The commodification of nature is an area of research within critical environmental studies that is concerned with the ways in which natural entities and processes are made exchangeable through the market, and the implications thereof.
Drawing upon the work of Karl Marx, Karl Polanyi, James O'Connor and David Harvey, this area of work is normative and critical,Prudham, William Scott (2009) 'Commodification', in Castree, Noel, et al. (eds) A Companion to Environmental Geography, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 123-142. (p. 125) based in Marxist geography and political ecology. Theorists use a commodification framing in order to contest the perspectives of "market environmentalism," which sees marketization as a solution to environmental degradation. The environment has been a key site of conflict between proponents of the expansion of market norms, relations and modes of governance and those who oppose such expansion. Critics emphasize the contradictions and undesirable physical and ethical consequences brought about by the commodification of natural resources (as inputs to production and products) and processes (environmental services or conditions).
Most researchers who employ a commodification of nature framing invoke a Marxian conceptualization of commodities as "objects produced for sale on the market"Polanyi, Karl (2001) The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, Boston: Beacon Press. (p. 75) that embody both use and exchange value. Commodification itself is a process by which goods and services not produced for sale are converted into an exchangeable form.Kosoy, Nicolás and Corbera, Esteve (2010) 'Payments for Ecosystem Services as Commodity Fetishism', Ecological Economics, 69(1): pp. 1228-1236. It involves multiple elements, including privatization, alienation, individuation, abstraction, valuation and displacement.
As capitalism expands in breadth and depth, more and more things previously external to the system become "internalized," including entities and processes that are usually considered "natural." Nature, as a concept, however, is very difficult to define, with many layers of meaning, including external environments as well as humans themselves.Braun, Bruce (2009) 'Nature', in Castree, Noel, et al. (eds) A Companion to Environmental Geography, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 19-36. (p. 20); Castree, Noel (2005) Nature, London: Routledge.; Smith, Neil (2008) Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space, Third Edition, Athens: University of Georgia Press. (p. 11) Political ecology and other critical conceptions draw upon strands within Marxist geography that see nature as "socially produced," with no neat boundary separating the "social" from the "natural."Bakker, Karen and Bridge, Gavin (2006) 'Material Worlds? Resource Geographies and the "Matter of Nature"', Progress in Human Geography, 30(10): pp. 5-27. (p. 8); Braun 2009 (p. 24); Castree 2005 (p. 24); Castree, Noel (2010a) 'Neoliberalism and the Biophysical Environment 1: What 'Neoliberalism' is, and What Difference Nature Makes to it', Geography Compass, 4(12): pp. 1725-1733. (p. 1725); Smith 2008 Still, the commodification of entities and processes that are considered natural is viewed as a "special case" based on nature's biophysical materiality, which "shape[es] and condition[s] trajectories of commodification."
Origins and development
Classical liberalism and enclosure The commodification of nature has its origins in the rise of capitalism. In England and later elsewhere, "enclosure" involved attacks upon and eventual near-elimination of the commons—a long, contested and frequently violent process Marx referred to as "primitive accumulation."Castree 2010a (p. 1730); McCarthy, James (2009) 'Commons', in Castree, N., et al. (eds) A Companion to Environmental Geography, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 498-514. (p. 500)
Classical liberalism, the ideological aspect of this process, was closely bound to questions of the environment. Privatization was presented as "more conducive to the careful stewardship of natural resources than the commons"McCarthy 2009 (p. 501) by thinkers like Bentham, Locke and Malthus. The neo-Malthusian discourse of Garrett Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons" (1968) parallels this perspective, reconceptualizing public goods as "scarce commodities" requiring either privatization or strong state control.McCarthy 2009 (p. 503)
As Foster points out in Ecology Against Capitalism, the environment is not a commodity (such as most things are treated in capitalism) but it is rather the biosphere that sustains all life that we know of. However, in society, it is treated as a capitalistic value. For example, a price is put on lumber in a certain forest or the quality of water in a river or stream, or the minerals that are available under ground. These ways of putting a price on the ecosystem tend to forget to put a price on exploiting it. This can cause more damage to an ecosystem if the externalities for business are not taken into consideration. One way to fix this problem is taxes that will increase the cost of environmental damage. For example, a carbon tax would help society get off of fossil fuels and go towards renewables much faster. This is one step that many scientists and experts agree needs to happen in order to transition away from fossil fuels and delay or even prevent man-made climate change. Deregulation of governmental programs such as the EPA, and other environmental organizations may be good for business, but it doesn't serve the people who must live on a more polluted earth.
Capitalist expansion Marxists define capitalism as a socio-economic system whose central goal is the accumulation of more wealth through the production and exchange of commodities. While the commodity form is not unique to capitalism, in it economic production is motivated increasingly by exchange. Competition provides constant pressure for innovation and growth in a "restless and unstable process," making the system expansionary and "tendentially all-encompassing."Castree, Noel (2010b) 'Neoliberalism and the Biophysical Environment 2: Theorising the Neoliberalisation of Nature', Geography Compass, 4(12): pp. 1734-1746. (pp. 1736-1737, 1738)
Through market globalization, the tendency Marx described in the Communist Manifesto in which "[t]he need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe,"Marx, Karl, and Engels, Friedrich (1967) The Communist Manifesto, New York: Monthly Review Press. capitalism converts nature into "an appendage of the production process."Smith, Neil (2008) Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space, Third Edition, Athens: University of Georgia Press. (p. 71) As Neil Smith argues, "[n]o part of the earth's surface, the atmosphere, the oceans, the geological substratum, or the biological superstratum are immune from transformation by capital."Smith 2008 (p. 79)
Neoliberal nature Since the late 1980s, an ideology of "market environmentalism" has gained prominence within environmental policy.Liverman, Diana (2004) 'Who Governs, at What Scale and at What Price? Geography, Environmental Governance, and the Commodity of Nature', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 94(4): pp. 734-738. Such a perspective is based in neoclassical economic theory, which sees degradation as a result of the absence of prices in environmental goods.O'Neill, John (2001) 'Markets and the Environment: The Solution is the Problem', Economic and Political Weekly, 36(21): pp. 1865-1873. (p. 1865) Market environmentalism gained widespread acceptance through the rise of neoliberalism, an approach to human affairs in which the "free market" is given priority and money-mediated relations are seen as the best way to deliver services.Castree, Noel 2010a (p. 1726)
A neoliberal approach constructs nature as a "world currency," valued in international markets and given "the opportunity to earn its own right to survive."McAfee, Kathleen (1999) 'Selling Nature to Save It? Biodiversity and Green Developmentalism', Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 17(2): pp. 133-154. (p. 133, 134) This "selling nature to save it" approachMcAfee 1999 requires economic valuation — either indirectly, as with cost-benefit analysis and contingent valuation, or through direct commodification.O'Neill 2001 Critics of neoliberal environmental policy argue that this reduces the importance of species survival "into a price whose rise or fall is entangled with bets on their susceptibility to irreversible loss, underscored by a calculus whereby species value rises with rarity, or greater risk of extinction". Thus, neoliberal interventions like ecotourism and bioprospecting are viewed by critics as ways of forcing nature to earn its right to survive in the global marketplace. Critical scholarship on neoliberal conservation has been found to form a highly internally coherent body of literature that rarely cites or is cited by economically oriented conservation finance research.
While commodification efforts are propelled in large part by private firms seeking new areas of investment and avenues for the circulation of capital, there are also explicit policy prescriptions for privatization and market exchange of resources, production byproducts and processes as the best means to rationally manage and conserve the environment.Harvey, David (2007) A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
The neoliberal commodification of nature and its exploitation in the global south for the profits of the global north is also known as ecological imperialism, whereby ecological racism is understood as part of ecological imperialism.
Stretching and deepening The commodification of nature occurs through two distinct "moments" as capitalization "stretches" its reach to include greater distances of space and time, and "deepens" to penetrate into more types of goods and services.Castree, Noel (2010b) 'Neoliberalism and the Biophysical Environment 2: Theorising the Neoliberalisation of Nature', Geography Compass, 4(12): pp. 1734-1746. External nature becomes an "accumulation strategy" for capital, through traditional examples like mining and agriculture as well as new "commodity frontiers" in bioprospecting and ecotourism.
David Harvey sees this as "the wholesale commodification of nature in all its forms," a "new wave of 'enclosing the commons'"Harvey, David (2003) The New Imperialism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (p. 148) that employs environmentalism in the service of the rapid expansion of capitalism.Castree 2010b (p. 1744); McAfee 1999 (p. 134) This "accumulation by dispossession" releases assets at very low or zero cost, providing immediate profitability and counteracting overaccumulation.Harvey 2007; McCarthy 2009 (p. 511)
Aspects of commodification At the most abstract level, commodification is a process through which qualitatively different things are made equivalent and exchangeable through the medium of money. By taking on a general quality of exchange value, they become commensurable.
Commodification turns on this apparent dissolution of qualitative difference and its "renegotiation," as commodities are standardized in order to maintain a constant identity across space and time.
Commodity status is not something intrinsic to a natural entity, but is rather an assigned quality, brought about through an active process. The conversion of a whole class of goods or servicesPrudham 2005 (p.8) necessitates changes in the way nature is conceptualized and discursively represented.Bridge, Gaven and Perreault, Thomas (2009) 'Environmental Governance', in Castree, Noel, et al. (eds), A Companion to Environmental Geography, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 475-497. (p. 487); Prudham 2009 (p. 125)