Environment Working Group

Environmental conservation has over the past two decades become central to the global political economy. Going ‘green’ is no longer something that tree-huggers do, but has literally become ‘serious business’. Contemporary policy initiatives such as those around the ‘green economy’ or ‘The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity’ (TEEB) have become part of mainstream ways of dealing with the ongoing financial crisis, while many businesses, NGOs and governments are trying to change their operations in a more sustainable direction. Central in these discussions is the idea of changing ‘production processes’, while the ‘production’ of environmental conservation itself is also seeing radical changes within the context of the uneven dynamics of the global political economy.

This panel session aims to interrogate and better understand ideas, practices and discourses related to the production of environmental conservation and the rendering more sustainable of production processes. We invite papers that aim to critically assess these processes and place them in an explicit political economic framing in relation to – for example, the global financial and ecological crises, resource conflicts and possible alternatives.

Panel title: Producing Environmental Conservation: Crises, Conflicts and Possible Alternatives

Session 5 — Track 8 — Room 2.01 — 11:15-12:45pm

Uneven neoliberal territorializations: sea turtle conservation in Las Baulas Marine National Park, Costa Rica 

Alonso Ramirez Abstract Full Paper

Pesticides turning green: Redefining environmental sustainability or redefining the industry? 

Kleoniki Kipourou Abstract Full Paper

The Environmental Condition: Hannah Arendt and the Political Economy of Nature Conservation

Bram Büscher Abstract Full Paper