The idea goes back to the Rio+20 conference in 2012, when a group of investors drafted the natural capital declaration. It argues that if we price everything nature gives us (wildlife, plants, forests, waterways, pollination, you name it), companies would think twice before destroying them.
Like advocates of the market for more than 200 years, the drafter of the declaration cannot abide the idea of "the commons" – commonly held resources whose reproduction and use is not subject to the laws of finance. The English enclosures, starting around the 15th century, and the Scottish clearances, from the 18th century, turned most common land in our country into private property, generating the profits that fed the Industrial Revolution.
In its quest for new markets today, finance is again intent on privatising the "global commons". The first step, as is clearly expressed in the natural capital declaration, is to start thinking of the environment as if it were capital, and to price it accordingly.
Surely few of the conservation groups gathered in Edinburgh last week would welcome the wholesale selling-off of nature. But either through desperation at the scale of the environmental crisis, or in ignorance of the political implications of the project, many are going along with this first step of putting a price on nature.
As one delegate told me: "We're just trying to value nature better." Ironically, it took an investment professional to point out the dangers that seemed to have escaped so many NGOs. "Be very careful," he warned. "Once you put a price on nature in order to protect something, you will find someone will pay that price in order to destroy it."...
An 1889 estate map for Moorooka Park, Brisbane. This was created for a land auction showing a plan of allotments to be sold on the 2nd March, 1889 by W.J. Hooker, Auctioneers, Brisbane
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