Speaker: Professor Sarah Bracking, King’s College London
Time: Wednesday, 13 November 2019, 13:00-15:00
Venue: S314 (Paul Webley Wing, Senate House)
Abstract
This contribution will explore the challenges and ambiguities of using capitalist valuation and calculation technologies to serve the objectives of conservation, including in relation to climate change. In the context of a post-crisis financialization of capital markets globally, how far do the structural patterns of capitalist accumulation define what is possible in conservation capacity and governance? How far can intrinsic conservation values be captured by finance and economization processes? This presentation will begin with a review of the macroeconomic patterns of climate and conservation finance, and an analysis of the use of innovative financial mechanisms and interventions, from global voluntary, public and private providers. It will then ask whether the experiments in the financialization of conservation pursued over the last 10 years have advanced either the money available, or the success of different project and governance paradigms.
About Speaker
Sarah Bracking is currently a Professor of Climate and Society at King’s College London with research and publishing interests in financialisation, corruption and political development, climate finance, development finance, the political economy of development and poverty and climate change adaptation, particularly in southern Africa. She is editor of Corruption and Development (Palgrave, 2007); co-editor of Valuing Development, Environment and Conservation (Routledge, 2019 with Aurora Fredriksen, Sian Sullivan and Philip Woodhouse); and author of Money and Power (Pluto, 2009) and The Financialisation of Power in Africa (Routledge, 2016).