Section 1
What is neoliberalism?
Neoliberalism details the shift away from state intervention in economic activities to upholding private property rights, free markets and free trade for an increase in individual entrepreneurial freedoms.
What is economic alienation?
It’s when you remove the connection between humans and the land, and their dependance on it and their impact on it as well. Under capitalism, people not only sell their labor but also relate to nature as a resource to be bought and sold.
What does the term green economy mean?
An economy that will prioritize a better quality of life for all that live within the limits of the planet. As well as being a way to stimulate economists and financial investors to protect nature while also using it to support the economy. Typically a green economy is still a capitalist economy.
What is neoliberal environmentalism?
Neoliberal environmentalism presents capitalism as the key to future ecological sustainability, overlooking capitalism’s environmental impacts in the expectation that in future things can be organised differently.
How do ecosystem payment schemes change the way people view land and resources?
Receipts of payments focus motivation on utilitarian and monetary reasons for conservation. Other non-monetary factors such as cultural values end up being pushed out by people further set on marketing environmental management
How did the neoliberal restructuring of economies affect developing countries?
Investors from around the world moved in and took control of the developing countries assets such as agriculture, mining and hydrocarbon extraction. Smaller local farmers were undercut by bigger businesses from the withdrawal of the state in the sale of seed, fertilizer and pesticides simulating more poverty in the areas.
What is the relation between capitalism and nature?
Under Capitalism, nature is seen as a resource to be exploited and profited on. Capitalists, influenced by short term gains and the competition in capitalism, are then driven to see short-term profits by the exploitation of both laborers and nature.
What was the overall goal of the idea of ecological modernization?
To meet and marry the demands of government decision making and radical change sought by environmentalists. This meant that the government would regulate use of nature in ways that only benefit public welfare. Ecological modernization also seeks out to ascertain sustainable development through more industrialization and innovation.
What aspects of the neoliberal agenda had a major role in shaping environmentalism?
Rolling back the state, deregulating markets, and extending market relations into society and its relations with the environment
How does value placed on ecosystem services reflect changing consumer preferences and willingness to pay?
If the value of nature is set by a price, it may be subject to the change of supply and demand. The market price of nature may also be subject to market dynamics and speculation, and therefore the prices set for different services will reflect transaction costs and willingness to pay. It matters whether ecosystem services are imagined (and measured) together or separate as many services influence one another or compete
Under neoliberal ideology, how is the environment managed?
The environment is managed under market demands. It is not economically viable to have protections for assets that come from nature, so the market values how nature is transformed versus preserved. Private sectors and NGO’s often pick up responsibility for environmental protection.
What is “Fordism”?
It reorganized the division of labor into specialized tasks and their integration and routinization into the production line. It was made by Henry Ford’s Motor company to mass produce their products on an assembly line in a fashionable time.
What strategies did ecological modernists craft in order to achieve ecological sustainability?
The improvement of technology and techniques regarding sustainability, putting ecological constraints and regulations on the markets, and making corporate ideals and objectives more ‘green’.
What is neoliberal conservation?
It portrays capitalism as the key to future ecological sustainability. Neoliberal conservation obscures capitalism’s environmental contradictions and it uses ecosystem degradation as an opportunity for investment and further accumulation, as new techniques are applied and new businesses grow to try to fix environmental damage.
How does carbon trading in organizations like the EU help control carbon emissions on an international level?
It creates a market-based incentive for companies to reduce their emissions by setting a cap on total allowable emissions and allows countries who meet carbon targets easiest to sell permits to those who can’t, so the maximum amount of carbon is controlled at the lowest price. The price per tonne of CO2 the EU allows fluctuates, and despite some problems, emissions have fallen
What were original Marxist thoughts concerning environmental issues?
They were not concerned with issues or environmental social movements during the 20th century, assuming the concern aligned with aesthetics and affected developing countries.
What was the roots of capitalism?
It emerged from feudalism in Europe, in an era of imperial conquest and economic expansion, as it was a means to allow new wealth from the colonization of other countries, slavery, agricultural production, mining, to be invested. It also allowed resources to flow from other exploited countries to Europe, and to support their growth and expansion at the cost of other countries and their own wealth.
What are some policies that ecological modernization does not give insight on?
The ideals of ecological modernization are solely on the nation scale rather than the international scale. This means that there is little insight on how to achieve globalization, regulate global trade, and the ability for developing countries to advocate and enforce environmental regulation.
What does market-based environmentalism accept?
The capitalist framing of nature and blames the absence of markets (or their ineffectiveness) or limiting conservation success? Refiguring nature as “services” and “natural capital” classify ecosystem functions and services into units that allow market transactions.
What four questions can we ask to help reveal whether a particular monetary valuation should be judged positive or not?
Does it improve environmental conditions or make them worse?
Does it lead to a reduction of inequality or promote the redistribution of wealth?
Does it contribute to other ways of valuation?
Does it promote processes of removing rights to an area, or does it help those against it?
What was Murray Bookchin’s attempt to explain the relationship between nature and society?
Bookchin argued that the threats to the environment were part of a larger issue that the bureaucratic structures of society with humans against humans are unnatural and create a disbalance in the way things are supposed to be, causing issues like the destruction of the environment.
What are the costs of sustainable development under capitalism?
Sustainability at home under capitalism means it can only be achieved at the cost of unsustainable practices somewhere else, in the mines, sweatshops, and waste dumps of other exploited countries. Sustainable development in industrialized countries is all too easily built on the unsustainable exploitation of resources, unequal trade of commodities, and inhumane and polluting manufacturing of products in the Global South.
What is the 'Environmental Kuznets Curve'?
The hypothesis that states that as a country goes through economic growth there will be more inequalities in income, these inequalities would then disappear as overall wealth increased. Example being that as a nation develops it will bring environmental degradation via industrialization but will begin to regenerate the environment as the nation gets more wealth for sustainable resources and technologies.
What is ‘green grabbing?’
describes the capture of resources (usually land) for an ostensibly environmental purpose, in a way that commoditized nature. This is both in the case of physical land grabs and the privatization of rights to nature. Even the creation of a “protected area” can be considered green grabbing.
Despite appearing as simple mechanisms, what makes payments for ecosystem services extremely complex?
It doesn’t necessarily take into account the ever evolving nature of socio-political issues, they work best where ecosystem services and service users are easily identified and long term support is available. It runs into problems where schemes and payments are poorly regulated, where regulations are unclear, or where buyers do not acknowledge the rights of the local communities