In Latin America, conservation agencies, ecotourism companies and the military are aligning to protect the Guatemalan Maya Biosphere Reserve as a "Maya-themed vacationland" which will generate ecotourism profits, while conveniently assisting the government's war on drugs and counter-insurgency. In Liberia in 2008, the UK-based Carbon Harvesting Corporation proposed a carbon contract covering 400,000 hectares of rainforest that left the proportion of carbon credit sale price to the government unspecified, and all local rights over forest resources extinguished. Its interest is in the carbon stocks represented by the trees that can be grown on that land, and traded in emerging carbon markets.
Meanwhile in Mozambique, a company with British capital is negotiating a lease with the government for 15 million hectares, or 19 per cent of the country's surface. markets for ecosystem services will one day become a fundamental part of our economic system, helping give value to environmental services that, for too long, have been taken for granted." The aim of the information portal is to "spur the development of new markets" and "facilitate transactions". The web portal, Ecosystem Marketplace, offers information updates and investment and price trend data on carbon, water and biodiversity markets. For example, supporters of the Nature Conservancy and the African Wildlife Foundation are now invited to "adopt an acre" - or perhaps 50 acres (20.234 hectares) for US$1,750 - in order to protect valuable wildlife heritage from human-induced degradation. But can nature really be sold to save it? Is this compatible with poverty-reducing sustainable development?Īcross the world, ecosystems are for sale. In green economies, economic growth and environmental sustainability are seen to go hand-in-hand, and central to this are new financial values and markets for pieces and aspects of nature.
Impoverishment and dispossession on the green economy's dark side
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