Printable version of Green growth against nature (french version)
Hélène Tordjman
Green growth against nature
Critique of commercial ecology
Introduction
“It is a sad thing to think that nature is speaking and that mankind is not listening”.
Victor Hugo, Carnets, 1870
Sending sulfur nanoparticles into the atmosphere to mitigate solar radiation; “fertilizing” the oceans with iron or urea to promote the growth of phytoplankton, a major consumer of carbon dioxide; manufacturing from scratch microorganisms that have never existed before to produce gasoline or plastic, or to enable them to absorb oil spills; put a price on pollination, on the sacred value of a mountain, on the carbon sequestration function of forests or on coral reefs in the hope that the market mechanism will protect them; transform the genetic information of all living beings into productive and marketable resources… This list is a list of some of the “solutions” being considered today to respond to the ecological crisis. It testifies to the relationship with nature that dominates our societies, a relationship characterized by a desire to control and exploit all forms of life on Earth, in addition to an unshakeable faith in the market mechanism. Yet it is precisely this anthropocentric perspective that has led to the ecological catastrophe. Since the dawn of the modern era in the West, nature has been seen as a reservoir of resources that humans can do with as they see fit. The emergence and deepening of industrial capitalism a little over two centuries ago was part of this paradigm and reinforced its legitimacy.
Industrial capitalism is a mode of production that always needs to broaden its base, to find new areas for capital valorization. Karl Marx made this clear, as did Joseph Schumpeter from a somewhat different perspective. The latter described it as a “perpetual hurricane”. Each in their own way, these two authors highlighted the fundamentally dynamic character of capitalism, constantly renewing itself from within. This dynamic is reflected, among other things, in the permanent search for new resources, new production processes, new technologies, new forms of work organization, new goods: all means of new sources of profit. It is a system whose inherent vocation is to grow, to encompass an ever-greater share of human activities and of nature. This frenzied and excessive appetite is now extending the domain of instrumentalization and reification to new territories and new dimensions of nature, auguring a continuation of the degradation. At the dawn of the 21st century, our relationship with nature is more marked by utilitarianism and anthropocentrism than ever before, even though putting a stop to the destruction of the planet would require a radically different conceptual framework.
However, due to a lack of historical and anthropological perspective and very powerful opposing interests, the responses to the ecological crisis are insufficient and inappropriate, even dangerous. Today, we are pinning all our hopes on “sustainable development”, “green growth” and now a “Green New Deal”, which are a continuation of industrial capitalism with a few “green” patches. Green growth is a deepening of the same model that has brought us to where we are: paradoxically, we intend to respond to the destruction caused by the expansion of markets and the technical surge with even more market and technology. This can in no way represent a way out of the crisis; it is more of a headlong rush. As such, this solution is not a solution. It leads to a number of absurdities. For example, while deploring the mass extinction of species caused by pollution of all kinds and the disappearance of habitats, our societies continue to produce and consume ever more powerful cars, more sophisticated telephones and other connected gadgets, thus contributing to what we otherwise regret. We are deploying prodigies of technical ingenuity to “repair” ecosystems and even the biosphere by intervening even more massively and aggressively in nature. This can only accentuate the destruction. Instead of limiting our footprint and seeking harmony with nature, we are now developing plant varieties that are adapted to global warming and even to radiation!
I would like to attempt here to define the contours of the capitalist regime that is being established under the name of “green growth” or “green capitalism”, to reveal its driving forces and to show how it is directly in line with the financialized capitalism that emerged at the turn of the 1980s. Of course, certain aspects are different, societies are evolving, and we will analyze these changes.
But what we are seeing is, on the whole, a continuation of existing logic, an extension of industrial capitalism into new areas rather than a change of model.To understand this, we will look at how green growth manifests itself in several of its dimensions, choosing two entry points that allow us to grasp what kind of relationship between human beings and nature this “new” regime establishes. The first entry point will be that of agriculture, the second, that of environmental protection policies and ecological “transition”. What productive and technical choices are being made to achieve agriculture that is more respectful of nature and people and capable of feeding a growing world population? To limit global warming and the decline of biodiversity? What types of institutional arrangements are being developed to encourage producers and consumers to pollute less? Who decides?I will begin by outlining the main features of the “bioeconomy” project recently adopted by international institutions such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Union, “for green and inclusive growth”. In very general terms, the “bioeconomy” aims to replace fossil resources with “bio-based” materials, which are therefore renewable, and to develop biotechnologies in increasingly wide-ranging fields. The “advances” in natural sciences and their coupling with nanotechnologies and artificial intelligence make it possible to envisage almost infinite applications in a growing number of fields: agriculture, chemistry, food, medicine, pharmacy, cosmetics, energy, etc.
This is the result of a scientific project known as “NBIC convergence”, for nanotechnologies, biotechnologies, information sciences and cognitive sciences. This project emerged as such at a conference organized by the National Science Foundation in the United States at the end of 2001, which deployed a prospective vision of the interactions between the new sciences and technologies. This “new Renaissance”, as it was called at the time, would enable humanity to solve all its problems through science and technology, including the existential questions of illness and death. In other words, its foundations are clearly transhumanist, in that this convergence aims to ‘augment’ the human being through the development of ever more intrusive science and technology1. This project has since evolved to focus on ‘improving’ nature as well and solving the ecological problems we face. Europe has followed the United States, China has also committed to it, as have a growing number of other countries. NBIC convergence now forms the technical and ideological horizon of the green growth regime. This will be seen in the first chapter, which will outline a project adopted before being proposed to citizens.
In the second chapter, I will show how the quest for efficiency, the mantra of our societies, can turn against itself. I will illustrate this perverse dynamic with the case of agrofuels. These are one of the latest incarnations of industrial agriculture. As such, they are symptomatic of the counter-productivity of what Ivan Illich called the “large industrial systems2”: multiple negative externalities, loss of autonomy for farmers and threats to global food sovereignty. The industrial agrarian system therefore does not fulfill its basic function of feeding the population, and destroys the very conditions of its sustainability in the name of the search for better yields.
Rather than questioning this idea of bio-based fuels, we are inventing a second generation of biofuels that is supposed to solve the problems posed by the first generation. Synthetic biology techniques make it possible to manufacture new micro-organisms that have never existed in nature, capable, for example, of breaking down cellulose into ethanol. To avoid competing with food crops, other types of biomass are being sought, such as fast-growing trees. This second generation brings its share of new problems, and scientists and engineers are now working on the third generation, making genetically modified microalgae produce oil. These so-called “advanced” biofuels are not profitable at all for the moment because the microbes are not easy to manipulate. However, researchers are continuing to try to develop more efficient micro-organisms. For their part, the industrialists concerned, who claimed to be helping to save the planet by producing ‘bio’ fuels, are converting their production tools to help the so-called unconventional hydrocarbon industry (for example, shale gas) to extract even more fossil energy. The case of biofuels highlights the dynamics of blind and endless research, where any sense of purpose seems to have been lost along the way.
At the root of all food are seeds: without seeds, there are no plants, and without plants, there are no animals. However, in the space of about a century, the seeds of cultivated plants have gone from being a more or less common good to a commodity. They have been privatized thanks to the extension of intellectual property law to “living” things in all their forms: plant varieties and animal breeds, micro-organisms, genes and even metabolic processes are “protected” by hundreds of thousands of patents and are now in the hands of a few giant firms. These companies are in the process of taking over the entire global food chain, as we will see in the third chapter.
Science plays a crucial role in these new enclosures. The term enclosure refers to the historical movement of privatization of common land by the great lords and landowners. It took place between the 16th and the beginning of the 19th century in England, a little later in the rest of Western Europe3. The discovery of recombinant DNA in the early 1970s, which paved the way for transgenesis and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), prompted biotechnology companies to lobby governments for the patentability of “living matter” to be recognized. This was done in 1980 in the United States, and made mandatory worldwide in 1995, by agreements of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Today, the “progress” of biotechnologies in the manipulation and instrumentalization of life forms on Earth is relentlessly pursued with the blessing of the United Nations, the OECD, the United States, China and the European Union, which see it as one of the major technological avenues of the bioeconomy. But this progress multiplies the power of human intrusion into natural processes. For example, synthetic biology attempts to “improve” photosynthesis or nitrogen fixation by plants, which are considered “too inefficient” (sic). In line with the idea of NBIC convergence, the aim is to create ‘enhanced’ seeds by manipulating the metabolic functions of plants. The patents filed relate to basic functions that are the foundation of life on Earth. Will we one day see Bayer-Monsanto owning photosynthesis?
The following two chapters focus on characterizing the new regime for the conservation of nature and biodiversity as established by the Convention on Biological Diversity in 1992, which forms the basis of today’s nature conservation policies.
In the fourth chapter, I will explain the concepts on which this paradigm shift in conservation is based, as well as the broad outlines of the institutional framework put in place to make this paradigm shift a reality. The main idea is that nature is a form of capital, just like financial capital or “human capital”. Like any capital, “natural capital” provides a flow of income: all the services that nature provides to human beings can be considered from this perspective. These include food and water, “genetic resources”, the regulation of the climate and water flows, pollination and “cultural services” such as the beauty of a landscape or the sacred value of a mountain. These services are called “ecosystem services”. The problem is that they do not have a “natural” price: economic agents are therefore not aware of their value, and that is why they are destroying them. If we were to put a price on them, the agents who destroy them would have to bear the cost, while those who protect them would be monetarily rewarded. In other words, there would be monetary incentives to behave virtuously. Such an approach leads to the inclusion of nature in the field of economic value, a typically neoliberal response to the degradation of the planet.
This utilitarian and anthropocentric concept is spreading throughout the nature conservation community and is supported by the United Nations, a growing number of countries, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as the World Wild Fund (WWF) and The Nature Conservancy, as well as large multinational companies. It is very much in tune with contemporary capitalism and reflects a financialization of minds, if not a financialization of nature itself. Viewing nature as capital that produces income in the form of ecosystem services extends the financial perspective to the protection of natural environments. Moreover, by entrusting companies with the task of protecting nature, this new conservation paradigm makes it a more individual than collective problem, based on the well-understood interests of the agents.
A whole institutional framework has been set up by the various stakeholders concerned, with the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), signed in 1992, at its center. This has three objectives: the conservation of biodiversity, the promotion of the sustainable use of the resources provided by biological diversity, and the equitable sharing of the gains from the exploitation of these resources. To create the right monetary incentives, the Convention advocates the implementation of various institutional mechanisms known as “market-based instruments”, enshrining the utilitarian and commercial vision of environmental protection in the international institutional regime. But, contrary to the widespread belief in the neutrality of technical instruments, which are only what we make of them, the market is not a neutral instrument. It is one of the central institutions of capitalism, organizing an ever-expanding spectrum of human activities, and is now expected to take charge of our relations with nature. As a result, the latter will be profoundly altered, but not in a more respectful sense, unfortunately.
In the fifth chapter, I will look in detail at the new market mechanisms that have emerged in the wake of the CBD, sometimes called “nature-based solutions”. Greenhouse gas permit markets, “ecological compensation” schemes, “payments for environmental services” and other institutional arrangements extend the price mechanism to new dimensions of nature. Things that were not intended to be commodities are becoming so: genetic resources, protection of endangered species and habitats, carbon sequestration by forests, a new class of fictitious commodities is emerging. Karl Polanyi used this term to refer to land, labor and money, things not produced for commercial exchange but which have become commodities through a complicated and often violent economic, legal and political process4. Although this is not the first time in history, this phenomenon is taking on a new form today. It proceeds by a dematerialization of nature, transformed into information (plants and animals are reduced to their genetic information dimension), into ecosystem services or even into financial assets. These new dimensions of nature therefore enter the market in an abstract and disembodied form, and it is in this form that they are valued. Here again, this disembodiment runs counter to a closeness to nature that we should, however, be reinventing.
In the capitalist mode of production, capital holders want to valorize them, that is to say, they try to increase their value through market exchange. But before being offered on the market, non-market objects such as a plant variety or the sequestration of carbon by forests must be shaped, constructed as commodities. They do not spontaneously have the properties necessary to be traded on markets. These characteristics are institutionally constructed. In this fifth chapter, I will develop an analytical framework to understand the creation of these fictitious goods that are ecosystem services.
In this vision, a forest or a coral reef no longer exist in themselves as organic wholes with their own identities, but are conceived as assemblages of functionalities at the service of human beings, each one subject to a monetary evaluation. This commodification of nature in the form of mechanisms useful to humans extends the domain of capital valorization to the intimacy of natural processes. Insofar as it is precisely the limitless development of capitalism that has led us to the current impasse, it is legitimate to doubt the benefits of this extension.
The sixth chapter will be devoted to the emergence of “green finance”. The transition to green growth cannot be achieved without financing, and the financial sphere must be called upon to contribute. Finance traditionally has two main roles: to channel lendable funds to the activities where these funds will be best utilized, where capital efficiency will be greatest, and to provide tools for “optimal” risk management. The “green finance” sector has developed along these two lines. The creativity of financial scientists is never in short supply, as we have seen in recent years. They have recently invented new tools to channel investment into “green” activities and to manage the new risks generated by global warming and the erosion of biodiversity.
To encourage investors to invest in the right sectors, market finance plays on its disciplinary nature. The idea is that agents who develop the activities necessary for the energy and ecological “transition” are rewarded with easier access to finance, while investors refuse to finance polluters, who would therefore find it difficult to continue their “brown” activities. On the investor side, those who contribute to green growth should be rewarded with higher returns, capital growth, a good image, or all three. Sustainable stock market indexes and green bonds have emerged in recent years, and the size of these markets, while still small, is growing rapidly. The difficulty of the exercise lies in defining what is considered “green”. It will be seen that, for the moment, the requirements are not very restrictive, and green finance contributes more to the ambient greenwashing than to a real ecological transition. Money being the sinews of war, things could change somewhat if there were real political will, drastic regulation of capital movements to limit speculation, and above all a general awareness of the need for a much more sober model: a profound change of regime and not a simple “transition”. Indeed, most of the responses provided today to ecological challenges are based on false solutions, which are hyper-technological, sophisticated and often above ground. These responses make us continue down a dead-end road. As long as the financial sphere “chooses” to develop these high technologies based on an illusory mastery, it will not be able to be green. The tools of finance may perhaps be useful the day we invent a truly different economic and social model. For the moment, we are far from that.The scale of the crisis calls for the conception of such a model, more respectful of nature and human beings. This can only happen if we manage, together, to take a step back, to change our ways of thinking and acting. On the one hand, we would have to forget for a while the search for efficiency and performance that drives us to act, and restore legitimacy to other modes of action than pure instrumental rationality. Beyond profit alone, it is a question of rehabilitating the values of autonomy, frugality, the common good and living together. On the other hand, combating the degradation of the Earth requires us to rethink our relationship with nature from top to bottom and to go beyond the nature/culture opposition analyzed by Augustin Berque or Philippe Descola as typical of Western modernity5. It is urgent to move away from a relationship based on the unlimited exploitation of resources and people, recognizing that human beings belong to nature with the same legitimacy as other forms of life, and do not dominate it by essence6.
Thus, after this long critique of the green growth regime, I will conclude by showing that, contrary to what has been asserted by liberals for forty years, it is possible to consider other viable options. To do this, I will take the case of agriculture and the urgent need to move away from agro-industry: alternative agrarian systems continue to exist, and it is they, not industrial agriculture, that feed the majority of the world’s population. Although they are diverse and varied, each adapted to local geographical, social and cultural conditions, they share a number of common features. On the one hand, they are organized on a human scale, on small plots, requiring little or no chemical inputs and sophisticated equipment. As a result, they promote the autonomy of farmers, who can continue to choose their cultivation practices and select their seeds. On the other hand, and correlatively, they are deployed in what Augustin Berque calls environments, local results of a close co-evolution between ecosystems and human activities. Nature and culture are inextricably linked.
This small-scale farming has long been defended by unions and associations such as La Via Campesina. What is new, however, is that such agricultural systems are now being promoted at the highest level of international institutions. For example, for at least twenty years, successive rapporteurs on the right to food at the United Nations have advocated a move away from industrial agriculture and the widespread adoption of agroecology. The latter is based on a holistic approach to agroecosystems, and benefits from advances in the understanding of biological processes and cultural practices that contribute to their balance. Agroecology thus rediscovers traditional practices such as crop rotation or associated crops, and imagines new ones, exploiting the synergies at work in nature in a gentle and respectful way.
I will present avenues for reflection and action aimed at developing small-scale farming and agroecology. These include agrarian reforms redistributing land into small plots, the relocation of production and the organization of distribution in short circuits, the development of associative and cooperative forms based on self-management, the dismantling of intellectual property rights on the “living”, the cessation of destructive free trade policies, and so on.
Such a program may seem utopian, and it certainly is to the extent that the opposing forces, the power of capital, the inertia of habits and representations, the lack of political will, are powerful. Nevertheless, it is fundamental and urgent to move towards radically different modes of production and consumption, and this is already possible. As Antonio Gramsci wrote, the pessimism of the intellect and the optimism of the will…
Notes
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- Science and technology today form an almost undifferentiated whole, with the bulk of science focusing primarily on technological applications and very little on knowledge that is fundamental in itself. This is why we often talk about technosciences. In technocratic language, the acronym STI for sciences-techniques-innovations is dominant. In fact, a large proportion of today’s scientists are more like sophisticated technicians. ↩︎
- Ivan Illich, La Convivialité (1973), in Œuvres complètes, t. I, Fayard, Paris, 2004. ↩︎
- See, for example, Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (1944), ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- See, from different perspectives, Augustin Berque, Écoumène. Introduction à l’étude des milieux humains, Belin, Paris, 1987, and Philippe Descola, Par-delà nature et culture, Gallimard, Paris, 2005. ↩︎
- The health crisis caused by SARS-CoV-2 is a reminder of this, if one were still needed. ↩︎
Hélène Tordjman
Critique of market ecology
La Découverte, 2021
Translated by TerKo with the help of a free translation tool.