Global Justice Ecology Project campaigns against the commodification of life through our work as the North American Focal Point of the Global Forest Coalition which has a campaign against the Commodification of Life; and through our work against genetic engineering.

Right: Cree elder women tanning caribou hide, Whapmagoostui, Quebec, Canada.  Photo: Langelle/ GJEP

"Cree culture has a lot to offer in the area of nature, which is something very much needed in the world. In western society, everything is segregated. That is what is ruining the world. People have to think more holistically about their actions. Everything comes down to 'how much money can I make from this.' Until this changes, all this talk of environmental protection is bullshit."  --Cree Helen Atkinson


The Global Forest Coalition statement on the Commodification of Life from their report, "You Cannot Save It If You Cannot Sell It?" is below:

Over the last decade a number of environmental economists, mainly based in the US, have been strenuously promoting market-based approaches as the only feasible solution to biodiversity conservation.

A range of organizations and institutions (already sympathetic to and in many cases actively promoting neoliberal policies) have responded by enthusiastically embracing this market-based approach to conservation. Such organizations include international financial institutions like the World Bank, a number of large conservation organizations and a broad range of commercial and semi-commercial environmental institutions and consultancy firms. According to these advocates, creating new markets in environmental services is the most efficient way of conserving forests and other environmental assets.

They argue that by giving these natural 'assets' a market value and creating a market for them, the 'invisible hand' of the market will automatically generate the desired objectives. The belief is that the market is the most effective and efficient way of reducing pollution because it gives incentives to industry to reduce its emissions in the most cost- effective manner. They also argue that regulation is ineffective and burdensome because it increases rather than decreases industry's costs. The question is: is this really true or not? Is this a foolproof mechanism for protecting biodiversity, with no negative social or environmental impacts?

The first step towards establishing an environmental service market is the privatization and commodification of the environmental assets and functions of the relevant ecosystem (forests, for example). There is a presumption, shared by many, that it is possible to both quantify and commodify the values and assets of nature. Conveniently, this presumption serves the interests of those who stand to benefit from the market-based approach. Critically, however, it completely ignores the interconnectedness between ecosystems, and local communities and Indigenous Peoples, who depend upon and are culturally intertwined with those ecosystems. Some NGOs have pointed out that the term 'environmental services' is being misused to describe a new market 'sector', as can be seen in the World Trade Organization's services negotiations (which include environmental services).

There are remarkably few analyses comparing the predicted benefits of proposed market-based mechanisms with potentially more equitable and efficient public governance approaches (such as focusing on safeguarding community governance or regulating corporations). The market in SO2 and NOx emissions reductions, established in the USA in the early 1990s within the framework of the Clean Air Act, is often quoted as an environmental and economic success.

However, there is no comparative analysis available that distinguishes between the success of the US Clean Air policy overall (which includes strong, regulatory binding caps on emissions) and the success of the emissions market itself. On the other hand, there are a number of studies on the social impacts of this emissions market that actually demonstrate a negative result.

Analyses of the impacts of market-based mechanisms are also obscured by the fact that certain schemes by governmental agencies, such as those that give a subsidy to land holders for improved land management(like the well-known New York City's Watershed Forestry Program) are wrongly presented as examples of commercial markets. In 2002, for example, the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) analyzed the social impacts of 287 cases, but only a small minority concerned existing private and commercial markets. The Costa Rican Payments for Environmental Services scheme, another frequently quoted example, is mainly financed by a fossil fuel tax. When the Costa Rican government tried to integrate this scheme into the international market for carbon credits in the mid 1990's, it turned out that the prices for carbon credits were too low to cover the costs of the scheme. In other words, it was not the market that delivered the desired results, but a combination of governmental taxes and subsidies.

In short, the case for environmental services markets is not only weak, but unproven. Furthermore, the negative social and environmental impacts could be considerable.

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More documents from GFC on the subject can be found here