Commodification and Financialization of Nature: Green Economy, Carbon Markets & REDD and new threats for water and other commons

This dialogue seminar and strategy meeting will focus on the environmental, social, cultural and moral threats of the commodification and financialization of nature through market-based conservation mechanisms like carbon markets and REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation and enhancing forest carbon stocks) that are being promoted as part of the so-called “green economy”. Carbon markets and REDD do not only represent false solutions to climate change, they also enable the corporate capture of our commons (lands, biodiversity, water, energy, air …) by privatizing and commodifying nature through new and speculative markets, including financial markets. Capitalist environmental policies like payments for environmental services (PES) and carbon and biodiversity offsets will enrich corporations and a few big NGOs while marginalizing and even expelling the very Indigenous Peoples, local communities, small peasants and women that have conserved and restored nature for generations. Building on this analysis, the meeting will discuss how we can reclaim, practice and promote our commons.