Nature Inc.: Environmental Conservation in the Neoliberal Age

Conclusion. The Limits of Nature™ Inc. and the Search for Vital Alternatives

246 conclusion The Limits of Nature™ Inc. and the Search for Vital Alternatives Wolfram Dressler, Bram Büscher, and Robert Fletcher This book began with the suggestion that “nature trademarked incorporated ” stands as an apt metaphor for conservation in our times. The premise argued that in the neoliberal age, new frontiers of environmental conservation have become inextricably bound, defined, invested, and reinvented in terms of the interrelated dynamics of commodification, competition, financialization, and market disciplining that were less dominant in earlier management regimes. As a concept and reality, Nature™ Inc. has set out to define and condition not only the design and substance of conservation planning and practice but also the fundamental values, beliefs, and assumptions that underlie a range of conservation frameworks and practices across different scales and, in the process, has “refurbished” the sociocultural dynamics, livelihoods, and landscapes that support the prevailing economic system (and the ecologies underpinning this system). As each chapter reveals, the enactment of the concept has shown how social and cultural relations embedded in land and lifeways become hollowed out and refurbished within and through market mechanisms aiming “to transcend the conservation of particular in situ natural resources to allow for the abstraction and circulation of ‘natural capital’ through the global economy,” as described in the introduction. The outcomes of this process have had profound discursive and material reach and impact, strongly influencing perceptions and representations of human relations The Limits of Nature™ Inc. • 247 with nonhuman natures. As noted in the introduction, with so much at stake, it remains critical to continue to investigate how neoliberal conservation actively reshapes human-nature relations in the context of several centuries of capitalist development. While acknowledging the need to keep problematizing the neoliberal order in the face of its increased promotion in global environmental governance arenas, however, we agree with a growing chorus of thinkers, practitioners , and activists that it is necessary to also promote serious discussion of alternative forms of (re)production and ways of being that go beyond Nature™ Inc. in all its proliferating forms. This entails, first, moving the debate on the politics and political economy of conservation forward by outlining and encouraging new theoretical perspectives on the process; and second, reflecting on and informing empirical practice directed toward non- and/or postcapitalist spaces and possibilities (Gibson-Graham 2006; Gibson-Graham, Cameron, and Healy 2013). The two aims are of course bound together and cannot be treated adequately in a short concluding chapter. This is not our aim. Rather, we build on the book’s content by outlining what we believe are key themes, issues, directions, and initiatives involved in starting to move discussions and practices beyond neoliberalism in pursuit of what we and the editors of the series this book is part of call “Vital Alternatives.” We begin by recapping some of the key issues raised in the preceding chapters, contending that what our critiques and analyses add up to, essentially , is the recognition that there are indeed clear limits to the capacity of a neoliberal approach to effectively commodify biodiversity conservation. This grounds our call for consideration of Vital Alternatives, where we outline a variety of emerging perspectives and possibilities that may help us to transcend Nature™ Inc. in pursuit of a world beyond the impoverished (and impoverishing) promises of neoliberal capitalism. We conclude by outlining a brief manifesto for the new book series of which this volume is the first installment. In this sense, both the present volume and the overarching series function as a broader call for new discussions and practices involving conservation and human-nature relations as we move deeper into the twenty-first century. The Limits of Nature™ Inc. As the chapters in this volume reveal, neoliberal conservation is highly problematic for a number of reasons that for the sake of brevity can be 248 • Conclusion summarized under material and discursive dimensions. Materially, a neoliberal approach to environmental governance commonly contributes to economic and other inequalities due to its propensity to redistribute “upward” rather than “downward” (Dressler 2009; McAfee 2012a, 2012b). At the same time, neoliberalism’s reliance on economic growth means that it necessitates environmentally destructive dynamics and activities, thus often forcing into opposition the very conservation and development concerns it ostensibly seeks to reconcile (Fletcher 2012c). In addition, provision of economic incentives to encourage conservation can backfire when those incentives are meager or unevenly distributed. Hence, West (2006, 185) highlights a situation in...