Commodification of nature, book value of biodiversity and others utilitarian perspectives on living things: Hélène Tordjman, an economist, lecturer at the Sorbonne and member of the Center for Research in Economics of Paris Nord, delivers a radical critique of ecological capitalism still triumphant in Glasgow. She published this year Green growth against nature: critique of market ecology (Discovery). Interview by Stéphane Baillargeon.
World leaders meet at the Glasgow Climate Change Conference (COP26). How do you judge this meeting or the previous ones?
They are, as usual, only promises that lead to nothing or very little. We’re not moving forward. It is not completely useless in the sense that these conferences allow the ecological question to be brought back to the fore. But since there is no binding framework, the States commit themselves and, then, they do not keep their promises. We can see this clearly in France, a country which nevertheless organized the Paris Agreement. French commitments have not been respected at all, to the point that the state has been condemned by justice for its climate inaction. This does not prevent President Macron from repeating a very proactive speech. It is distressing. Everywhere, there is a double discourse that journalists do not recognize enough to confront the rulers with their commitments, their lies and their contradictions.
How are you yourself interested in these questions as an economist?
Since my doctorate on speculative dynamics, I have been interested in the market as a central institution of capitalism. With the rise of ecological issues, I looked at the phenomenon of the extension of markets to realities, in particular nature, a priori non-marketable. Different parts of the natural world are being commodified, even financialized, when they should not undergo this transformation at all since they are not commodities. A commodity is produced for the purpose of market exchange, which is not the case with genetic information or pollination.
Where does this utilitarian and commercial perspective on nature come from?
The notion of natural capital, as we used to say human capital, appeared at the end of the 1980s, the market being re-legitimized as a privileged institution for the coordination of economic activities. Nature is now seen as a capital to be protected and grown to produce annual revenues which are called “ecosystem services”, another new term. From this perspective, nature provides us with these ecosystem services, such as regulating climate or pollination. If it were given a financial value, it would become costly to destroy it and advantageous to protect it, which would encourage economic agents to act for the common good.
What are the most striking examples of this commodification of the living?
The example of genes transformed into commodities is well known. Thousands of experts are also working to put a price on species, landscapes or carbon sequestration. The evaluation methods can be done with surveys of people. For example, we ask them: what price would you be willing to pay per year to support a grizzly bear or blue whale conservation policy? The answer gives the value of the species. We arrive at results that make no sense. When the Americans want to pay $ 63 to protect Pacific salmon and only $ 8 for Atlantic salmon, we imagine that there are more salmon fishermen in the west than in the eastern United States. In statistics, this is called sampling bias. If we ask an Afghan woman today how much she is willing to pay to protect the giant panda, in my opinion it won’t be much.
What is the place of this market valuation of ecosystems in ecological discourse?
This idea is dominating the discourse on the protection of nature and some major environmental associations, such as WWF. [le Fonds mondial pour la nature], The Nature Conservancy or IUCN [l’Union internationale pour la conservation de la nature], fall into the trap by defending ecological compensation practices which in fact constitute a right to destroy: what is destroyed here can be compensated by keeping there. Previously, throughout the XXe century, protecting nature amounted to creating protected areas, to sanctuary large areas of the territory. The paradigm shift became explicit with the Convention on Biological Diversity signed at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, at the same time as the great framework convention on climate change. This international treaty explicitly promotes market instruments based on price incentives. The first position resulting from this, the Kyoto protocol, proposed to put a price on carbon.
This is still a solution defended at COP26, including by Canada. How do you judge the carbon market?
It is a right to pollute. It is postulated that by setting a maximum number of permits we will limit emissions. The result is not at all conclusive: the carbon market has not prevented emissions from rising, on the contrary. The European Union even distributed permits free of charge to businesses, and in such large quantities that we ended up with a surplus of supply.
What then of the green growth discussed in Glasgow?
It’s an oxymoron. It is not possible. The capitalist productivist economy now claims to be able to save what it has helped to destroy. The tools of capitalism that led to the disaster cannot help it out. It is a headlong rush, an absurd and paradoxical position. Only the big transnational corporations benefit: they can impose their priorities on the politicians, and that is exactly what they do. These major economic and financial players have no interest in stopping polluting. In short, green capitalism offers a false solution. We won’t get there like that.
How then ? What do you recommend?
We cannot get out of the impasse by remaining in this system. We have to fundamentally rethink our modes of production, our modes of consumption and our modes of wealth distribution. The stakes are vital. Capitalism acts like a steamroller on human beings and on nature. Obviously, there is no simple recipe for achieving this great upheaval.
On what philosophical or ethical foundations is this economic or industrial transformation based?
There is a philosophical and anthropological revolution to accomplish in order to regain respect for the living. We are touching the foundations of Western modernity, this idea of making humans the master and possessor of nature, as Descartes said. This completely anthropocentric view believes that other life forms are on Earth only to serve humanity. Eco-modernists take it a step further, saying that true nature no longer exists, but that humans, so strong with their science and technique, will be able to recreate a new nature. We are therefore seeing proposals appear to modify ecosystems and make them supposedly more efficient. We say it like that really, as if nature was there to be “efficient”. We have tools like gene drives to eradicate or modify the species that disturb us. This Promethean vision also envisages improving the human being or reviving extinct species. A project wants to “extinguish” the woolly mammoth to revitalize the arctic tundra and allow it to capture carbon. Really, he has a philosophical and anthropological revolution to lead to regain a respect for the living, and that requires a certain humility.