Conservation banking mechanisms and the economization of nature: An institutional analysis

Valérie Boisvert

Ecosystem Services, 2015, vol. 15, issue C, 134-142

Abstract: During the last decade, conservation banking mechanisms have emerged in the environmental discourse as new market instruments to promote biodiversity conservation. Compensation was already provided for in environmental law in many countries, as the last step of the mitigation hierarchy. The institutional arrangements developed in this context have been redefined and reshaped as market-based instruments (MBIs). As such, they are discursively disentangled from the complex legal-economic nexus they are part of. Monetary transactions are given prominence and tend to be presented as stand alone agreements, whereas they take place in the context of prescriptive regulations. The pro-market narrative featuring conservation banking systems as market-like arrangements as well as their denunciation as instances of nature commodification tend to obscure their actual characteristics.

Keywords: Market-based instruments; Biodiversity offsets; Commodification; Land sparing; Institutional analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoser:v:15:y:2015:i:c:p:134-142

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoser.2015.02.004

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