Dear all, I just followed up on my promise during the ESS business meeting at ISA and have set up a page for panel and paper suggestions for next year's ISA. The page is linked from http://environmental-studies.org/ - just follow the link in the most recent post. It is set up as a Wiki - so you can simply edit the content yourself (just please do not erase everything ...): add or edit panels and papers as you please. I took the liberty to incorporate suggestions made at ISA as well as in the recent exchange here. Kathy and Mat: feel free to edit/delete what I posted with respect to your suggestions. Marcus -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kathy McAfee Sent: Mittwoch, 21. März 2007 13:34 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; gep-ed@listserve1.allegheny.edu; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Carbon offsets, 'climate capitalism'
Dear Matt, Ronnie, and others, I've done some work on what I call "selling nature to save it" that might be germane to your ideas for an ISA panel. Here's an abstract of a paper I've drafted: Trading Environmental Services: Can Nature Pay It's Way in the Global Marketplace? Commodification of environmental services - carbon storage, water filtration, flood control, wildlife habitats, genetic diversity, and scenic beauty - has become a leading environmental policy trend. Governments (including China's) and international agencies (such as the World Bank) sponsor programs for Payment for Environmental Services such as watershed functions and schemes for transnational trade in carbon sequestration. Most discourse in support of these "markets" reflects a neoliberal ideal of private entrepreneurialism and economic efficiency. However, actual ES trading schemes depend substantially on regulation, subsidies, and support by public institutions. Their advocates anticipate vast new revenues for climate-change mitigation and biodiversity preservation. Some claim that by simultaneously fostering economic growth, conservation, and social equity, the commercialization of ES provides the missing link between conservation and development. This paper questions whether transnational ES markets can yield either net conservation or net equity gains. Instead, to the extent that transnational markets in "permits to pollute" make it easier to avoid reduction of GHGs and other ecological damage at the source, they promote net environmental harm. Moreover, carbon sequestration, waste storage, or habitat maintenance are cheaper in global South because land rents, wages, and living standards are lower there. Thus, the pivotal premise of low-cost conservation by commercialization depends on the continuation of extreme socio-economic inequality. By leaving out the greater part of nature's meanings and uses to the world's poor majority, global ES trading radically discounts nature's existing and future values. "Global' carbon markets and other transnational ES trading would postpone accounting for environmental costs by displacing the ecological crises of advanced industrial societies to poorer places and less powerful people. I expect to be at ISA 08, so please let me know if this is relevant to your interests. Kathy I'd be keen on such a panel. I was going to propose it a little wider, on 'climate capitalism'. I,m happy to put this together if people are interested. Mat Matthew Paterson Professeur titulaire École d'études politiques Université d'Ottawa 75 rue Laurier Ottawa K1N 6N5 Canada 613 562 5800 x 1716 [EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://www.socialsciences.uottawa.ca/pol/fra/profdetails.asp?login=mpaterso n> http://www.socialsciences.uottawa.ca/pol/fra/profdetails.asp?login=mpaterson -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Ronnie Lipschutz Sent: Tue 3/13/2007 2:47 PM To: gep-ed@listserve1.allegheny.edu Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Carbon offsets Dear All: Apropos the article just circulated by Stacy V., is anyone interested in assembling one or more panels on carbon offsets for next year's ISA? Ronnie Lipschutz P.S.: Stacy--in case this gets bounced back to me, could you circulate the question to the GEP list? ************************************************************************* Ronnie D. Lipschutz, Professor of Politics, Dept. of Politics, 234 Crown College University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 Phone: 831-459-3275/Fax: 831-459-3125; <http://people.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/home.html> http://people.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/home.html ************************************************************************* -- Kathleen McAfee Department of International Relations San Francisco State University 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94321 Office: HSS 381 Tel: 415 405 2412 Office hours Spring 2007: Wed. 3-4pm, Thurs 4-6pm (after Jan. 24) e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
