A project activity is additional if it can be demonstrated that the activity results in emission reductions or removals that are in excess of what would be achieved under a “business as usual” scenario and the activity would not have occurred in the absence of the incentive provided by the carbon markets” (VCS Standard V4.3, Accessed October 2022, p. 34). One way that this relationship between the baseline scenario and the project additionality is assessed is through a barrier analysis. This requires the project proponents to describe the main barriers that the baseline scenario (e.g., degraded mangroves) faces to change, in order to show that this baseline will not change without the sale of carbon credits. There are many types of barriers that can be assessed: social, ecological, technical, and those related to land tenure (Project 1493, page 26 of validation report for full list). As both additionality and safeguards have been central to the contestation over carbon markets (Karsenty, 2008; Sills et al., 2017), these sections also provided a window into how such projects resolve these tensions and navigate community and institutional relationships. Because the idea of co-benefits came up so frequently within the barrier analysis, I ended up searching documents for other instances of the term “benefits” or “local community,” which provided information about how the benefits to the community were being described, and how these did or did not relate to the revenues from the carbon credits on their lands. Each barrier analysis was inductively analyzed, guided by the following questions: Where an investment barrier is said to be present, how is it described and how is it justified? Is 88 the possibility, or reality, of publicly funded restoration discussed as an alternative, and, if so, why is that scenario seen as unlikely in the barrier analysis? Subsequently, I looked at how the benefits and revenues of the project were being described, to try to understand where the revenues of the carbon credits were going. Who was receiving the monetary value from putting this carbon credit on the market? Was this money flowing to project developers, to local landholders, or only covering the costs of the restoration project? Who were the carbon credits intended for (if this was predetermined) and how much were they investing in the project? Through analysis of these documents, I identified three key themes: (1) an articulation of investment barriers due to lack of state funds and state capacity (2) a lack of transparency about how profit is shared, how it is generated and where it goes, and (3) an emphasis on co-benefits as the proper distribution of benefits to the community. The picture that emerges from these documents is one of austerity as the precondition for ecosystem restoration and economic development via carbon offsets, not only in terms of the current conditions of such ecosystems, but also as the justification for the “additional” nature of the carbon sequestered, rendering this carbon investable and sellable on the voluntary carbon market. These themes are explored further in the following sections. 2.3.1 Theme 1: Lack of state funds and state capacity poses investment barriers Demonstrating an investment barrier is one way to be approved by Verra, to prove additionality, and to validate the rights of private ownership of the carbon credits (and not, say, as a part of a state’s Nationally Determined Contributions). This is to say that if, for example, a mangrove reforestation project is happening on state lands, but a private investor is coming in to purchase the carbon credits, it must be shown that the state does not have the capacity or intent to regulate 89 or restore the area; this must be shown for these credits to be sold on the voluntary market as offsets. These offsets are largely created by project developers outside of the countries in which the projects take place, with most headquartered in the Global North. Meanwhile, local communities are considered unable (technically or financially, or sometimes both) or unwilling to protect or restore mangroves without the project – they must be, for such projects to prove additional. Many barrier analyses within these documents contained a statement under the sub-heading “investment barrier” like the following: “Local communities do not have the capacity for implementing the project without the support of NEWS [the project partner]” (PD 1463:37). “Although the local communities are interested in planting mangroves, there is a lack of sufficient access to technical and organizational support without carbon credits” (PD: 1764:47). In many project documents, the existence of this investment barrier (for the community or the government) seems to be taken for granted, and only loosely referenced or backed up with evidence. For example, one document from a Livelihoods Fund project in Senegal reads that the investment barrier posed would be overcome “by the simple fact that the project proponent invests in the project in exchange for carbon credits” (VR 1318:22). But in many projects, the lack of capacity to restore mangroves (i.e., why investors in carbon credits are needed, and why the carbon produced from these investments can be considered “additional”) is explicitly named as a lack of government capacity. One can see how the common sense of the financing gap for nature reinforces the assumption that public investment or state capacity could not be capable of carrying out such a project, in a quote such as the following: "Mangrove restoration activities in Mexico have historically only happened with direct government funding. This funding is no longer available or only in limited cases where matching funds can be provided by project developers” (PD 2848:20). 90 That the Mexican government would not contribute money to the restoration of mangroves is taken as a given, but without further justification. Therefore, the likelihood that the investment barrier would be overcome without the sale of carbon credits is presented as slim in the assessment of baseline scenario change: without private financing, these mangroves will not be restored or conserved. Other project documents give a range of evidence; take, for example, this use of past, failed mangrove plantings as evidence that the government of Myanmar is not able to restore their mangroves: "Mangrove restoration has been done only by the Myanmar Government (Forest Department) and a few NGOs with grants but the management of plantings may fail due to financing and capacity deficits” (PD 2088:42). This statement is repeated in all projects developed by Worldview International Foundation in Myanmar (of which there are 4 in this data set). This statement is supported by an analysis of statistics from the Government of Myanmar as compared with NASA data, which describes these past failures: “According to Government statistics more than 100,000 ha have been cultivated by the Government but NASA studies identified only 46,200 ha of mangroves were left in 2013. It is therefore evident that these cultivation efforts have not been successful in increasing the mangrove forest cover in the area. The majority of attempts simply involved planting but there have been practical difficulties in maintaining in the long run and protect the mangroves from external threats due to lack of effective management practices" (PD 2088:42). The project document does not provide more information about how and why “financing and capacity deficits” were responsible for this failure, or if there are efforts underway to improve this replanting effort. However, this is not to say that such statements are ungrounded: in some cases, it is representatives of government agencies themselves that are said to have confirmed 91 that they do not have the capacity to undertake such restoration. Take this description of the investment barrier from a Livelihoods Fund project in the Sundarbans in India: “Investment barrier: The PD provides a justification on the existence of an investment barrier, other than lack of financial results. In the past, afforestation activities have been conducted by the government but on a very limited scale as assessed below in the Common Practice Analysis of Section 3.2.5. One of the reasons is the lack of financial resources as confirmed by the representative of the Department of Forests. Private credits for these activities do not exist in the market as confirmed by the Department of Forests. Carbon benefits would help to overcome this barrier as the main reason for starting the project by Livelihoods are the carbon benefits. Livelihoods, is guaranteeing the investment for the implementation including the first 10 years of project operation. Hence, the audit team deems that this alternative faces an investment barrier which is real” (VR 1463: 24). Investment from abroad, in exchange for carbon credits, therefore, not only overcomes the limits of state capacity, but also recursively justifies the market that delivers this capital to begin with. That is, dwindling state capacity is used as justification for the legitimacy of a carbon credit from the outset of a project. Meanwhile, the sale of these private credits does provide some new sources of money for restoration to agencies which face both limited budgets and increasing pressures on ecosystems. But narratives of state capacity are not only related to the financing of mangrove restoration directly. In the same project of Livelihoods Fund in India (notably, one of their first, launched in 2011), the project document’s barrier analysis also notes the lack of state capacity when relating to what they describe as the social barriers facing mangrove restoration. That is, they state that the government lacks capacity to even engage local stakeholders, which limits the success of the mangrove restoration project, and therefore supports the basis for the sale of carbon credits by the project developer. See below: “Such social barriers are primarily related to a lack of transparent government capacity to engage with stakeholders. The lack of capacity has been documented in recent World 92 Bank assessments, which generally identify inadequate training, inadequate intergovernmental coordination, and inadequate budgetary resources for the weakness on the government institutional side” (PD 1463:38). While it’s hard to place these differing narratives into neat categories, I found that roughly half (12) of the 24 project documents named a lack of state funds and capacity directly as a barrier to mangrove conservation and restoration efforts. Table 2 shows an example of how these narratives show up across the projects in the dataset. Table 2. Investment barrier descriptions in VCS mangrove project documents (sorted from most estimated annual emissions reductions to least). Project by Country and ID Identified Investment Barrier? Lack of state funding or capacity23 Mexico - 2518 Y Does not explicitly name government failure, but states that: “Smaller projects were implemented in the area, but it is known that the management of plantings failed due to lack of technological capacity and financing” (PD 2518:36) Mozambique - 3142 X N/A: No Investment Analysis Mexico - 2842 Y "Mangrove restoration activities in Mexico have historically only happened with direct government funding. This funding is no longer available or only in limited cases where matching funds can be provided by project developers” (PD 2848:20) 23 For this table, I indicated lack of state capacity or funding only where the state or the government was explicitly mentioned. Where a project stated that mangrove restoration required carbon finance (e.g., “It is therefore unlikely that the mangrove restoration and the project would have occurred in the absence of carbon finance (PD 3361:89), but it was not indicated as referencing a lack of financing from the state, I did not count this as a direct reference to an investment barrier or a lack of state capacity or funding. Some language within the project documents could be described as within a gray zone here; in that case, I quoted the material directly, but with the caveat that the state or government was not implicated by name. 93 Colombia - 2330 X N/A: Section missing from project document. Myanmar - 2088 Y "The Government of Myanmar also have identified the importance of mangrove forests but it’s effort to reforest have faced number of constraints including financial support and maintaining the established plantations” (PD 2088:45) Mexico - 2974 N Myanmar - 3333 Y “While the Government of Myanmar has initiated participatory policies such as Community Forestry (1995) and Private Planting in 2006, only a small area has been planted. As of 2017, 3551 ha has been planted under community forestry and 1037 ha under private plantations have been established. The local communities lack the financial strength to restore mangroves on their own due to poor finances” (PD 3333:67) The Gambia - 3223 Y This project is initiated by the Government of The Gambia. Their document states: “Smaller mangrove restoration activities funded by other entities has previously taken place in the Gambia, but the scope of these projects have been local, and the funding provided not sufficient for funding a larger scale restoration of mangrove habitats in The Gambia as those proposed by this project” (PD 3223: 50) Myanmar - 1764 Y “As explained above, mangrove restoration has been done only by the Myanmar Government (Forest Department) and a few NGOs with grants but the management of plantings may fail due to financing and capacity deficits. According to Government statistics more than 100,000 ha have been cultivated by the Government but NASA studies identified only 46,200 ha of mangroves were left in 2013. It is therefore evident that these cultivation efforts have not been successful in increasing the mangrove forest cover in the area. The majority of attempts simply involved planting but there have been practical difficulties in maintaining in the long run and protect the mangroves from external threats due to lack of effective management practices” (PD 1764:46) Indonesia - 1493 Y “In the past, afforestation activities have been conducted by the government and other entities, but on a very limited scale as assessed below in the Common Practice Analysis of 94 Section 3.2.5. One of the reasons for this is the lack of financial resources as confirmed by the director of the Environmental Board and community leaders” (PD 1493:27) Senegal - 2834 Y Doesn’t name the government, but states that: “Other smaller projects were developed in Senegal. However, even in projects that secured funding for the planting phase, plantation management failed in later years due to lack of long-term financing” (PD 2834: 92) India - 3360 Y “Currently, the plantation that has already happened in the area by the Forest Department and other agencies does not have a plan for monitoring of survival or replanting…the state led initiative is facing some criticism” (PD 3360:41) Nigeria - 3155 Y “The Niger Delta Development Commission [a Federal Government Agency] was established in 2000 to develop Niger Delta region with a vision to offer a solution to socio-economic difficulties of the Niger Delta region. However, the stride of the commission does not presuppose that all is well. The organization is threatened by several problems being inadequate funding, corruption, lack of political will, no environmentally sustainable development emphasis, weak monitoring and enforcement capacity, few appropriately trained staff, etc” (PD 3155:63) Myanmar - 2792 Y "As previously stated, mangrove restoration has mostly been carried out by the Myanmar government (Forest Department) and a few NGOs with funds, but due to financial and capacity constraints, the management of plantings may fail” (PD 2792:51) Sri Lanka - 3357 Y “Currently, the plantation that has already happened in the area by other agencies does not have a plan for monitoring of survival or replanting. Previous restoration activities have been taken up by the government and NGOs in the degraded mangroves of the region” (PD 3357:50) India - 1463 Y “Within the transition zone outside of the Biosphere Reserve where this NEWS project is being implemented the project activity is the “first of its kind” especially considering the community involvement and participation approach during establishment, management, protection and monitoring. This is in contrast to the efforts undertaken by the Forest Department where plantations are established, guarded and monitored by the Forest 95 Department and where mangrove plantations are not maintained after the first two years (Vyas and Sengupta 2012)” (PD 1463: 39); also see quote above in text Colombia - 2290 Y This is one of the most thorough project documents, in which the project developers outline the financial outlook for a number of quasi-governmental institutions that carry out mangrove restoration work in line with state objectives in Colombia. This makes it hard to summarize quickly, but the outlook here is generally the same: not enough financing to continue the needed projects. The project document states: “The main reason for not complying with the requirements of the DMI [the protected area] is the insufficient budget available to the regional environmental authorities. This means that there is inadequate funding for the salaries for the staff required to perform technical and administrative tasks, ensure safe conduct, do follow-up visits, carry out monitoring and forest monitoring of the DMI, among other tasks” (PD 2290:172-173); it’s interesting to note that they also mention the lack of state capacity as an underlying driver of mangrove deforestation – due to lack of personnel, community members cannot access permits for legal wood harvesting in a timely fashion, leading to further illegal harvesting. Senegal - 1760 N Senegal - 1318 Y Does not explicitly name the government, but states that: “Smaller projects were implemented in the area, previous to the proposed Project, but even in cases where the establishment phase was financed, the management of plantings failed in later years due to financing and capacity deficits” (PD 1318:34) India - 3361 N China - 2343 N Senegal - 2406 Y Does not explicitly name the government, but states that: “Smaller projects were implemented in the area, but it is known that the management of plantings failed due to lack of technological capacity and financing. For the SWAMP project, the activities will cover the financing and support needed, providing appropriate implementation and correct management of the mangrove ecosystems [...] This means that the communities need the support of 96 ALLCOT to establish and maintain the restoration and conservation activities” (PD 2406:38-39) China - 2568 N Mexico - 2976 N It is not only state capacity that is described as lacking in these project documents, but also domestic lending. International finance, in particular, is deemed necessary for these projects to work. A project document from one of the small-scale mangrove restoration projects in Myanmar elaborates on the need for international finance as follows: “Mangrove reforestation financing are being rejected by Myanmar's banks. The reasons include the risk of the nature of the project and the unavailability of assets for the specific project” (PD 2792:50). There is neither state capacity to execute this project via state agencies (as they describe in other sections of this document), nor capital within the nation willing to support these projects. As these project documents make clear, because these aren’t profitable investments in typical terms, it’s challenging to secure loans for them in general. A project document from a Senegal-based mangrove project says in its investment barrier analysis: “No commercial loans are available in Senegal or in general in the world for activities without revenue.” It feels almost like a joke when one reads this statement. The question remains, then: what makes Northern project developers and investors able to overcome these barriers, while positioning this project as one of return-generating finance? From where does their cut of the profits originate? 97 2.3.2 Theme 2: Documents lack transparency about how revenues are shared In order for the investment barrier to be overcome, the carbon credits created through these activities must be able to generate returns of some kind: someone must be willing to pay for them, whether this is on an open market, or through a specific company retiring the credits to reach their net zero objectives. However, the profit side of this arrangement is surprisingly hard to track via the project documents alone. In my analysis of these documents, I asked: who owns or has the rights to this resource, what do they give it away for, and on what terms? But there was typically no budget that showed the breakdown of funds, of how much private investment is entering this arrangement, or how much in revenues are expected to go to various groups involved in the project. It is not clear how much profit is flowing to whom, and, if the project fails, who will be on the hook for the lack of profits, or for the carbon credits, the integrity of which may be at risk. Though this picture is still unclear, I was able to identify a few themes about how benefits are distributed, and what direct benefits flow to local communities versus investors and project proponents. As a precondition for registration, each VCS project needs to demonstrate how they have the rights to own and sell the carbon credits which are associated with the project. In many of the nations in which these projects take place, all mangroves are protected by, or owned by, the government. But in some, there are other forms of community land ownership or management that must also be navigated. After ownership is established through legal analysis, there is sometimes a description of how these ownership rights will be resolved through the project. The sections describing this element of the project are highly variable across documents; below is one 98 of the more detailed accounts of this process (note that there are some grammatical errors; they have been kept in transcription): “TRCC, the local NGO will organize and manage the project implementation in association with the local communities, This includes signing carbon waiver with the local councils for carbon waiver and working in partnership with the local forest department which is providing all the technical assistance to the project activity. EVERI and TRCC has signed consultant agreement for development of carbon credits and raising initial fund for the planting and maintenance expenses for the project activity. EVERI will be will be responsible for development of the carbon credits and selling the credits in the international carbon markets. The carbon revenue generated by the project will be used to implement the project and and management of the projects during the project lifetime” (PD 3155:40). This last sentence is indicative of a broader trend among project documents: that the revenues generated from the sale of carbon credits would flow towards just covering the costs of implementing the project. This would include the costs of mangrove restoration efforts, for example, but could also include “alternative livelihood activities,” which purported to provide some kind of development or economic opportunity to community members who were dependent on the mangrove ecosystems or the activities which threatened them. However, the reliance on this common refrain (that carbon revenues financing the project) also meant that few projects are explicit about what amount of carbon revenues are flowing back to the community (and almost none provide information about what that community is, and how the revenues are distributed among them). One of the only projects that puts a specific number to this distribution of revenues can be seen below: “Taking into account the communities that have plantation areas within their territories, collaboration agreements have been signed between them and WeForest. An agreement has also been signed with the government of Senegal (who owns the land), to carry out the project without legal impediments. This project aims to return 10% of the benefits generated by the sale of carbon credits to the communities so that they can also enjoy the 99 benefits of managing their resources. This fact is reflected in each of the signed Agreements” (PD 2834:47). It’s unclear whether this 10% will be returned as “benefits” or as monetary revenues (an issue discussed further in the next section). While a review of the norms of revenue distribution within market-based environmental mechanisms is outside of the scope of this thesis, one expert I spoke with described this number as “paltry.” Yet to have any clarity about this agreement marked this project as an outlier, as many did not indicate whether communities would receive any monetary compensation or how much.24 In a project in Mexico, for example, landowners would get a share of the carbon finance, but it was not stated what percentage or how much: "In addition to restoring and reforesting degraded mangrove areas at no cost to the landowner, BlueMX will share in the carbon finance with the landowner" (PD 2842:5). This was likely because, as the project documents note, "A professional legal analysis has confirmed that the landowners have the exclusive rights to all environmental services provided by their land, including any ecosystem payments that cover the cost of restoring and planting mangroves in exchange for the carbon reduction benefits" (PD 2842:5). In other contexts, ownership is merely waived: “The initial project activity instances are located in 1000 ha across 12 districts of Sri Lanka. The lands are a mix of community and private lands. The project proponent has signed agreements with the owner/rights holder of the selected project parcels to obtain relevant permissions and for the waiver of carbon rights” (PD 3357:15). Overall, the project developers show why communities and governments would be incentivized by this private investment (without it, they do not receive these benefits, cannot restore their 24 However, note that one ALLCOT project states that “local communities” will be “responsible for the fieldwork and owning the associated carbon revenues” (PD 2406:7), which makes it sound like the communities will receive all of the revenue, though I could not confirm this. 100 mangrove forests, etc.), but never must demonstrate why the company (or companies) would be incentivized to invest in such a project (that is, what they get out of it). In one Livelihoods project in Senegal, the investment arm of these projects is written about as altruistic (“invests in projects with a very important social component”), such that even the benefits (compensation for emissions) they receive are seen through this light: “Livelihoods Fund is a carbon fund which invests in projects with a very important social component in exchange for carbon credits which are used by the Fund participants to compensate for their corporate emissions” (VR 1318:22). This was one of the more explicit project documents on this topic. Ultimately, it’s hard to say from these documents whether companies are directly benefiting financially either – for some of them, as with Livelihoods Fund, the credits from these projects are retired by the investor companies before being sold on a market. How such companies and developers benefit from these credits could form the basis of future research, both in terms of returns on investment and carbon credit sales, but also how such companies indirectly benefit through increased ESG ratings and increased Corporate Social Responsibility branding.25 These distributional imbalances point to the larger discursive context in which these projects exist. If the incentive of selling carbon credits must be shown to be necessary for the project to move forward, we can see how the idea of the mangroves as a wasteland, and the associated lack of human understanding of the true value of mangroves, plays into this narrative. That is, if we take for granted that individuals don’t currently value mangroves adequately, we can see the salience of the idea that these mangroves will not be well restored or taken care of 25 However, the future of such marketing opportunities is still in the making: Evian, a subsidiary of Danone, is currently facing a class action lawsuit for marketing its product as carbon neutral as a result of using offsets from the Livelihoods Carbon Fund (See Worford, 2022). 101 without this economic incentive presented by international finance. And this logic extends beyond the argument of needed funds to support such activities, gesturing instead to the psychology of economic incentives. For example, one project description states that even if there was available grant or government funding for the restoration activities, these restoration activities would perform worse without the economic incentive associated with carbon credits. The project description reads: "Overall, the above listed restoration activities differ fundamentally from the proposed carbon project as they are based on different financing strategies, with the existing restoration projects being based primarily on funds being donated no matter the success of the restoration outcome, and the proposed carbon project being based on the generation of verified carbon credits. As the number of credits to be verified and therefore the economic success of the proposed project is dependent on the success of the restoration activities, there is an essential incentive to implement the best possible restoration practices and to secure the long term success of the project” (PD 3223:52). Ultimately, in many cases, and as explored in the next section, the benefits which will flow to communities were described as “indirect” and “difficult to quantify”: “The project activities do not provide any other direct revenues than the possibility for carbon finance. It is expected that the restoration of the ecosystems will improve fisheries and potentially increase opportunities for ecotourism. However, these potential benefits are indirect, limited and difficult to quantify but likely to be de minimis in comparison to the cost of the projects” (PD 2842:20). As explored next, these diffuse benefits play a big role in the projects that get accredited through the Verified Carbon Standard. 2.3.3 Theme 3: Co-benefits define distribution of revenues to community “At the moment, there is little to stop the conversion [of mangroves] except for the possibility of carbon financing, which is deemed the most equitable method to battle the threats against degradation and deforestation” (PD 2842:11). 102 In return for handing over the control of carbon credit revenues emerging from these sites, communities involved with these projects are often framed as receiving some kind of “co-benefit”; “co” because the community is benefiting alongside those who develop and sell the carbon credits. These co-benefits include “improved fisheries” and “increased opportunities for ecotourism”, as described above, but also extend to include benefits ranging from increased protection from storms to short-term paid labor in restoration efforts. These benefits are what allow such projects to claim that they present “the most equitable method” for managing mangroves. However, when reading these documents against the scholarly literature on this subject, the slippery positions of community members in relation to these projects are apparent: on the one hand as supposed beneficiaries, on another as laborers (and in some cases, also as the rights holders to the land). One paper on REDD+ evaluations put it this way: “Climate change mitigation in developing countries is increasingly expected to generate co-benefits that help meet sustainable development goals. This has been an expectation and a hotly contested issue in REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) since its inception. While the core purpose of REDD+ is to reduce carbon emissions, its legitimacy and success also depend on its impacts on local well-being” (Sills et al., 2017, p. 148). This would seem to be the case with mangrove carbon projects as well – they are expected to generate local benefits to people and biodiversity. But more importantly, what comes through from the project documents is that these co-benefits are also considered to be the main source of remuneration for communities in exchange for what is, in some cases, a dramatic change to their landscape and livelihoods. This language is echoed in many of the project documents: that local communities and states receive development support, while the carbon credits are used often by private companies who pay project developers in the Global North. 103 Occasionally, these carbon revenues are described as going directly to typical development projects, such as a project in Myanmar in which 30% of project budget will be directed towards projects such as “public education, social mobilisation, livelihood creation, micro-loans, cottage industries, aquaculture, scholarships, distribution of solar lamps, and subsidy for fuel saving stoves, women projects and scholarships" (PD 2088:5). In these cases, the revenues from the carbon credits are reinvested into other livelihood opportunities for community members – particularly where their current economic activities impact mangroves, and therefore must be changed for carbon credits to persist. But, in the case of the mangrove, these co-benefits are most often described as indirect benefits from increased mangrove productivity, such as “an increased ecosystem productivity of fish, oyster and the like” (PD 3223:49). As such, a common thread across these project documents is that economic benefits to the community are measured in purported flood mitigation or promised ecotourism opportunities but are not immediately (and sometimes not at all) recouped at the level of the individual or household. Research that more closely examines specific projects, however, has found wide ranging results for project success in terms of the actualization and distribution of these benefits. For example, in an ethnographic and household survey-based study of the Livelihoods Fund mangrove restoration projects in Senegal, Rocio Hiraldo (2017; 2021) argues that such a project “depends upon the creation and maintenance of contradictory class relations based on alienated labour,” in order to both make profits and validate their allocation (2021). Despite government authority in the creation of the new protected area, Hiraldo’s account describes the process as “privatization,” in which local fishing and foraging use was restricted, labor opportunities failed to offset the lost income, and the Danone corporation secured the benefit of emissions credits. 104 Members of this community expressed frustration when the eco-tourism project that had promised to provide local jobs failed to deliver on this promise, with various issues relating to the number of jobs, community politics relating to who got the jobs, and how much the jobs paid. Hiraldo emphasizes that once locals began contesting their labor conditions, pay and use of the land (reportedly determined by non-state actors), the state maintained their alienation from their labor “by means of the state repressive apparatus (laws, police, prisons and army), [as well as] passively, through the disengagement of state representatives towards villagers’ requests for support in their struggle” (Ibid.). While this is but one example, the prevalence of such findings within the case study literature on market-based mechanisms indicates that these types of conflicts are not outliers in the field. Researchers have also argued that these conditions mirror the circumstances of precarious workers in under-regulated industries worldwide. Neimark et al. (2020) argue that the labor involved in, or created by, market-based conservation projects represents a new “eco-precariat:” an often unprotected, unorganized, and underpaid labor force, the emergence of which mirrors the transformation toward similar working conditions under neoliberal policies in the 1970s. As with class formation worldwide, the work and lives of marginalized people and communities are often rearranged in order to meet demands (in this case, for outcomes such as carbon offsetting and conservation) by those with more power across scales (Bigger and Dempsey, 2018), especially (but not limited to) North-South divides.26 As is consistent with the literature on this 26 It’s important to note, however, that enrolling “idle labor” (Neimark et al., 2020) in conservation schemes does not always work the way project developers assume it will. For example, a case study in Peru illustrated that those not pushed to precarity by conservation or enclosure may resist the less secure employment that these projects offer (Bleeker & Vos, 2019). In this study, proposed “participants” were accustomed to higher wages due to nearby mining and construction industries and the project therefore struggled to find willing participant-laborers. 105 topic, the jobs that emerge from these projects – which are described as increasing livelihoods for the community – are by nature short-term (planting mangroves, for example) or otherwise precarious labor. The sole project in Sri Lanka describes the jobs it will create at length, including: "Preparation of polythene bags for plant nurseries: Members of the local community are recruited in producing black polythene packets which will be later used in plant nurseries. They purchase polythene rolls and sealing machines to make the bags. The finished product is then purchased by the CBO/NGO. This activity is an IGA [Income-Generating Activity] and livelihood opportunity for several people in the community" (PD 3357:18). In certain projects, these livelihoods activities are not only “co-benefits,” but are themselves part of a strategy to reduce deforestation, by transitioning local peoples’ livelihoods away from activities that depend on forest resources, and towards more formal types of economic activities – even as these economic activities appear limited and precarious. For example, in the sole project in Nigeria: “Local communities will be provided training to raise nursery, be involved in planting activities and management, thereby gaining technical skills. This is also an important barrier of forest management for the local community. The local forestry department and NGOs will organize trainings to help the community take up alternate livelihood options thereby helping to provide additional economic capabilities” (PD 3155:87). And from one of the projects in Myanmar: “The project involves low income families in the area who will get more opportunities to increase their income and thus be less prone to pursue unsustainable practices that might increase CO2 emissions, harm the environment and further reduce the mangroves” (PD: 1764:4) These alternative livelihood opportunities are about providing benefits, sure, but they are also about rendering local communities “less prone to pursue unsustainable practices.” Ultimately, Neimark et al. critique the notion of “local participation” – used by both conservation projects 106 and the scholarly literature – for obscuring the social relations of labor within conservation and restoration projects. This obfuscation can be seen in project documents, as above, but also in official media for these investment funds. For example, in 2021, Danone launched its third Livelihoods Carbon Fund: this one raising 150 million euros, and with an explicit focus on nature-based solutions and the co-benefits they provide to rural communities. The investors include luxury clothing brands with public net-zero commitments, as well as other multinational food companies, a travel agency, and more; the press release reads: “A total of 14 corporate & financial investors are expected to join LCF3 in a common investment vehicle to achieve the transition: Bel Group, Chanel, Danone, Eurofins, Global Environmental Facility 3, Hermès, L’OCCITANE Group, Mars, Mauritius Commercial Bank, McCain Foods, Orange, SAP, Schneider Electric and Voyageurs du Monde” (Danone, 2021). Upon the announcement of this new fund, Livelihoods President Bernard Giraud said in an interview, that the fund “will accelerate and allow both companies and financial investors to benefit from this opportunity” while simultaneously saying that “all benefits will go to the community.” Read the full quote below: “All benefits go to the local communities, from increased fish stocks thanks to the restoration of mangroves ecosystems in Africa and Asia, to coffee and fruit from the Araku valley in India. In return of its investment, the Livelihoods Fund receives carbon credits that are audited and certified under the highest international standards” (Livelihoods, 2019). But if all benefits go to the community, what benefits are left over for companies and financial investors? How can they say that all benefits go to the community, even as they are receiving the carbon credits, which are ostensibly the part of this finance that is “market-based”? This doublespeak is confusing at best; in the worst case, it risks deflecting attention from the deeply unequal relations that produce the ability to profit off so-called reparative actions. As Nelson and 107 Bigger reflect, this “language of ‘co-benefits’ papers over the precarious and undervalued labors underpinning the ‘business case’ for infrastructural nature, reframing conservation jobs as altruistic benefits rather than value-producing labor” (2020, p. 11). Thus, while these projects all differ in terms of the purpose of their description of community benefits – in some cases as part of the mangrove intervention, in others as part of the justification for the distribution of benefits – these benefits occupy a slippery position in a field which has so often been accused of dispossession (Benjaminsen & Bryceson, 2012) and primitive accumulation (Kelly, 2011). More importantly for the purposes of this chapter’s argument, this language of co-benefits – and the communities in need of them – reinforces the position of this private financial investment as uniquely capable of delivering on social and environmental objectives. These communities, who, according to the project documents, would be unable or unwilling to restore their environment without the sale of carbon credits, are also rendered in need of this investment. But these co-benefits do double time, also acting as evidence that such interventions are “the most equitable,” and providing enough benefit to communities that, in some cases, no distribution of actual carbon revenues is deemed necessary. Taken together, these three themes from the project documents represent a shift in how social and environmental objectives are managed, and who funds them. In the next section, I describe this as representative of a broader orientation towards funding sustainable development objectives through private finance. 2.4 Wall Street Conservation “The financial markets, they're willing to accept risk, as long as someone pays for it.” - Steve Crooks, at the Blue Carbon: Beyond the Inventory Conference 108 Investments in nature conservation face a common problem: they typically do not produce commodities or services that can generate a profit (Suttor-Sorel & Hercelin, 2020). In contrast, projects aiming to protect biodiversity often do so through taking lands and their resources out of the official sphere of production, limiting the profits that could be extracted from an area. Making nature investable, therefore, relies on the creation of markets for not allowing them to be converted, requiring someone to be incentivized to pay for benefits that they will not directly receive. While there have been many attempts to create markets that will organically drive major investments in conservation, these markets have largely failed to live up to the neoclassical economic theory upon which they were predicated (Shapiro-Garza et al., 2020; Nelson et al., 2020; Nelson, 2017). That is, these markets consistently require non-market intervention and support in order to “work” as return-generating mechanisms. As a result, advocates of return-generating conservation finance have come to rely on the concept of “blended finance” or “concessional finance” to meet financing targets. Concessional finance describes funds that are given, from either governments, philanthropy, or non-profits to investment products to create better risk-return ratios for private financiers; called “de-risking.” In short, concessional funds make investment products more attractive to investors by sweetening the deal with public or charitable funds. They do this by offering up these funds as loan guarantees or other kinds of non-return generating financing, to improve the risk-return ratios of return-generating investments, often putting the government or NGO on the hook for whatever money is not recouped by the investment. This practice is premised on the idea that once private finance crowds into biodiversity conservation, this finance will be able to “leverage” far more finance than typical public and philanthropic funding streams would allow. What is ensured by this finance is that the private investor will receive their return, and that if no 109 such returns materialize, the public or non-profit will concede the funding, taking the hit while the private financiers have their investment secured. Mangroves are no outlier to this trend within the conservation literature, with the State of the World’s Mangroves (2021) report celebrating this new opportunity: “New financial mechanisms—like carbon markets, blue bonds, and insurance-based investments—represent a growing opportunity for mangrove protection and restoration. ‘Blended’ finance models which combine private capital with philanthropic or government grants are also being developed, and can be used to ‘de-risk’ investments in the short-term” (Spalding & Leal, 2021, p. 7). The turn towards blended finance is not limited to conservation. Rather, it is part of what Daniela Gabor terms the “Wall Street Consensus,” a replacement of the Washington Consensus as a global macro-financial doctrine. If the Washington Consensus was characterized by macroeconomic stabilization, trade liberalization, and privatization – that is, a turn towards market-led policies in general – then the Wall Street Consensus (WSC) picks up where this project left off (i.e., with limited state capacity and an increasing private sector) to make public goods and services investable, especially through the use of blended finance. This characterizes a new role for both governments and those representing the interests of private capital. To quote Gabor: “Dispensing with the legitimizing force of neoclassical economics in the Washington Consensus, development is narrated as a matter of closing funding gaps through partnerships with (global) institutional investors, while development interventions are defined as policies that create risk buffers to render development projects ‘investible’” (Gabor, 2021, p. 433). This practice, starting in the 1990s but codified by UNDP in 2013, was enshrined through its deployment in the UN’s “Billions to Trillions” agenda in which Sustainable Development Goals were to be met by using Official Development Assistance (ODA) to “leverage” private capital 110 (Gabor 2021, p. 430). Yet despite this ostensible focus on “filling funding gaps” for sustainable development, Gabor argues that this project has explicit political objectives “to reorient the institutional mechanisms of the state towards protecting the political order of financial capitalism against climate justice movements and Green New Deal initiatives” (Ibid., p. 431). That is, the Wall Street Consensus seeks to enshrine “de-risking as an accumulation regime” that consolidates power (i.e., of global asset managers experiencing “unprecedented concentration of capital”) while reconstituting the role of public funding as concessional finance to private capital (Ibid.). Many scholars have posited that this regime is not only a response to the real existence of financing gaps, but also to unprecedented concentrations of private capital.27 As Nelson and Bigger (2020) write: “If austerity is a pull factor that draws return-seeking capital into the provision of public goods, then the concentration of wealth in a high liquidity, low yield world, is a key ‘push’ factor (Ahlers, 2020). With chronically low interest rates and highly concentrated ownership of capital, money is searching for profitable, predictable assets like public goods with publics-qua-customers reliant on those infrastructural services (Vecchi et al., 2017). [...] As infrastructure has become financialized, investors have acquired tremendous power in defining what infrastructures are produced and reproduced (O’Neill, 2019), raising questions about democratic deficits exacerbated by financialization (Peck and Whiteside, 2016)” (Nelson & Bigger, 2020, p. 13). 27 The 2022 World Inequality Report, from the World Inequality Lab coordinated by public economist Thomas Piketty, puts this trend into quantitative terms. One of the major findings of their report is that the gap between the net wealth of governments and the net wealth of the private and public sectors has increased. That is, “Nations have become richer, but governments have become poor. One way to understand these inequalities is to focus on the gap between the net wealth of governments and net wealth of the private sector. Over the past 40 years, countries have become significantly richer, but their governments have become significantly poorer. The share of wealth held by public actors is close to zero or negative in rich countries, meaning that the totality of wealth is in private hands. This trend has been magnified by the Covid crisis, during which governments borrowed the equivalent of 10-20% of GDP, essentially from the private sector. The currently low wealth of governments has important implications for state capacities to tackle inequality in the future, as well as the key challenges of the 21st century such as climate change” (Chancel et al., 2022, p. 15). 111 The conceptualization of nature as infrastructure, Nelson and Bigger argue, places ecosystems within this broader trend of private infrastructure investments, driven by capital looking for places to go. And perhaps this – along with all the Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Social and Governance benefits – is why nature-based solutions are so often touted as “opportunities for investment” rather than as urgently needed policy, achieved through state funding or regulation. The United Nations Environment Programme’s inaugural report on investment in nature-based solutions, to take one example, advises that: “NbS poses an opportunity for private sector investment in pursuit of sources of revenue, to reap the benefits of increased resilience, to reduce costs and to enhance reputation and purpose. As businesses become more sophisticated in their understanding of NbS opportunities, there will be a role for financial de-risking products such as guarantees and insurance, to create attractive risk-return profiles for large, mainstream investors” (United Nations Environment Programme, 2021, p. 7). Of course, such a trend has implicated the mangroves – as a leading NbS example – as well. In their 2020 report titled “Blue Carbon: Mind the Gap”, Beeston Cuyvers and Vermilye express their concern that: “The single greatest barrier to scale today is a lack of credible verified projects. Working together with the financial community to create a comprehensive new system of well designed, implemented and validated projects that meet the needs of both the projects and the funders should unleash the scale we need” (Beeston, Cuyvers & Vermilye, 2020, p. 11). This scale will require blended finance, they write, “until a transition to a commercially viable business model can be achieved” (Ibid., p. 10). As with other conservation finance projects, there is a concern that “mangrove conservation and restoration actions are not being financed to the extent necessary” (State of the World’s Mangroves, 2021, p. 74), and that to remedy this problem, there are instruments that can make this investment more appealing for private finance. 112 Indeed, a key conclusion of the United Nations Environment Programme report is that, given that protecting nature doesn’t create enough returns on its own: “The investment case, that is, the available return to the investor relative to risk, needs to be stronger, judging by the small share of private finance compared to public funding” (United Nations Environment Programme, 2021, p. 41). This discourse, repeated year after year despite the limitations faced by this market, enshrines de-risking as a key state action to be taken for securing a livable planet. The Wall Street Consensus is therefore based upon the notion that there are market-failures within the system – which underprice nature and make it hard to mesh with investor expectations – but that these market-failures have technical fixes, which come in the form of concessional finance to the private procurement of public goods and services. The de-risking state can fix these market failures through funding private financial investments, not through keeping sectors public or through increased public spending. And that is how you get something like this: a statement from the Assistant Director of the International Monetary Fund in 2022 talking about a new system for whale carbon credits which can fix such market errors: “’Our current economic paradigm values dead whales that are sold for their meat. In contrast, living whales are valued at zero dollars, although their ecological services, including carbon sequestration, are incredibly valuable to our survival and well-being and the health of our ocean. We need a new economic paradigm that recognizes and values the services of a living and thriving nature, both flora and fauna. This new nature-positive economy will lead to sustainable and shared prosperity for all,’ says Ralph Chami, Assistant Director at the IMF International Monetary Fund and Advisor at Blue Green World” (The Whale Carbon Plus Project, 2022). Many of the reports from major financial institutions that say we are valuing nature wrong (e.g., World Economic Forum, 2020; Johnson et al., 2021) sound like they are finally taking the problem of biodiversity loss seriously – that is, that they recognize the limits of markets and of capitalism to produce social and ecological wellbeing. But these critiques are still playing out 113 within a framework in which the issue with our economic system is not the lack of regulations on industries polluting the oceans, or public funds or protections to support blue whale conservation, but that private capital hasn’t been properly invited to crowd into a certain asset – even something as intangible, unbounded, and unowned as a blue whale. A quote from this press release continues to say that even regulation has to follow markets, claiming that “for whale protection measures to be adopted on a global scale, we need to incentivize businesses and other stakeholders by proving the benefits of protecting whales far exceed the cost” (The Whale Carbon Plus Project, 2022). Laughable as the idea of credits for a whale, or a mangrove, may still seem to some, the endorsement of this project by International Financial Institutions like the IMF indicates how dominant such ideas are within current debates about environmental action. But the conversation was not always so myopic, so focused on filling financing gaps. As Gabor puts it, “the development problem used to be, for example in the old developmental state tradition, was ‘How do we improve our terms of trade?’ The development problem now is ‘How do we create investable assets for institutional investors?’” (Gabor, D., in Denvir, 2022). That this major reorientation of state priorities should trickle down to even the mangrove affirms the political entanglements of mangrove finance. The idea that mangroves markets must be de-risked does not represent a predetermined political bloc, but “can enroll previously disparate actors united through the shared acceptance that austerity-as-practice has become so firmly ensconced that only private capital solve the sundry issues bound up in austerity natures” (Nelson & Bigger, personal communication). From my interviews, I suspect that many of the actors involved in mangrove conservation would not consider blended finance or de-risking to be highly political 114 acts; like writing a government grant or asking for community donations, they are just another way to raise the money that is needed to protect and restore mangroves. Austerity natures, and the common sense they help to solidify, can make the needs of investors seem like just another technical hurdle to be jumped. And so, while each mangrove project may be dutifully focused on its own restoration efforts, such projects can amount to a reinforcement of this larger political trend, what could be termed “Wall Street Conservation”, in homage to Gabor’s Wall Street Consensus. Even these more macro-scale views are not uncommon within the conservation finance literature. Take just one idea from the 2021 Little Book of Investing in Nature, a publication by Global Canopy. In this book, Tobin de la Puente et al., pin their hopes for an abundant and diverse planet on their projection that “the next 25 years will see new generations of high- and ultra-high-net-worth individuals, cumulatively representing 30 trillion in net worth, who are expected to raise demand for a range of triple bottom-line investment opportunities” (Tobin de la Puente et al., 2021, p. 69). Meanwhile, finance publications ask: “Can private wealth close the biodiversity funding gap?” (Euromoney, 2022). This is the logical conclusion of a consensus that embraces concentrated wealth and power as an opportunity rather than a barrier to social and ecological justice: that world-historical levels of inequality built on the grounds of a ravaged planet could be fixed and redeemed if only they produce a few impact investors. Such is the ignorance of those who do not recognize that the same system that has produced such billionaires is the one that has produced degraded natures; is also the one that produces governments without capacity to support social and ecological wellbeing without turning back to this private capital. The contradictions of this approach also raise real questions about its possibility for success. In his work on the Blue Economy, Jens Christiansen (2021) makes a distinction between 115 two critiques of blended finance. First, the concern over the creation of new spaces for capital accumulation, especially within and adjacent to social and environmental objectives. Such critiques have been frequent within the scholarship on neoliberal environmentalism, setting up many a riff on Harvey’s (2003) concept of “accumulation by dispossession”: “accumulation by conservation” (Büscher & Fletcher, 2015), “accumulation by restoration” (Huff & Brock, 2017) and “accumulation by alienation” (Dunlap & Sullivan, 2020). These scholars are broadly concerned with how such efforts may create stability for the capitalist class or capitalism in general, while contributing to an “exclusionary, racist, and violent trajectory” for conservation (Huff & Brock, 2017). But equally urgent for Christiansen is the second critique of blended finance: that by insisting that the right risk-return ratios for investors will unlock conservation markets, we are orienting towards a strategy that has been struggling, even on its own terms, to turn “billions into trillions.” For Christiansen, taking these two critiques together “raises the normative question of whether de facto subsidizing the sometimes-elusive promises of markets is the best sustainability policy” (Christiansen, 2021, p. 94). And so, we find ourselves in a contorted position not unfamiliar to those studying projects of reparative accumulation: skeptical that a robust market will emerge, but also weary of the perverse effects should it do so. But despite these persistent barriers, this project continues to overcome its limiting conditions. The next section turns to the current state of mangrove finance, and the ongoing attempts to fix the barriers to scaling up return-generating finance for mangroves’ services. 2.5 Brackish Conditions At the “Blue Carbon: Beyond the Inventory” conference taking place in concert with COP26 in 2021, the mangrove scientist Peter Macreadie opened his presentation with a problem: despite 116 over 3000 scientific papers on the subject, improved methodologies, considerable policy roll out, and government and media attention, “the dots just aren’t connecting” (Macreadie, 2021, November 11). This was weighing on him heavily; in Macreadie’s home country, Australia, not a single blue carbon credit had been issued. Macreadie, therefore, posed a series of questions to his colleagues: “So, what are the barriers? What are the uncertainties? What is holding us back from being able to offer investors shovel-ready projects that are beneficial to the natural environment, and society, and that are scalable and profitable?” Macreadie’s questions are not new, but rather have circled discussion about making nature investable for decades (Biodiversity Capital Research Collective, 2021). This is the persistent challenge faced by those seeking to make nature produce returns: creating projects with risk return ratios that appeal to investors, that can scale up,28 can be easily replicated in contexts across the globe, and do not have major negative ecological or social outcomes. Dempsey and Bigger attribute this ongoing struggle to the “multiple temporalities that are in constant tension: the fast rhythms of investment capital, the patient time needed to transform “wasteful” conduct, as well as the longer histories of the settler-colonial past and present” (Dempsey & Bigger, 2018, p. 519). But despite these mismatches, this strategy continues to dominate the conversation about filling the funding gap, in which this set of questions is met with a perennial sense of optimism that such hurdles can be cleared. The cracks, however, are still there, and this tension is evidenced by the paradox of Macreadie’s analysis: that despite “rapidly increasing demand from industry” including projects from Apple, BHP & HSBC, and “high global enthusiasm [...] 28 This is a limitation referenced going back at least to the Mattsson et al. (2009) paper on the CDM, in reference to previous efforts at afforestation and reforestation through REDD. 117 conservation and restoration that use carbon-based mechanisms has not dramatically increased” (Macreadie, 2021, November 11). His conclusion, therefore, is that a major change of strategy is needed if blue carbon is to be utilized as a natural climate solution. But rather than reconsidering the promise of private finance, what is Macreadie’s proposal for change? More research to uncover the values that could “facilitate or disrupt” blue carbon crediting. For Macreadie, this means identifying the community benefits associated with blue carbon projects which could make the market hotter. Macreadie also notes his own embarrassment: that he didn’t used to think about the community proximate to blue carbon ecosystems when considering this market. But now, he realizes that land tenure and community buy-in is essential to blue carbon markets – and this is not only because negative impacts upon the community may pose a reputational problem, but also because what these communities gain from blue carbon conservation and restoration represents an economic opportunity for the market. This is due to his growing realization that blue carbon credits will not be able to work financially unless the other elements (the co-benefits) are themselves financialized. This is particularly relevant for developed economies, where costs are higher. Macreadie argues: “In developed economies, blue carbon projects are unlikely to be viable on the carbon credits alone. Even if there is a very high price for carbon, I am not sure that they will be viable on carbon alone. Key to financing blue carbon projects at scale will be bundling and stacking carbon credit revenue through other forms of revenue...fisheries enhancement, payments for co-benefits, premium prices for co-benefits, governments and philanthropies and tourisms and fisheries and aquaculture operators...we would need to know the price that buyers are willing to pay for co-benefits.” The social and ecological impacts of carbon crediting projects do not only pose barriers, then, but also present opportunities. Today, attempts to make these co-benefits bear financial value are picking up steam, with investors demanding “high impact” carbon credits, meaning that they 118 desire carbon credits which are verified for broader social and ecological impact (Forest Trends’ Ecosystem Marketplace, 2021). But this presents project developers with a tricky problem: while traceable scientific quantification, extensive co-benefits, procedural justice, and equitable sharing of benefits are increasingly being demanded by those wishing to invest in these projects, delivering on these promises also inhibits the scalability, replicability, and profitability that these projects require to be marketable. Moreover, as Geographer Morgan Robertson wrote from the United States Environmental Protection Agency in 2008, “this new round of the commodification of nature may overwhelm the capacity of science to provide stable representations of commodity value. The methods and techniques of ecosystem assessment must describe a nature that capital can ‘see’, that has an uncontroversial measure, in order for trade to occur” (Robertson, 2008, p. 367). As Macreadie suggests, stacking co-benefits for investors to purchase would require reorienting, at least partially, the field of coastal ecosystems science towards quantifying these benefits in stable and tradeable terms for investors. It is not yet clear if this can be achieved in technical or market terms, and what the social and economic consequences of this would be. Will monetized co-benefits finally unlock the carbon market, and be able to adequately price not only carbon emissions, but a host of other negative impacts of ecological disruption? Or does this represent another attempt to defer the promise of financialized natures into the future, what Jessica Dempsey describes as “a socioecological-economic utopia whose realization is always just around the corner” (2016, p. 4, emphasis original). There is always the risk that this will be the latest in a series of promises that renew the legitimacy of carbon markets as a dominant solution to emissions reductions, in which they are again positioned to be “just about to take off” (Forest Trends Ecosystem Marketplace, 2021) but are not able to do so on the projected timelines or at the scale that is 119 forecasted. For example, in a 2009 article in Science on the hopes of carbon crediting schemes, Mukerjee (2009) writes that “The Nature Conservancy hopes that three billion tons of such credits, valued at $45 billion, can be generated by 2020” (p. 18). As of 2021, however, despite that over half of that number of tons is being traded (1.72 billion tons carbon dioxide equivalent on the voluntary market) the all-time value of the voluntary carbon market stood at only $6.7 billion (Forest Trends’ Ecosystem Marketplace, 2021, September 15). As Collard and Dempsey write, this discursive pattern may be described as speaking in the tense of the “future eco-perfect” in which, in the future, “the contradictions between colonial-capitalist growth and ecological degradation will have been resolved through technological innovation and managerialism,” even as “the evidence betrays this temporal imaginary” (Collard & Dempsey, 2022, p. 1549). Further, even as this project publicly aligns itself more closely with the needs and livelihoods of Indigenous people and local communities (although the extent to which this is privately achieved is the matter of substantial debate), the co-benefits that these communities receive are also under development as financial assets. Under this current trajectory, I argue that this approach is aligned with what Nancy Fraser has described as “progressive neoliberalism”: a political project in which the emancipatory political potential of ideas such as traditional ecological knowledge and Indigenous rights are weaved into tools of financialization, which stabilizes and expands the project of economic liberalization and free market capitalism. Within the still-in-formation political life of mangroves, we see the tension between these two routes, and the desire to integrate them under one project, in which even Indigenous livelihoods are a “benefit” which can be traded on the free market. 120 And yet, there is still the possibility that the tide of private finance optimism may be receding. Curiously, in the State of the World’s Mangroves report in 2022, the word “finance” appears only once in passing, when mentioning “unlocking public, private and philanthropic finance” (Leal & Spalding, 2022, p. 2). In its stead, policy is mentioned first and foremost throughout this report as a necessary tool for mangrove protection. This is a significant shift compared to the same report from 2021, which mentions the term ‘finance” 21 times, devotes an entire chapter to it, and advocates for a variety of financial mechanisms and strategies, including de-risking private investment in mangrove conservation (Spalding & Leal, 2021). At the same time, others in this space have expressed concern that they are not able to get enough blue carbon projects online fast enough to meet the demand, indicating that blue carbon may indeed move the needle on the market. Major conservation reports seem to mirror this trend: celebrating the rise of new and innovative market mechanisms, while simultaneously recognizing that they may not be the panacea they were once thought to be. Ultimately, these shifts will need to continue to be tracked in the coming years, though it would seem foolish to assume that they will resolve in any one direction. 2.6 Conclusion In total, this chapter showed how the project of reparative accumulation, in the case of the mangrove, depends on state austerity and disinvestment twice: first as the cause of nature’s degradation, and second as the rationale for restoring these natures on the terms of private investors. This project cannot function without these dual conditions: degraded ecosystems in need of repair through increased finance, and degraded state capacity in need of appealing to private finance to fund social objectives. The result is that the underdevelopment of the Global 121 South (along with the progression of human-driven climate change) is a prerequisite for the use of private financial tools that both capitalize on and aim to remediate that underdevelopment. And where the destruction of the mangrove was once a means for development and capital accumulation, the restoration of the ecosystem now promises to do the same. But if delivering on social and ecological outcomes is so beneficial – profitable, even – why would states not be able to execute these plans on behalf of their own citizens? The answer to this question is found in the project documents analyzed within this chapter: the lack of state capacity and structural limits on access to capital which have framed the problem of mangrove degradation from the beginning. And yet, the global economic pressures placed on states, and therefore coastal communities within them, who endure austerity in exchange for access to capital, are not perceived as urgent barriers for social and ecological wellbeing. In contrast, the field of conservation finance – as seen through its reports, project documents, and conferences – conceives of the largest structural economic barriers to biodiversity conservation as the high risk-return ratios for investors in for-profit conservation, a low price for carbon, and a lack of methodology to understand what premiums investors will pay for community co-benefits. These barriers, as shown in this chapter, remain unresolved, continuing to limit the material footprint of private conservation finance, even as its grip on the terms of debate appears unrelenting. This position, of private finance as the dominant solution to the biodiversity crisis, is significant beyond its own failed aspirations, in that escorting private finance into meeting public objectives must be embraced as a tool of governance, including by opening the furthest reaches of the biophysical world to private ownership. And while this trend in conservation governance has been critiqued extensively for the negative social impacts and maldistribution of benefits within local communities, we must also keep in the foreground how the “common sense” of 122 conservation finance can reinforce inequality as other scales. Thus, even as these projects further incorporate certain ideas of environmental justice (such as supporting livelihoods and utilizing traditional ecological knowledge), a broader, highly unequal system of access to capital for this restoration is maintained through the political and economic arrangements of these projects. Though conservation finance as a whole, and these mangrove project documents in particular, respond to real political economic conditions, this chapter has aimed to characterize how these projects reproduce the certainty of these conditions, which – like those of the mangrove’s degradation and restoration itself – are not inherently natural, and not merely technical, but undeniably political. In the conclusion, I asses how this argument might shift our understanding of “the mangrove” as a policy solution, and the implications of moving beyond this dominant frame. 123 Conclusion: Shifting Political Economic Baselines How does the mangrove go from a worthless swamp to key to saving the earth? These two chapters, taken together, describe what lies behind the curtain of the official story of the mangrove: first, a mystification of the drivers of ecological degradation, and subsequently, the use of that degradation (both financial and ecological) as justification for certain conservation solutions. Without compromising the clarity of this argument, I have tried to present my observations without ascribing intentions behind this project as a whole. As I argued in the introduction, this narrative and its effects are not the result of any conspiracy, but of a series of overlapping conditions, interests, and ideologies, which are still in motion – still determining where this story will lead. By tracing the “political life” of mangroves, I have aimed to weave back into the story the elements that are bound up in ongoing political-economic ideologies and choices, in contrast to the image of the “technical life” of mangrove conservation and restoration. Need it be said explicitly, my intention is that such a project will ultimately be in service of those who seek to address the underlying drivers of ecological degradation and socioecological injustice. In the first chapter, I demonstrated how the project of mangrove revaluation has pinned mangrove decline on individual human actions and attitudes, obfuscating the structural political economic conditions which drive mangrove loss. Through defining the problem of mangrove loss as one of individual attitudes and not political choices, the solution to mangrove decline is framed as both a moral revelation and an economic revaluation, especially as defined through neoclassical economic paradigms. This framing blends two distinct discourses – of a reformed (efficient, sustainable, less wasteful) attitude toward the environment on the one hand, and an improved microeconomic calculus on the other – into a solution for mangrove decline. Broadly, 124 this approach is based on the idea that markets, and individual actors, can address social and ecological harms through increased information and rational self-interest. Homo economicus needs a software update; with the wisdom to understand the long-term economic value of nature he will be able to create economic incentives that outcompete the incentives of actions that create direct pressures on ecosystems. And, crucially, this recalibration will be achieved within the current structure of global economic activity. The second chapter demonstrated how a lack of state capacity and structural limits on access to capital have framed the problem of the financing gap for nature, a gap which subsequently justifies the need for private financial investment in mangroves services in general, and the sale of their carbon credits developed across the Global South in particular. This turn towards private finance, I argue, is about more than a unique shortage of funds for mangrove forests, or for nature – it is instead part of a larger macro-financial trend toward “the de-risking state” (Gabor, 2021), and must be understood within that broader context. Thus, in contrast to global economic pressures placed on states who endure austerity in exchange for access to capital, the field of conservation finance – as seen through its reports, project documents, and conferences – often conceives of the largest structural economic barriers to biodiversity conservation as the high risk-return ratios for investors in for-profit conservation, a low price for carbon, and a lack of methodology to understand what premiums investors will pay for community co-benefits. These techno-managerial fixes, I argue, leave a significant amount of historic and current political economic context outside of the frame of mangrove degradation, conservation, and restoration, limiting the extent to which these fixes can address the underlying drivers of biodiversity loss. 125 I can see someone asking why this historical accounting matters. The places lost to mangrove conversion have already been lost, they might say, what does it matter that these trends were spurred on decades ago by certain actors, and certain doctrines? Doesn’t it matter more what happens now? I am sympathetic to this line of reasoning: once the destruction of an ecosystem has happened, the how and why of it seem to start to matter less than figuring out how to reverse it. Those who seek to protect threatened ecosystems are often forced into crisis mode, to address the proximate drivers directly, or insulate the ecosystem from a suite of pressures through protected areas. Even the most stop-gap measures to protect against species extinctions can face substantial challenges. But what is at stake when we let the story of how each of these decisions was arrived at fade into the background? When stopping the proximate drivers precludes an awareness of those underlying the problem? This is the question I have had to ask myself throughout this project, specifically because I have wanted to make a contribution that can be constructive – that can be acted upon, and that opens up different opportunities for action. I argue that this approach highlights the need to attend to what I have come to call shifting political economic baselines. In conservation science and practice, a shifting baseline describes a situation in which the measurement of ecosystem health is determined in relation to certain temporal positions. This phenomenon is often illustrated through stories, and especially across generations: parents who remember when the bugs were so loud it was hard to hold a conversation (but no longer), or historical texts which describe a time when the sky would go dark with migrating birds (an occurrence unknown to current inhabitants of such place). The risk of shifting baselines in an ecological sense is not only that we forget past abundance, but that our metrics for ecosystem health deteriorate overtime alongside those ecosystems. Those who 126 advocate for consideration of shifting baselines within environmental policy argue that if we are always setting targets for ecological protection based on our current (deteriorating) conditions, then our targets will deteriorate right along with them. In concurrence with this view, I argue that it is not only the biophysical realities of the present that we begin to take as baselines, but also their indirect political economic determinants. The assumption that Northern firms must step in to secure sustainable development through private finance would be one such baseline, which has become so established that these are often the only ideas that are seen as reasonable or feasible. The related processes of disinvestment and state austerity, the conditions of unequal (ecological) exchange, and the concentration of private capital enabled through the ideologies and systems promoted through the World Bank and other IFIs; all of these are shifting baselines that set up the terrain of struggle for social and ecological wellbeing. But if we take them as immutable, then we are narrowing our view of the problem. Meanwhile, these shifting political economic baselines allow an institution, like the World Bank, to continue to rebrand neoliberal economic doctrine as the solution for nature, rather than calling into question how this ideology created such an unequal and degraded world to begin with. On this point, there may be a temptation to conflate an assessment of the ideas driving these actions with an argument that these actors possess a permanently dubious character. That is, to make the argument that because an institution like the World Bank was complicit in the destruction of such ecosystems, their actions in relation to ecosystem health should be treated with unrelenting suspicion. Rather, I argue that attempts to rebrand development banks as guarantors or an abundant future should be treated neither as conspiracies nor benevolences, but, at base, movements to prevent this system from falling into deeper levels of crisis. If there is anything to be wary of in the ecological turn of development banks and other financial institutions, it is to 127 which ideologies and interests underly these proposals for saving nature. Under these shifting baselines, redistribution for past harms is never deemed necessary, and current problems are only to be dealt with through tinkering with the values included in current market approaches. In contrast, by bringing the broader political economic drivers and struggles back into the frame, we are given an opportunity to more fulsomely reckon with the question of what kind of world is desirable. This requires acknowledging that conservation finance solutions are not merely technical fixes to generate more funds, but that they adhere to, and reproduce, specific political economic agendas. As opposed to an apolitical funding mechanism, the political life of mangroves demonstrates how “the mangrove” becomes entangled with a series of economic and financial discourses, affirming Nelson’s (2017) claim that “the environment” is “a political problem that entails ongoing negotiations over the legitimacy of market rule, the role of the state in relation to the market, and the value of ecological stewardship” (Nelson, 2017, p. ii). This ecological stewardship, I argue, will be strengthened by attending to the full environmental history of the mangrove forest, a history which includes political debates about far more than biodiversity conservation. Placing efforts for biodiversity conservation within broader political contexts – removing any delusions of their apolitical nature – highlights both the possibilities and obligations for struggle in the present. This present is rife with contradictions, but also opportunities for intervention, as the debate over what kind of global economy can “save nature” rages on. 128 References Abdullah, G. (2022). Indonesia’s mangrove revival hindered by conflicting policies. Mongabay, Environmental News. Retrieved from https://news.mongabay.com/2022/12/indonesias-mangrove-revival-hindered-by-conflicting-policies/ Alday-Sanz, V. (2010) The Shrimp Book. Nottingham University Press, Nottingham. Alvarenga, D. O., Rigonato, J., Branco, L. H., Zanini, & Fiore, M. F. (2015). Cyanobacteria in mangrove ecosystems. Biodiversity & Conservation, 24(4), 799-817. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-015-0871-2 Amorelli, L., Gibson, D. & Gilbertson, T. (Eds.) (2021). Hoodwinked in the Hothouse: Resist False Solutions to Climate Change. Retrieved from https://climatefalsesolutions.org/ Anyango-van Zwieten, N. (2021). Topical themes in biodiversity financing. Journal of Integrative Environmental Sciences, 18(1), 19-35. https://doi.org/10.1080/1943815X.2020.1866616 Asiyanbi, A. & Lund, J. F. (2020). Policy persistence: REDD+ between stabilization and contestation. Journal of Political Ecology, 27(1), 378–400. https://doi.org/10.2458/v27i1.23493 Atwood, T. B., Connolly, R. M., Ritchie, E. G., Lovelock, C. E., Heithaus, M. R., Hays, G. C., Fourqurean, J. W., & Macreadie, P. I. (2015). Predators help protect carbon stocks in blue carbon ecosystems. Nature Climate Change, 5(12), 1038–1045. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2763 Bai, J., Meng, Y., Gou, R., Lyu, J., Dai, Z. ... & Lin, G. (2021). Mangrove diversity enhances plant biomass production and carbon storage in Hainan Island, China. Functional Ecology, 35(3), 774– 786. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.13753 Bair, J. (2009). Frontiers of commodity chain research. Stanford University Press, Palo Alto. Bakker, K. (2010). The limits of ‘neoliberal natures’: Debating green neoliberalism. Progress in Human Geography, 34(6), 715-735. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132510376849 Bangladesh - Shrimp Culture Project: Credit 1651 - Credit Agreement - Conformed (English). (1986). World Bank Group. Retrieved from http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/171151468003924603/Bangladesh-Shrimp-Culture-Project-Credit-1651-Credit-Agreement-Conformed Bann, C. (1997). Conversion or Conflict? Resolving the Mangrove Conflict in Koh Kong. Economy & Environment Partnership for Southeast Asia. Retrieved from https://eepseapartners.org/conversion-or-conflict-resolving-the-mangrove-conflict-in-koh-kong/ 129 Barbesgaard, M. (2018). Blue growth: savior or ocean grabbing? The Journal of Peasant Studies, 45(1), 130-149. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2017.1377186 Barbier, E. B. (2022). The Policy Implications of the Dasgupta Review: Land Use Change and Biodiversity. Environmental and Resource Economics 83, 911–935. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-022-00658-1 Barclay, E. (2019). These 3 supertrees can protect us from climate collapse. Vox. https://www.vox.com/a/supertrees Beeston, M., Cuyvers, L. & Vermilye, J. (2020). Blue Carbon: Mind the Gap. Gallifrey Foundation. Retrieved from https://www.mangrovealliance.org/resources/blue-carbon-mind-the-gap/ Benjaminsen, T. A., & Bryceson, I. (2012). Conservation, green/blue grabbing and accumulation by dispossession in Tanzania. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 39(2), 335-355. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2012.667405 Bétrisey, F., Bastiaensen, J. & Mager, C. (2018). Payments for ecosystem services and social justice: Using recognition theories to assess the Bolivian Acuerdos Recíprocos por el Agua. Geoforum, 92, 134–143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.04.001 Beymer-Farris, B. A., & Bassett, T. J. (2012). The REDD menace: Resurgent protectionism in Tanzania’s mangrove forests. Global Environmental Change, 22(2), 332–341. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.11.006 Bhowmik, A. K. (2022). Mangroves are disappearing – we read 200 scientific papers to find out why. The Conversation. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/mangroves-are-disappearing-we-read-200-scientific-papers-to-find-out-why-183700 Biodiversity Capital Research Collective. (2021). Beyond the Gap: Placing Biodiversity Finance in the Global Economy. Third World Network. Retrieved from https://twn.my/title2/books/Beyond%20the%20Gap/BeyondTheGap%20complete%20report.pdf Bleeker, S. & Vos, J. (2019). Payment for ecosystem services in Lima’s watersheds: power and imaginaries in an urban-rural hydrosocial territory. Water International, 44(2), 224–242. https://doi.org/10.1080/02508060.2019.1558809 Boon, P. I. (2012). Coastal wetlands of temperate eastern Australia: Will Cinderella ever go to the ball? Marine and Freshwater Research, 63(10), 845–855. https://doi.org/10.1071/MF12205 Brinck, K., Fischer, R., Groeneveld, J., Lehmann, S., Dantas De Paula, M. … & Huth, A. High resolution analysis of tropical forest fragmentation and its impact on the global carbon cycle. (2017). Nature Communications, 8. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14855 130 Burkett, P. (2006). Two Stages of Ecosocialism? Implications of Some Neglected Analyses of Ecological Conflict and Crisis. International Journal of Political Economy, 35(3), 23–45. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40470952 Büscher, B., & Fletcher, R. (2015). Accumulation by Conservation. New Political Economy, 20(2), 273–298. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2014.923824 Business for Nature. (2022). More than 330 businesses call on Heads of State to make nature assessment and disclosure mandatory at COP15. Retrieved from https://www.businessfornature.org/make-it-mandatory-campaign Calvet-Mir, L., Corbera, E., Martin, A., Fisher, J., & Gross-Camp, N. (2015). Payments for ecosystem services in the tropics: A closer look at effectiveness and equity. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 14, 150–162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2015.06.001 Castree, N. (2010). Neoliberalism and the biophysical environment: A synthesis and evaluation of the research. Environment and Society, 1(1), 5-45. https://doi.org/10.3167/ares.2010.010102 The Whale Carbon Plus Project. (2022). The Whale Carbon Plus Project (Press Release). Retrieved from: https://thewhalecarbonplusproject.com/press-release Chan, K. M. A., Gould, R. K. & Pascual U. (2018). Editorial overview: Relational values: what are they, and what’s the fuss about? Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 35, A1-A7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2018.11.003 Chancel, L., Piketty, T., Saez, E., Zucman, G. et al. (2022). World Inequality Report 2022. World Inequality Lab. Retrieved from https://wir2022.wid.world/ Charm Industrial. (April 2, 2021). Charm Delivers Stripe’s Carbon Removal Purchase Ahead-of-Schedule. Charm Industrial. Retrieved from: https://charmindustrial.com/blog/2021/4/19/charm-announces-ahead-of-schedule-delivery-of-stripes-carbon-removal-purchase Christiansen, J. (2021). Fixing fictions through blended finance: The entrepreneurial ensemble and risk interpretation in the Blue Economy. Geoforum, 120, 93–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.01.013 Cohen, D., Nelson, S., & Rosenman, E. (2022). Reparative accumulation? Financial risk and investment across socio-environmental crises. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 5(4), 2356-2382. https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486211030432 Collard, R. C. & Dempsey, J. (2017). Capitalist Natures in Five Orientations. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 28(1), 78–97. https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2016.1202294 131 Collard, R. C. & Dempsey, J. (2020). Two icebergs: Difference in feminist political economy. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 52(1), 237–247. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X19877887 Collard, R. C. & Dempsey, J. (2022). Future eco-perfect: Temporal fixes of liberal environmentalism. Antipode, 54(5), 1545–1565. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12849 Convention on Biological Diversity. (2020a). Evaluation and review of the strategy for resource mobilization and Aichi Biodiversity Target 20: Summary of the first report of the panel of experts on resource mobilization (CBD/SBI/3/5/ADD1). Retrieved from: https://www.cbd.int/meetings/SBI-03 Convention on Biological Diversity. (2020b). Contribution to a draft resource mobilization component of the post-2020 biodiversity framework as a follow-up to the current strategy for resource mobilization: Third report of the panel of experts on resource mobilization (CBD/SBI/3/5/ADD3). Retrieved from: https://www.cbd.int/meetings/SBI-03 Convention on Biological Diversity. (2021). First Draft of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (CBD/WG2020/3/3). Retrieved from: https://www.cbd.int/conferences/post2020 Cooper, N., Brady, E., Steen, H., & Bryce, R. (2016). Aesthetic and spiritual values of ecosystems: Recognising the ontological and axiological plurality of cultural ecosystem ‘services’. Ecosystem Services, 21, 218-229. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2016.07.014 Crooks, S. (2021, November 11). Requirements for Connecting Coastal Blue Carbon Projects to the Carbon Market and Evaluating Inclusion of Seascape Carbon [Conference Presentation]. Blue Carbon: Beyond the Inventory. Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland. Edinburgh, Scotland and online. Recording available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXqts-DjXw8 Danone: 40 years of a unique trajectory. (2012). Retrieved December 26, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XshgoHjwUeU&t=4s Danone. (2021). Launch of a new Livelihoods Carbon Fund - 14 companies & financial investors join forces to accelerate and scale-up nature-based solutions. Danone. Retrieved from: https://www.danone.com/media/press-releases-list/pr-third-livelihoods-carbon-fund.html Danone Fund for Nature. (2010). Achieving Carbon Offsets through Mangroves and Other Wetlands. November. (Expert Workshop Meeting Report). Danone Group/IUCN/ Ramsar Convention. Secretariat, Gland, Switzerland. Retrieved from https://docslib.org/doc/11970128/achieving-carbon-offsets-through-mangroves-and-other-wetlands Dempsey, J., Irvine-Broque, A., Bigger, P., Christiansen, J., Muchhala, B., Nelson, S., Rojas-Marchini, F., Shapiro-Garza, E., Schuldt, A. & DiSilvestro, A. (2021). Biodiversity 132 targets will not be met without debt and tax justice. Nature Ecology Evolution 6, 237–239. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01619-5 Dempsey, J. (2016). Enterprising Nature: Economics, Markets and Finance in Global Biodiversity Politics. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken. Dempsey, J. & Bigger, P. (2019). Intimate mediations of for-profit conservation finance: Waste, improvement, and accumulation. Antipode, 51(2), 517-538. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12503 Dempsey, J. & Robertson, M. (2012). Ecosystem services: Tensions, impurities, and points of engagement within neoliberalism. Progress in Human Geography, 36(6), 758-779. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132512437076 Dempsey, J. & Suarez, D. C. (2016). Arrested Development? The Promises and Paradoxes of “Selling Nature to Save It.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 106(3), 653–671. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2016.1140018 Denvir, D. (Producer). (2022, February 4). Financial Empire w/ Daniela Gabor & Ndongo Samba Sylla [Audio podcast]. The Dig Radio. Retrieved from https://thedigradio.com/podcast/financial-empire-w-daniela-gabor-ndongo-samba-sylla/ Deutz, A., Heal, G., Niu, R., Swanson, E., Townshend, T., Li, Z., … & Tobin-de la Puente, T. (2020). Financing nature: Closing the global biodiversity financing gap. The Paulson Institute, The Nature Conservancy, and the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability. Retrieved from: https://www.paulsoninstitute.org/conservation/financing-nature-report/ Duarte, C., Dennison, W. C., Orth, R. J. W. & Carruthers, T. J. B. (2008). The Charisma of Coastal Ecosystems: Addressing the Imbalance. Estuaries and Coasts, 31, 233–238. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12237-008-9038-7 Duke, N. C., Meynecke, J.-O., Dittmann, S., Ellison, A. M., Anger, K., ... & Dahdouh-Guebas, F. (2007). A World without Mangroves? Science, 317(5834), 41–42. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20036617 Dunlap, A & Sullivan, S. (2020). A faultline in neoliberal environmental governance scholarship? Or, why accumulation-by-alienation matters. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 3(2), 552–579. https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848619874691 E360 Digest. (2021). New Approach to Blue Carbon Projects Underway in Colombia. Yale Environment 360. Retrieved from: https://e360.yale.edu/digest/new-approach-to-blue-carbon-projects-unveiled-in-colombia Elgin, B. (December 9, 2020). Nature Conservancy Hooked Corporate America on an Empty Climate Solution. Bloomberg Green. Retrieved from: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2020-nature-conservancy-carbon-offsets-trees/ 133 Evans, M. (2020). Mangrove forests: the muddy mazes that stash carbon and hide secrets. Global Landscapes Forum. Farnsworth, E. J. & Ellison, A. M. (1997). The global conservation status of mangroves. Ambio, 26(6), 328-334. Forest Trends’ Ecosystem Marketplace. (2021, September 15). State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets: “Markets in Motion” [Webinar]. Ecosystem Marketplace. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uHuV8LDPp4 Forest Trends’ Ecosystem Marketplace. (2021). ’Markets in Motion’, State of Voluntary Carbon Markets 2021, Installment 1. Washington DC: Forest Trends Association. Fraser, N. (2017). From Progressive Neoliberalism to Trump and Beyond. American Affairs, 1(4), 46-64. https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2017/11/progressive-neoliberalism-trump-beyond/ Gabor, D. (2021). The Wall Street Consensus. Development and Change, 52(3), 429–459. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12645 Gidwani, V. (2013). Six theses on waste, value, and commons. Social & Cultural Geography, 14(7), 773-783. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2013.800222 Global Canopy. (2021). Time for change: Delivering deforestation-free supply chains (Forest 500). Retrieved from https://forest500.org/sites/default/files/forest500_2021report.pdf Global Environment Facility. (2022). Wildlife Conservation Bond boosts South Africa's efforts to protect black rhinos and support local communities. Retrieved from https://www.thegef.org/newsroom/press-releases/wildlife-conservation-bond-boosts-south-africas-efforts-protect-black Goldman, M. (2005). Imperial Nature: The World Bank and Struggles for Social Justice in the Age of Globalization. Yale Agrarian Studies Series. Yale University Press, New Haven. Goldstein, J. (2013). Terra Economica: Waste and the Production of Enclosed Nature. Antipode, 45(2), 357–375. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.01003.x Greenberg, C. (2021). Carbon Offsets are a Scam. Greenpeace. Retrieved from: https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/50689/carbon-offsets-net-zero-greenwashing-scam/ Griffiths, V. F., Bull, J. W., Baker, J., Infield, M., Roe, D., Nalwanga, D., Byaruhanga, A., & Milner-Gulland, E. J. (2020). Incorporating local nature-based cultural values into biodiversity no net loss strategies. World Development, 128, 104858. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.104858 Gronski, R. (2001). Shrimp Culture in Thailand: Environmental Impacts and Social Responses. New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy,10(4), 367-376. https://doi.org/10.2190/WVRK-64N6-C84U-950G 134 Gros, M. (2022). Can private wealth close the biodiversity funding gap? Euromoney. Retrieved from: https://www.euromoney.com/article/2acw45nwlj0vbsrtqel1c/esg/can-private-wealth-close-the-biodiversity-funding-gap Hall, S., & Massey, D. (2010). Interpreting the crisis: Doreen Massey and Stuart Hall discuss ways of understanding the current crisis. Soundings, 44, 57+. Gale Literature Resource Center. Hamilton, S. E., & Stankwitz, C. (2012). Examining the relationship between international aid and mangrove deforestation in coastal ecuador from 1970 to 2006. Journal of Land use Science, 7(2), 177-202. https://doi.org/10.1080/1747423X.2010.550694 Hamilton, S. E. (2011). The impact of shrimp farming on mangrove ecosystems and local livelihoods along the pacific coast of ecuador (Doctoral Dissertation). Retrieved from the University of Southern Mississippi ProQuest Dissertations Publishing. Harrison, J. A. (2012). Buoyancy on the bayou: Shrimpers face the rising tide of globalization. Cornell University Press, Ithaca. Harrison, P. (2022). Why we must make nature investible. OpenInvest. Retrieved from https://www.openinvest.com.au/insights/why-we-must-make-nature-investible/1018/ Hart, G. (2018). Relational comparison revisited: Marxist postcolonial geographies in practice. Progress in Human Geography, 42(3), 371–394. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132516681388 Harvey, D. (2003). The new imperialism. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Herr, D. (2020). How to get private capital to protect nature – without greenwashing. World Economic Forum. Retrieved from: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/10/conservation-nature-based-solutions-private-finance/ Hiraldo, R. (2021). Resisting workers’ disalienation: The making and survival of capitalist conservation in niombato, senegal. Environment and Planning. E, Nature and Space (Print), 4(4), 1441-1461. https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848620960405 Hiraldo Lopez-Alonso, R. (2017). Value is Still Labour: Exploitation and the Production of Environmental Rent and Commodities for Nature Tourists in Rural Senegal. Human Geography, 10(2), 54–71. https://doi.org/10.1177/194277861701000204 Holmes, G., & Cavanagh, C. J. (2016). A review of the social impacts of neoliberal conservation: Formations, inequalities, contestations. Geoforum, 75, 199–209. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2016.07.014 Howard, J. (2022). Why ‘Blue Carbon’ Ecosystems Matter. Environmental, Coastal & Offshore (ECO) Magazine. Retrieved from 135 http://digital.ecomagazine.com/publication/frame.php?i=755566&p=1&pn=&ver=html5&view=issueViewer Huff, A. & Brock, A. (2017). Accumulation by Restoration: Degradation Neutrality and the Faustian Bargain of Conservation Finance. Antipode Online. Retrieved from https://antipodeonline.org/2017/11/06/accumulation-by-restoration/ Huxham, M. (2022) How shrimp farming wreaked havoc on Sri Lanka’s coasts. The Conversation. Retrieved from http://theconversation.com/how-shrimp-farming-wreaked-havoc-on-sri-lankas-coasts-44933 Igoe, J. & Brockington, D. (2007). Neoliberal Conservation: A Brief Introduction. Conservation and Society, 5 (4), 432–449. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26392898 Ilman, M., Dargusch, P., Dart, P. & Onrizal. (2016). A historical analysis of the drivers of loss and degradation of Indonesia’s mangroves, Land Use Policy, 54, 448-459. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2016.03.010 Inniss, L. & Simcock, A. (2017). The first global integrated marine assessment: World ocean assessment I. United Nations Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea, Office of Legal Affairs. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108186148 IPBES. (2019). Global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the intergovernmental science-policy platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services. E. S. Brondizio, J. Settele, S. Díaz, and H. T. Ngo (editors). IPBES Secretariat. Retrieved from https://ipbes.net/global-assessment IPBES. (2022a). Media Release: IPBES Values Assessment - Decisions Based on Narrow Set of Market Values of Nature Underpin the Global Biodiversity Crisis. Retrieved from https://ipbes.net/media_release/Values_Assessment_Published IPBES. (2022b). Summary for policymakers of the methodological assessment of the diverse values and valuation of nature of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Retrieved from https://zenodo.org/record/6832427#.Y5lB8bLMJQI IUCN. (2012). Investment in carbon capture—Lifeline to poor. Retrieved from https://www.iucn.org/content/investment-carbon-capture-lifeline-poor IUCN. (2022). Nature-based Solutions. Retrieved from https://www.iucn.org/our-work/nature-based-solutions Jakovac, C. C., Latawiec, A. E., Lacerda, E., Leite Lucas, I., Korys, K. A., … & Baeta Neves Strassburg, B. (2020). Costs and Carbon Benefits of Mangrove Conservation and Restoration: A Global Analysis. Ecological Economics, 176, 106758. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106758 136 Johnson, J. A., Ruta, G., Baldos, U., Cervigni, R., Chonabayashi, S., … & Polasky, S. (2021). The Economic Case for Nature: A Global Earth-Economy Model to Assess Development Policy Pathways. World Bank Group. Retrieved from https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/35882 Jones, N. (2021) Why the Market for ‘Blue Carbon’ Credits May Be Poised to Take Off. Yale E360. Retrieved from https://e360.yale.edu/features/why-the-market-for-blue-carbon-credits-may-be-poised-to-take-off Karsenty, A. (2008). The architecture of proposed REDD schemes after Bali: Facing critical choices. The International Forestry Review, 10(3), 443-457. https://doi.org/10.1505/ifor.10.3.443 Kelly, A. B. (2011). Conservation practice as primitive accumulation. Journal of Peasant Studies, 38(4), 683–701. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2011.607695 Knight, T. (2021). Multitalented mangroves: Spotlight on the trees that could save the planet. Flora and Fauna International. Retrieved from https://phys.org/news/2021-03-multitalented-mangroves-spotlight-trees-planet.html Kolb, A. (2016). 6 facts you need to know about mangroves. Conservation International. Retrieved from https://www.conservation.org/blog/6-things-you-need-to-know-about-mangroves-but-never-thought-to-ask. Latorre, S. (2013). The politics of identification in a shrimp conflict in ecuador: The political subject, "pueblos ancestrales del ecosistema manglar" [ancestral peoples of the mangrove ecosystem]. The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 18(1), 67-89. https://doi.org/10.1111/jlca.12003 Leal, M. & Spalding, M. D. (Eds.). (2022). The State of the World’s Mangroves 2022. Global Mangrove Alliance. Retrieved from https://www.mangrovealliance.org/mangrove-forests/ Lee, S. Y. (1995). Mangrove outwelling: a review. Hydrobiologia 295, 203–212. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00029127 Li, T. (2007). The Will to Improve. Duke University Press, Durham. Livelihoods. (2019). An Interview with Bernard Giraud on our New Fund LCF3: “The Livelihoods investment model is now mature enough to scale up.” Livelihoods Funds. Retrieved from https://livelihoods.eu/bernard-giraud-interview-lcf3/ López-Angarita, J., Roberts, C. M., Tilley, A., Hawkins, J. P., & Cooke, R. G. (2016). Mangroves and people: Lessons from a history of use and abuse in four latin american countries. Forest Ecology and Management, 368, 151-162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2016.03.020 137 Lugo, A. E., & Snedaker, S. C. (1974). The ecology of mangroves. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 5(1), 39-64. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.es.05.110174.000351 Macreadie, P. (2021, November 11). Operationalising marketable blue carbon [Conference Presentation]. Blue Carbon: Beyond the Inventory. Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland. Edinburgh, Scotland and online. Recording available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXqts-DjXw8 Martinez-Alier, J. (2001). Ecological conflicts and valuation: Mangroves versus shrimps in the late 1990s. Environment and Planning. C, Government & Policy, 19(5), 713-728. https://doi.org/10.1068/c15s Mattsson, E., Ostwald, M., Nissanka, S. P., Holmer, B., & Palm, M. (2009). Recovery and protection of coastal ecosystems after tsunami event and potential for participatory forestry CDM – Examples from Sri Lanka. Ocean & Coastal Management, 52(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2008.09.007 McAfee, K. (1999). Selling nature to save it? biodiversity and green developmentalism. Environment and Planning. D, Society & Space, 17(2), 133-154. https://doi.org/10.1068/d170133 McVeigh, K. (2021). Blue carbon: The hidden CO2 sink that pioneers say could save the planet. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/04/can-blue-carbon-make-offsetting-work-these-pioneers-think-so Melanidis, M. S., & Hagerman, S. (2022). Competing narratives of nature-based solutions: Leveraging the power of nature or dangerous distraction? Environmental Science & Policy, 132, 273-281. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2022.02.028 Mies, M. (2014). Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale. London: Zed Books. Miles, W. B. (2020). The invisible commodity: Local experiences with forest carbon offsetting in Indonesia. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space. https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848620905235 Milne, S., Mahanty, S., To, P., Dressler, W., Kanowski, P., & Thavat, M. (2019). Learning From 'actually existing' REDD+: A synthesis of ethnographic findings. Conservation & Society, 17(1), 84–95. https://doi.org/10.4103/cs.cs_18_13 Mitchell, T. (2002). Rule of Experts: Egypt, Technopolitics, Modernity. University of California Press, Berkeley. Mukerjee, M. (2009). Conflicted conservation. Scientific American, 301(3), 18-21. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican0909-18 Munasinghe, M. N., Stephen, C., Abeynayake, P., & Abeygunawardena, I. S. (2010). Shrimp Farming Practices in the Puttallam District of Sri Lanka: Implications for Disease 138 Control, Industry Sustainability, and Rural Development. Veterinary Medicine International, https://doi.org/10.4061/2010/679130 Nature Finance. (2022). Aligning Sustainability & Sovereign Debt. Nature Finance. Retrieved from https://www.naturefinance.net/making-change/sovereign-debt/ Neimark, B., Mahanty, S., Dressler, W., & Hicks, C. (2020). Not Just Participation: The Rise of the Eco-Precariat in the Green Economy. Antipode, 52(2), 496–521. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12593 Nellemann, C., Corcoran, E., Duarte, C. M., Valdés, L., De Young, C. … & Grimsditch, G. (Eds). (2009). Blue Carbon. A Rapid Response Assessment: The Role of Healthy Oceans in Binding Carbon. United Nations Environment Programme, GRID-Arendal. Retrieved from https://www.grida.no/publications/145 Nelson, S. H., & Bigger, P. (2022). Infrastructural nature. Progress in Human Geography, 46(1), 86-107. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132521993916 Nelson, S. H., Bremer, L. L., Meza Prado, K., & Brauman, K. A. (2020). The political life of natural infrastructure: Water funds and alternative histories of payments for ecosystem services in valle del cauca, colombia. Development and Change, 51(1), 26-50. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12544 Nelson, S. H. (2017). Neoliberal environments: Crisis, counterrevolution, and the nature of value (Doctoral Dissertation). Retrieved from University of Minnesota ProQuest Dissertations Publishing. Nesperos, V. J. C., Villanueva, C. M. M., Garcia, J. E. & Gevaña, D. T. (2021). Assessment of blue carbon stock of mangrove vegetation in Infanta, Quezon, Philippines. Ecosystems and Development, 11(1-2), 48-60. https://ovcre.uplb.edu.ph/journals-uplb/index.php/EDJ/article/view/618 Nurse, L. & Moore, R. (2007), Critical considerations for future action during the second commitment period: A small islands’ perspective. Natural Resources Forum, 31, 102-110. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-8947.2007.00143.x O'Connor, J. (1991). On the two contradictions of capitalism. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 2(3), 107-109, https://doi.org/10.1080/10455759109358463 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2020). A comprehensive overview of global biodiversity finance (final report). OECD. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/environment/resources/biodiversity/report-a-comprehensive-overview-of-global-biodiversity-finance.pdf Parker, C., Cranford, M., Oakes, N., & Leggett, M. (Eds.) (2012). The Little Biodiversity Finance Book, Global Canopy Programme. Oxford. Retrieved from https://globalcanopy.org/insights/publication/the-little-biodiversity-finance-book-3rd-edition-2012/ 139 Patil, P. G. (1999). Modelling and measuring the efficiency of the brackish water shrimp aquaculture sector and its socio-economic and environmental impacts on rural producers in Nellore District, India (Doctoral Dissertation). London School of Economics and Political Science (United Kingdom) ProQuest Dissertations Publishing. Peck, J., & Theodore, N. (2012). Follow the policy: A distended case approach. Environment and Planning. A, 44(1), 21-30. https://doi.org/10.1068/a44179 Perreault, T. A., Bridge, G., McCarthy, J., & ebrary, I. (2015). In Perreault T., Bridge G. and McCarthy J. (Eds.), The routledge handbook of political ecology. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315759289 Portfolio Earth. (2020). Bankrolling extinction. Retrieved from https://portfolio.earth/ Price, K. (2020). The oceans are on the brink. Here are 3 ways to save them. Conservation International. Retrieved from https://www.conservation.org/blog/the-oceans-are-on-the-brink-here-are-3-ways-to-save-them Rahman, M. M., Zimmer, M., Ahmed, I., Donato, D., Kanzaki, M., & Xu, M. (2021). Co-benefits of protecting mangroves for biodiversity conservation and carbon storage. Nature Communications, 12(1), 3875-3875. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24207-4 Rao, N. S. (2004). In Somvanshi V. (Ed.), Conservation and management of marine fishery resources: Role of socio-economic factors. Fishery Survey of India, Mumbai (India). Report No. 20430-CE, Sri Lanka, Recapturing Missed Opportunities. (2000). World Bank Group. Poverty Reduction and Economic Management, South Asia Region. Retrieved from https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/15254/multi_page.pdf;sequence=1 Rivera-Ferre, M. (2009). Can export-oriented aquaculture in developing countries be sustainable and promote sustainable development? The shrimp case. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 22(4), 301-321. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-009-9148-7 Robertson, M. (2006). The nature that capital can see: science, state, and market in the commodification of ecosystem services. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 24(3), 367–387. https://doi.org/10.1068/d3304 Rovai, A. S., Twilley, R. R., Castañeda-Moya, E., Riul, P., Cifuentes-Jara, M. … & Pagliosa, P. R. (2018). Global controls on carbon storage in mangrove soils. Nature Climate Change, 8(6), 534-538. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0162-5 Sasmito, S. D., Sillanpää, M., Hayes, M. A., Bachri, S., Saragi‐Sasmito, M. F. … & Murdiyarso, D. (2020). Mangrove blue carbon stocks and dynamics are controlled by hydrogeomorphic settings and land‐use change. Global Change Biology, 26(5), 3028-3039. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15056 140 Scoville, C. R. (2020). A “Stupid little fish”: Science, law and the politics of environmental decline in california (Doctoral Dissertation). University of California, Berkeley ProQuest Dissertations Publishing. Setyowati, A. B. (2020). Making Territory and Negotiating Citizenship in a Climate Mitigation Initiative in Indonesia. Development and Change, 51(1), 144–166. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12541. Shapiro-Garza, E., McElwee, P., Van Hecken, G. & Corbera, E. (2020). Beyond market logics: Payments for ecosystem services as alternative development practices in the Global South. Development and Change, 51(1), 3-25. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12546 Shapiro‐Garza E (2020) An Alternative Theorization of Payments for Ecosystem Services from Mexico: Origins and Influence. Development and Change 51(1): 196–223. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12552. Sills, E. O., de Sassi, C., Jagger, P., Lawlor, K., Miteva, D. A., Pattanayak, S. K., & Sunderlin, W. D. (2017). Building the evidence base for REDD+: Study design and methods for evaluating the impacts of conservation interventions on local well-being. Global Environmental Change, 43, 148-160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2017.02.002 Simon, M. (2021). Nature Can Save Humanity From Climate Doom—But Not On Its Own. WIRED. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/story/nature-can-save-humanity-from-climate-doom-but-not-on-its-own/ Smith, S. V. (1981). Marine Macrophytes as a Global Carbon Sink. Science, 211(4484), 838–840. Spalding, M. (2010). World Atlas of Mangroves. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781849776608 Spalding, M. D. & Leal, M. (Eds.). (2021). The State of the World’s Mangroves 2021. Global Mangrove Alliance. Retrieved from https://www.mangrovealliance.org/the-state-of-the-worlds-mangroves-2021/ Sparr, P. (1994). Mortgaging women's lives: Feminist critiques of structural adjustment. Zed Books, London. Stonich, S. C., & Bailey, C. (2000). Resisting the blue revolution: Contending coalitions surrounding industrial shrimp farming. Human Organization, 59(1), 23. https://doi.org/10.17730/humo.59.1.86281132l884231k Suttor-Sorel, L. (2019). Making Finance Serve Nature. Finance Watch. Retrieved from https://www.finance-watch.org/publication/making-finance-serve-nature-report/ Suttor-Sorel, L. & Hercelin, N. (2020). Nature’s Return. Finance Watch. Retrieved from https://www.finance-watch.org/publication/natures-return-biodiversity-greendeal/ 141 Táíwò, O. O. & Bigger, P. (2022). Debt justice for climate reparations. Climate and Community Project. Retrieved from https://www.climateandcommunity.org/debt-justice-for-climate-reparations The Nature Conservancy. (2019). A Necessity and An Opportunity: Private Finance for Nature. Retrieved from https://www.nature.org/en-us/what-we-do/our-insights/perspectives/the-necessity-and-opportunity-of-private-finance-for-nature-/ Thomson, E. (2020). Time for Change: Delivering Deforestation-Free Supply Chains. Global Canopy. Retrieved from https://globalcanopy.org/insights/publication/time-for-change-delivering-deforestation-free-supply-chains/ Time for transformation. (2022). Nature Sustainability, 5(6), 461-461. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00925-5 Tobin de la Puente, J., & Mitchell, A.W. (Eds.) (2021). The Little Book of Investing in Nature. Global Canopy, Oxford. Tokrisna, R., & Benheam, W. (1995). In Liao D. (Ed.), Gain or loss from shrimp farming development: A case of pak panang. National Taiwan University Tsing, A. L. (2015). The mushroom at the end of the world: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400873548 Turschwell, M. P., Tulloch, V. J. D., Sievers, M., Pearson, R. M., Andradi-Brown, D. A., … & Brown, C. J. (2020). Multi-scale estimation of the effects of pressures and drivers on mangrove forest loss globally. Biological Conservation, 247. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2020.108637 United Nations Environment Programme. (2021). State of Finance for Nature 2021. Nairobi. Retrieved from https://www.unep.org/resources/state-finance-nature van Mulekom, L., Axelsson, A., Batungbacal, E. P., Baxter, D., Siregar, R., de la Torre, I., & SEAFish for Justice. (2006). Trade and export orientation of fisheries in southeast asia: Under-priced export at the expense of domestic food security and local economies. Ocean & Coastal Management, 49(9), 546-561. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2006.06.001 Vannucci, M. (2004). Mangrove Management and Conservation. United Nations University Press, Tokyo, New York. Verra. (2020). First Blue Carbon Conservation Methodology Expected to Scale Up Finance for Coastal Restoration & Conservation Activities. Verra. Retrieved from https://verra.org/first-blue-carbon-conservation-methodology-expected-to-scale-up-finance-for-coastal-restoration-conservation-activities/ 142 Veuthey, S., & Gerber, J. (2012). Accumulation by dispossession in coastal ecuador: Shrimp farming, local resistance and the gender structure of mobilizations. Global Environmental Change, 22(3), 611-622. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.10.010 Warne, K. (2011). Let them eat shrimp: The tragic disappearance of the rainforests of the sea. Island Press/Center for Resource Economics, Berkeley. Worford, D. (2022). Evian Faces Lawsuit Over Packaging’s Carbon Neutral Claims. Environment + Energy Leader. Retrieved from https://www.environmentalleader.com/2022/10/evian-faces-lawsuit-over-packagings-carbon-neutral-claims/ World Bank. (2021). Mangrove Conservation and Restoration: Protecting Indonesia’s “Climate Guardians.” World Bank Group. Retrieved from https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2021/07/26/mangrove-conservation-and-restoration-protecting-indonesia-climate-guardians World Economic Forum. (2020). Nature Risk Rising: Why the Crisis Engulfing Nature Matters for Business and the Economy. Retrieved from https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_New_Nature_Economy_Report_2020.pdf Zimmer, K. (2021). This tree could be key to saving the Earth — if we can regrow it right. Inverse. Retrieved from https://www.inverse.com/science/many-mangrove-restorations-fail-is-there-a-better-way “Project Description Template V4.1”. Verra Carbon Standard. Accessed October 2022. Retrieved from https://verra.org/programs/verified-carbon-standard/vcs-version-4-rules-and-requirements/ “VCS Standard V4.3”. Verra Carbon Standard. Accessed October 2022 Retrieved from https://verra.org/programs/verified-carbon-standard/vcs-version-4-rules-and-requirements/
Thesis/Dissertation
eng
Geography
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Graduate
Dempsey, Jessica, 1977-
The political life of mangroves
Text