This is the corporate coup of the commons. It represents the monetization of all nature on a global scale.
Under the guise of environmental protection, the NDFN amounts to the privatization, commodification and objectification of nature, marketed with emotive imagery and holistic framing.
It also threatens further Indigenous displacement and genocide.
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Mark Tercek, former CEO of The Nature Conservancy describes the intent best: “This reminds me of my Wall Street days. I mean, all the new markets, the high yield markets, this is how they all start.”
The NDFN must be stopped. We call on all those who care about nature to speak out now.
3. Represents the corporate coup of the commons. During negotiations on free trade agreements such as TTIP and CETA, we saw how our governments work hand-in-hand with multinational corporations to hand over even greater power to big business, privatising more public services. Now nature is up for grabs.
Under the guise of taking action on the climate and ecological crises, what the NDFN entails, in practice, is the financialisation and privatisation of nature (defined as “ecosystem services”, “natural capital”, “natural climate solutions” or “nature-based solutions”)—global in scale. Assigning monetary value to nature enables industries such as the fossil fuel industry to continue polluting as long as they commit to engaging in net zero activities such as offsetting carbon emissions by planting trees, or by “restoring” nature.
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4. Rescues the very system destroying nature. The NDFN would involve the total transformation of the global economic system to create new markets, thereby salvaging the failing global economic capitalist system that has brought us to the brink of ecological catastrophe.
5. Harms those best placed to protect biodiversity. The NDFN would threaten the further displacement and genocide of Indigenous and tribal peoples as global corporations and conservation NGOs seek control of their lands to maintain hegemony under the guise of tackling climate change and restoring nature. This represents a new wave of colonisation, for peoples in the Global South in particular.
• Branko Obradovic, campaigner, Croatia
• Forrest Palmer, writer and researcher at Wrong Kind of Green, US
• Geraldine Ring, campaigner, Belgium
• Keith Harmon Snow, photojournalist & war correspondent
• South Essex Radical Media, UK
• Don Sullivan, former North American Coordinator for the Taiga Rescue Network
• Mathias Weiss, PhD Student, Faculty of Sociology, University of Innsbruck, Austria
• Al Williams, environmental campaigner, UK
• Winter Oak Press
• Clive L. Spash, WU Vienna, University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria
• Paul Swann, Organic Radicals Wales
“Whoever thought that capitalizing natural resources could be a solution for our ecological crisis knows better now: thanks to the investigative approach of the directors. It is clear that the protection of endangered species should not be left to multinational companies and financial consultants. Although the topic is highly complex, the film remains exciting to the very end. The development to profit from nature as revealed by the film is frightening.”
“This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history.”
-— Christiana Figueres, UNFCC Executive Secretary, February 3, 2015 Press Conference, Brussels
“Unfortunately, many environmental non-governmental organisations have bought into this illogical reasoning and justify their support as being pragmatic. Neoliberal language is rife across their reports and policy recommendations and their adoption of natural capital, ecosystems services, offsetting and market trading. These new environmental pragmatists believe, without justification, that the financialisation of Nature will help prevent its destruction.”
-— Clive L. Splash, WU Vienna, University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria
"TEEB and other articulations of market-based conservation do little to question the dominant economic theory that has licensed the financialisation of social, political and economic life and led to our current global economic crisis. As a species of power, it can also be analysed in the social connections of the corporate boardroom: where the professional authority, executive expertise, epistemic frameworks and political projects of senior conservation ecologists increasingly converge with those of the worlds most powerful bankers."
October 29, 2016 The “New Economy” is Not Inclusive “The route for real change is not via those who are already totally vested in the growth economy and have gained power through it. Rather look for power amongst those who are disenfranchised by the capital accumulating system. Give them voice. Look to organisations that care..
Promise, we won't stay silent
