STEPS Centre Director Ian Scoones is on a panel at Nature Not For Sale: 2nd Forum on Natural Commons today in London. The forum brings together NGOs, academics, activists and the general public to respond to concerns about biodiversity offsetting, which the event organisers see as a flawed policy to allow wildlife to be destroyed in the promise that it will be ‘replaced’ elsewhere.
Prof Scoones is on the “Biodiversity offsetting and community rights” panel.
From the blurb:
“Biodiversity offsetting propagates the myth that people and nature are completely separate, by promising to neutralize the environmental impact of development by protecting or improving biodiversity elsewhere. This may lead to an increase in developments that infringe on community rights and access to nature. Land set aside for conservation within an offsetting scheme could lead to further land grabbing, taking land out of the hands of communities in order to serve corporate ‘environmental’ interests.”
STEPS work in this area includes our research on ‘green grabbing’ and the political ecologies of carbon in Africa.
More details about the event are on the Nature Not For Sale website.
Edit (3 June 2014): here’s a rather lovely-looking graphic summary of the discussion.
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