‘We are heartbroken and furious!’ Engaging with violence in the (anti-)globalisation movement(s)

This piece is intended as an exploratory comment on the militancy emerging in (anti-)globalisation political practice and in the policing of such practice, rather than as a definitive analysis. As someone who attempts to pursue a tradition of the ‘organic intellectual’ – engaging in the practice of activism as well as the theorising of activist practice – the paper has emerged from my own process of sense-making regarding violence in the ‘(anti-)globalisation movement(s)’. It flows from xperience of irruptive situations, my perceptions of the contextual causes of violence in these situations, and my thinking around the subversive and transformative potential, or otherwise, of violence in engendering radical post-capitalist social relations. I take as a starting point the recent protests against the EU summit meeting in Thessaloniki, June 2003, which culminated in substantial violence against property and towards police by antiauthoritarian protesters, and was met by the police with violent attack and the brutalisation of those arrested. I do not assume a moral standpoint regarding the value or otherwise of violence to ‘the movements’. Instead I try to consider why violence is increasing as a bio-political tactic in these contexts, ‘upfronting’ both the normalisation of psychological and physical violence in the everyday circumstances of late-capitalism, and the depression and anger this engenders. In the interests of strategic debate regarding the usefulness of violence in potentiating post-capitalist social relations, however, I attempt to disentangle the relative (f)utility of acting out, acting upon and denying the experience of anger. My personal stance is to celebrate the transformative potential and energy of the correct attribution of the contextual sources of anger – particularly in shifting between the microcosm of individual circumstances and the macrocosm of structural societal violence within which these arise – whilst upholding a view that violence as a simple reaction to alienating circumstances is likely to maintain rather than shift their brutalising tendencies. My conclusion is both gloomy and hopeful. On the one hand, given that violence to life is both so systemic to late capitalist modernity and that ‘we’ tend to be in such denial regarding its dehumanising psychosocietal effects, I am clear that it is likely that the incidence of violence in protest politics as elsewhere will increase in reaction to this. On the other hand, I celebrate the creative energy present in global anti-capitalist actions and practice, the emergence of a global peace movement as a political force, and the current radicalisation of people otherwise deemed by some to be politically apathetic

Frontline(s)

The challenge of theorising and analysing socio-political phenomena can feel overwhelming given today’s somewhat threatening realpolitik (9/11, US-led wars on Afghanistan, Iraq and now, perhaps, Syria) and the rapid pace with which (dis)information is received, digested and discarded. Through an act of ‘literary montage’ construction, and prefaced by some interpretation of my own, I offer this ‘exhibit’ as an attempt to highlight this sense of dislocation whilst simultaneously ‘building a picture’. A specific concern is to problematise the notion of ‘the frontline’. Given blatant military and economic imperialism by the US, underscored by the construction and fetishising of the rational subject under modernity and the social democratic state, I suggest that frontlines are located in any public or private space where the legitimacy of these interests and categories is questioned. Expressions of difference, including peace activism, thus become ‘proliferating illegitimacies’ and are policed as such. Against this context, the texts positioned here tell of growing realisation and fear of the coldness and instrumentalism at the heart of empire-building, of which both the horrific violence currently inflicted on Iraqi people, and the discounting and suppression of dissent to war worldwide, are part. For a global anti-capitalist/pro-justice movement that recognises trade in arms as a core constraint on human potential, reaching beyond this fear - retaining the hope of the ‘politics of possibility’ with which this ‘movement of movements’ has come to be identified – emerges as a latent and essential challenge

Financialisation, biodiversity conservation and equity: some currents and concerns

Executive Summary: When nature is viewed in monetary terms, is it the nature that is valued, or the money? And what implications does this have for ecosystems and equity, given a financialised economy that rewards money products and their brokers, and that tends towards speculative and volatile dynamics? The current biodiversity crisis is giving rise to calls for a massive mobilisation of financial resources to conserve biodiversity, and to reduce the drivers of biodiversity loss. The possibility for ‘innovative mechanisms’ to assist with resource mobilisation needs is included in the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity (2011-2020) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). This has generated a fizz of interest around what might constitute ‘innovative financing mechanisms’ for biodiversity. At the same time, much attention is directed to questions of how much nature is worth, and of how this worth might be signalled through prices that move decision-making in directions that are more ecologically sustainable. The recent UN programme on The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) gives added impetus to the incorporation of monetised ecological values into national and corporate decision-making and accounting practices, and is welcomed as such in the CBD’s current Strategic Plan. Financial support for TEEB comes from the European Commission, Germany, the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Japan. Accounting for nature in terms of ‘natural capital’ and ‘ecosystem services’ also creates wealth-generating opportunities through the possibility that proxies for conserved or restored nonhuman nature can be mobilised as capital-bearing assets. This reflects a ‘Green Economy’ ideology proposing that social equity and environmental sustainability are compatible with further economic growth and entrepreneurial activity. A pillar of this ideology is the conversion of nature health and harm into capital assets that can be traded and financialised, and requires the following: Numerical representation. First, nature needs to be conceptually ‘cut up’ into units that can be represented as numbers. These numbers, often referred to as ‘metrics’, act as surrogate or proxy measures for valued aspects of ecosystems. Numerical representation reduces ecosystem complexity to create apparent equivalence and commensurability between different locations and times. Through this, trade-offs between sites of development and sites of conservation become possible. Monetisation. This is the process whereby something is conceived of in monetary terms, and thus behaves as a commodity that can be exchanged for a monetary payment. The use of metrics for turning aspects of nonhuman nature into numerical scores helps generate monetary figures for use in cost-benefit analyses and cognate economic models. As noted by economists, these can produce monetised values that, whilst useful, may be ad hoc, unreliable, and even deceptive. The state as market facilitator. Legal markets require state participation in numerous ways. In environmental markets for conservation, the state provides regulatory frameworks to generate demand, creates terms attractive to investors and entrepreneurs through tax breaks and subsidies, and can underwrite loans bound with nature assets to make these investable by the private sector. These processes enable measures of nature health and harm to become marketised, capitalised and financialised in various ways: Trading nature. Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) are considered to compensate for economic opportunity costs in contexts where environmental uses are altered so as to conserve the integrity of particular ecosystem functions. PES might take the form of relatively simple direct payments for transformed behaviour so that ecosystem service managers maintain a defined environmental good. Examples include water users paying upstream farmers not to engage in practices that might damage water quality downstream, or payments to tropical forest dwellers for the maintenance of carbon stored in trees constructed as an ‘offset’ for industrial CO2 emissions. Many existing national ecosystem services markets are maintained through substantial government subsidies. New legislative structures also make it possible for developers to offset new environmental harms, through purchasing conservation activity on formally owned land areas elsewhere, and thereby trading environmental harm for environmental health. Examples include species and wetland mitigation banking in the USA, habitat banking in the UK, and various biodiversity offset schemes globally, all of which trade fungible units of species, habitats and biodiversity. Nature markets. The conversion of nature aspects into numerical scores associated with monetary payments enables markets in conservation indicators. To create and service these markets, as well as to facilitate ‘price discovery’ through linking buyers and sellers, voluntary market exchanges for conservation measures currently are being established by nature brokers and environmental-financial entrepreneurs. Examples include the US ‘Earth Exchange’ of Mission MarketsTM, and the UK’s Environment Bank Ltd, through which conservation credits can be traded as commodities. The prospect of financial gain from these markets is attracting large entrepreneurial investors. Bonding nature. Once elements of nature have been conceived as monetised units, they can also be leveraged as a new class of capital asset. As such, they may become the collateral for capital-releasing loans bonded with the designated monetary value of the underlying nature aspect. New environmental bond structures are suggested for the ‘frontloading’ of predicted future incomes from conserved ecosystems, which would act as collateral for loans by private investors and multilateral donors. This would connect investor finance now with infrastructural developments considered in time to enhance environmental sustainability and to generate financial returns. ‘REDD+ bonds’, for example, would permit the mobilisation of predicted future payments for expected emissions reductions provided by standing forests under the United Nation’s REDD+ mechanism (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries) to act as collateral for loans to finance upfront investments in REDD+ and other environmental infrastructure. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the Global Canopy Programme, the Climate Bonds Initiative, Goldman Sachs and the private bankers Lombard Odier, similarly propose that through ‘forest bonds’ guaranteed by the national governments of forest-rich countries, the ‘natural capital’ of tropical forests could be ‘materialised’ to leverage finance for development from global capital markets. It is unclear who would own collateralised (i.e. pledged) ‘natural capital’ in the case of possible payment defaults. Nature derivatives. As observed for the recently created market in tradable carbon units, the big money tends not to be in the credits themselves, but in poorly regulated voluntary and bespoke over-the-counter (OTC) trades in financialised products derived from these credits. As units of conserved or restored nature are leveraged as ‘natural capital’ in environmental markets, bonds and mortgages, these might be similarly ‘securitised’ into derived money-bearing products. This could transform the risk of species extinction and biodiversity decline, for example, into speculative opportunities. It is unclear what implications this would have for the ‘underlying’, which in this case could be credits for species populations, biodiversity and habitats. These are significant in-roads into the financialisation of biodiversity conservation, that may contribute to a scaling-up of financial resourcing for the sustenance of biodiversity. But these innovations also generate concern: Conservation markets such as habitat banking require development-related ecological harm for their existence, so as to maintain the sorts of prices that might fund the conservation considered to offset development-related environmental harm. This generates a perverse situation in which ecological harm ensures market values for conservation, such that degradation is needed in order to sustain market demand for this conservation mechanism. The raising of economic rents for land areas through the enhanced monetary values commanded by credit-bearing indicators of nature health may act to displace people from land areas as governments and investors seek to ‘grab’ these new values. Such enhancement of inequity is both unethical and may amplify the drivers of biodiversity degradation by diluting the possibility of collective action in support of conservation policies. The legal and customary rights of indigenous peoples and local communities will also be impacted. Finally, conversion of complex landscapes into numerical and monetised metrics instrumentalises peoples and nonhuman natures so that these conform to a homogenising system in which money is the mediator of all value. This can displace local eco-cultural knowledge, practices and values which may be more benign for biodiversity, thereby reducing options for transferring maximum socio-ecological diversity to our descendants

‘Shell to Sea’ in Ireland: building social movement potency

In 1996 the Corrib gas field, holding over 1 trillion cubic feet of gas, was discovered by Enterprise Oil 83km off the North West coast of Ireland. Acquired by Shell in 2002, proposed extraction and processing is now a co-venture between several multinational energy corporations who aim to transport the gas some 90kms via pipeline to an onshore refinery site at Bellanaboy. Although heralded as a significant opportunity for development and employment by Shell and participating companies, local resistance to the proposals, on social and environmental grounds, has been sustained and effective. Mirroring global conflicts between the petrochemical industry and local people and lifeworlds, this resistance has elicited repressive responses, including the jailing of local landowners by the Irish state following their resistance to unprecedented compulsory land acquisition orders, and the taking out of a court injunction by Shell in 2005. Drawing on elements of contemporary social movement theory, and on both field research and analysis of campaign documents and media reports, this paper seeks to describe and reflect on the shape and spread of the social movement that has arisen in response to this development project. We focus on the ‘Shell to Sea’ campaign which has argued for the offshore, as opposed to the onshore, development of the gas field, and has garnered support from many other social movement groups and networks. In particular we consider the use of alternative media in strengthening shared networks of concern and in engaging critically with corporate media representations of both the project and the mobilisation. We conclude that social movement effectiveness and potency is in large part an outcome of collective and subjective commitments to intense work effort and the sharing of felt solidarity regarding environmental and social concerns; and we iterate the significance of affective and subjective dimensions of social movement activities alongside more conventional descriptions of work practices and structuring contexts

Offsetting Nature? Habitat Banking and Biodiversity Offsets in the English Land Use Planning System

Land use planning is a key arena for the spectacles of localism and marketisation being staged by our self-proclaimed greenest government ever. A new “presumption in favour of sustainable development” aims to encourage housebuilding and other development by simplifying and decentralising the planning system, while protecting the natural environment. This protection is in part to be achieved through a new market in off-site mitigation, supplementing existing policies which (can) require onsite mitigation of habitat degradation. The proposed system allows developers to offset deleterious impacts on biodiversity in one place by paying for improvements somewhere else, at a market rate. The message is that this “habitat banking” system will not only aggregate small habitats into ecologically significant reserves, while facilitating the ‘development’ we allegedly need to escape financial crisis, but also open up new income streams for landowners and reserve managers to spend on habitat conservation. By moving mitigation somewhere else, however, it will also reinforce the message that humans and other species live in separate places, that the non-human is not present in everyday life, but inhabits a separate world, which is fragile and in need of protection. This paper argues that displacing and marketising the mitigation of habitat degradation may serve to entrench this separation, thus retarding rather than facilitating the emergence of ecologically sustainable human settlements. It examines the use of habitat banking and biodiversity offsetting in the English planning system, and situates this in an international context, before offering some brief reflections on its likely effects and broader implications

The disvalues of alienated capitalist natures

This engagement highlights the antagonism between wealth and the commodity value form posed at the heart of Marx’s work. In doing so, it considers methodological possibilities for both understanding and intervening in the fabricating of new alienated capitalist values from beyond-human natures

Noting some effects of fabricating ‘nature’ as ‘natural capital’

The contemporary moment of global ecological crisis is also a moment wherein ‘nature’ is being named and framed as ‘natural capital’. This article considers aspects of this fabrication of ‘natural capital’, drawing attention to three connected processes: [1] commensuration, through which different elements of the natural world are made to correspond to one another through applying a common measure; [2] aggregation, through which different aspects of the material world are conceptualized together, enabling calculations of a total or ‘net’ quantity; and [3] capitalization, through which conserved ‘standing natures’ can be financed and developed as capital assets. The article queries the social and environmental benefits claimed for these processes of fabrication, drawing attention to some of the justice implications of asserting natural capital valuations for nature. In considering whether the conservation of ‘natural capital’ is the same as the conservation of ‘nature’, the article emphasizes the constitutive (i.e. world-making) implications of the naming and framing of ‘nature’ as ‘natural capital’

Making nature investable: from legibility to leverageability in fabricating ‘nature’ as ‘natural capital’

In response to perceived valuation problems giving rise to global environmental crisis, ‘nature’ is being qualified, quantified and materialised as the new external(ised) ‘Nature-whole’ of ‘natural capital’. This paper problematises the increasing legibility, through numbering and (ac)counting practices, of natural capital as an apparently exterior ‘matter of fact’ that can be leveraged financially. Interconnected policy and technical texts, combined with observation as an academic participant in recent international environmental policy meetings, form the basis for a delineation of four connected and intensifying dimensions of articulation in fabricating ‘nature’ as ‘natural capital’: discursive, numerical-economic, material and institutional. Performative economic sociology approaches are drawn on to clarify the numbering and calculative practices making and performing indicators of nature health and harm as formally economic. These institutionalised fabrications are interpreted as attempts to enrol previously uncosted ‘standing natures’ in the forward-driving movement of capital

Dissonant sustainabilities? Politicising and psychologising antagonisms in the conservation-development nexus.

Reflecting on more than twenty years engagement with the idea that development and economic growth are essential for ensuring environmental conservation and sustainability, a key experience for me has been that of dissonance. In this talk I draw on the concept of ‘dissonance’ as explored some decades ago by psychologist Leon Festinger in A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957). I focus in particular on how the coherence of sustainability discourses can be maintained precisely by managing, and often excluding, contradictory information, however robustly argued and evidenced that information might be. My intention is to highlight ways in which this management of dissonance is also ideological in nature, with implications for understanding the antagonisms with which sustainability discourse is infused

'Viva nihilism!' On militancy and machismo in (anti-)globalisation protest

This paper is a further reflection on the incidence of violence in (anti-)globalisation protest (also see CSGR Working Papers 123/03 and 133/04). Previously I have argued that biopolitical militancy in protest emerges as a legitimate, predictable and human anger at the multiplicitous biopolitical violences that maintain and distribute a modern status quo of alienation and structural inequality. Questions remain, however, regarding the possibilities for violent protest to open up and dismantle the violating categories, assumptions and practices targeted by protestors. Drawing on the violences that occurred during protests against the EU summit in Thessaloniki, June 2003, in this piece I consider some relationships between a contemporary nihilist orientation to protest in some quarters and two superficially contradictory lines of thought associated with the modern era. These are, 1. assertions of what it means to be ‘a revolutionary’ as captured in the ‘catechism’ of the 19th century Russian nihilist Sergei Nechayev, and 2. the 18th century liberal discourse by Adam Smith on the traits accompanying desirable bourgeois masculinity. Both of these discourses elevate a masculinity which is bounded, restrained, unconcerned with the openness and softness of relationship, and built on the disciplined repression of physical needs and desires. This is a conservative ‘hardcore habitus’ that is reproduced rather than shattered in the militancy and machismo accompanying some orientations to protest in contemporary (anti-)globalisation movements. Such orientations participate in a logic of more violence: in the increasingly transnational policing practices that both creates and responds to militant protest, and in support for a romantic, self-sacrificing (but also self-serving) machismo in both violent protest and policing. Drawing on feminist theorists from de Beauvoir to Irigaray, I thus wonder at the potential for violent protest to engender radical departures from contemporary circumstances experienced as violating by many. At the same time, given the structural violence producing these violating circumstances, I conclude that violence, in protest as elsewhere, is likely to intensify rather than diminish in the foreseeable future