Financialisation of the environment; A literature review

Eric Clark and Kenneth Hermele
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Eric Clark: Lund University, Department of Human Geography
Kenneth Hermele: Lund University, Department of Human Geography and Human Ecology Division

Working papers from Financialisation, Economy, Society & Sustainable Development (FESSUD) Project

Abstract: This paper provides a review of research into financialisation of the environment, focusing on the role of financialisation in the interface between social and natural dimensions of sustainability, the geographical penetration of finance into environmental sectors, and its increasing control over the production of nature and environmental governance through regulating flows of capital and consequently material flows. Financialisation is conceptualised as a profoundly spatial process, forging financial ecologies with consequences crucial to conditions for sustainability of social-ecological systems. The paper introduces the theme by framing financialisation in historical contexts. Financialisation of the environment is then related to processes of commodification, privatisation, neoliberalisation and accumulation by dispossession within the broader context of intersections between political economy and political ecology, highlighting the distinction between use-value/object-oriented investments and exchange-value/’investor’-oriented investments, the right to inhabit place, and the shift from control and command to economic incentives, drawing out implications for sustainability. Research on financialisation of agriculture and land resources, and on financialisation in relation to economic and social dimensions, is reviewed, and current moves towards re-regulation are considered from the perspective of a Polanyian countermovement. Conclusions reconsider the nature of the relationship between financialisation and sustainability and the challenges of bringing financial systems into the service of achieving social and natural sustainability.

Keywords: financialisation; sustainability; commodification; political ecology; land (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q14 Q15 Q24 Q57 R11 R51 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 89 pages
Date: 2013-12-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-env, nep-his and nep-pke
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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