Thread by @DanielaGabor

we're now discussing Finance and Nature as an Asset Class at the #BeyondGrowth2023 - with Vandana Shiva, Fred Hache, WWF (!) Marie Toussaint and other.
is the question 'how do we finance the protection of nature' the right one?

MT: 'we're opening new frontiers for capital accumulation, in the debt-for-nature swaps in Ecuador's Galapagos Island...betting on capital to solve the problems capital has created'

a reminder that in Europe, France is driving the Nature as an Asset Class process - as we examined w @nssylla in the recent One Forest Summit in Gabon #BeyondGrowth2023

phenomenalworld.org/analysis/wall-…

(three of the 6 people on this panel are French, ahem)

hmm, the first French is using the language of the investible nature lobby: Amartya Sen, ecosystem services, French legal system
but also social and environmental justice.

Fred Hache @greenfinanceobs - biodiversity markets are coming, promoted by European Commission, you can compensate habitat destruction by 'repairing' habitats elsewhere.
the Commission also uses 'nature-based solutions'

@greenfinanceobs FH: 'if you think carbon offsetting is bad, biodiversity offsetting creates infinitely worse problem...also transfers critical conservation decisions to financial markets'

'the main political appeal of nature markets resides precisely in their ineffectiveness...the political goal is to enable rich countries to continue with their life style while creating investible assets for their financial sectos'

Vandana Shiva has just walked out of the WWF rep speech, which is the most exciting thing that has happened during his intervention

WWF: 'we are not valuing nature enough....culturally, socially, economically, but only dead nature has value currently....this is the fundamental problem, unless we value nature while in nature..we cannot compete with destructive forces, this is fundamental truth'

she's now walking back in while WWF man claims we MUST put a price on nature but also that he agrees with Fred Hache's critique of commodification.
(well, who said we need consistency)

this is the WWF position: we commodify nature but we dont call it that, we avoid the pitfalls by involving governments, not a silver bullet but also radically transformative.

Clive Spash: 'getting prices right (the derisking mantra) is in fact cost shifting....we set up pseudo-markets..why appeal to people's preferences for microrganisms, people do not have preferences for integrity of ecosystems'

Vandana Shiva: with one line, British empire turned all the land of India was turned into a commodity, growth has always been an extractive process.
colonialism create a dead nature separate from humans

Colonialism was nature-based, nature-based solutions doesnt bring anything conceptually new but it reminds us of the continuity of the colonial method

VS: there is an attempt to make nature disappear...Rockefeller Foundation promoted nature as an asset class, denying the rights of indigenous people that had protected nature.

biodiversity extinction is not accidental, but there by design - of industrial capital and financial capital, who will not rest until the last river is dead and people are disinfrenchised

This is now a dunking on WWF session, which is fair enough, but I wish presenters were also this incisive on European commissioners and politicians patting themselves on the shoulder for driving nature-based solutions in which WWF is a junior partner