Business interests and environmental crisis: A book review

A number of Asian countries are going through environmental crisis. Nowhere is the impact felt so seriously than in India, where the crisis threatens to affect survival. It is also impacting biodiversity, ecology and livelihoods. In this context, it becomes important to understand how nature and the current environmental crisis are being addressed in policy discourses.

This book, 'Business Interests and the Environmental Crisis' edited by Kanchi Kohli and Manju Menon and published by Sage publications, dwells on these pertinent questions. It argues that the current development discourse has been borrowed from the economic principles, leading to the commodification of nature and its resources, turning them into products with costs assigned to them.

Commodification of nature and the role of big businesses in conservation

Why has conservation assumed importance then? This has to do with the rising involvement of private players in businesses involving natural products and the market value assigned to them. Natural products are becoming increasingly scarce, threatening the existence of huge businesses that harness them for profit. This is forcing the private players, as well as the government, to take measures to conserve natural resources.

Big businesses have now assumed the role of leaders in solving the environmental crisis. Concerned about their own business prospects, several large corporations are supporting the stand taken by international organisations on conservation. The book informs that the formal dialogues organised by international conventions and global congregations on the environment now involve not just the affected parties, but private organisations as well. The mediators of the conflicts at these congregations are often scientists, policy makers, economists, legal experts, NGOs, environmental activists, indigenous leaders and heads of state. 

Parallels between environmental dialogues and business negotiations

Environmental dialogues have assumed the form of negotiations, similar to business agreements, where the vested interests of the corporations are passed off as philanthropic initiatives for a better world or a greener planet. These business-like agreements raise a number of ethical, legal dilemmas and controversies as they are often found to blur the boundaries between public and private, choice and obligation, production and consumption, benefits and costs and legality and corruption.

The book talks about these 'experts' of environmental problems who can be found everywhere--in villages and cities, in courtrooms, government chambers, corporate boardrooms and international conference halls--where scarcity of nature is looked at as nothing more than economic loss. The discussions in these meetings view nature's goods as commodities to be priced, owned, exploited, controlled or regulated by a few at the cost of the others.

The language of economics and outcomes of these business-led solutions

Do these solutions for business interests result in sustainable, equitable outcomes? The book presents a collection of essays that addresses this question. The essays are organised into two separate sections. The first section includes four chapters that highlight how the policy discourse, based on economic principles, creates new definitions of nature. This essentially leads to the commodification of nature and the alienation of local communities from their knowledge, resources and livelihoods. The next section includes four chapters that deal with the politics of participation, where alternative views are discussed to democratise the discourse for equitable outcomes.

Section I: Examining nature in business

Chapter 1: Bringing liquidity to life, markets for ecosystem services and the new political economy of extinction

Chapter 2: Claiming benefits, making commodities

Chapter 3: The abstract nature of building

Chapter 4:  Coal accounting: The story of fuel kept cheap

Section II: Democratic governance of nature

Chapter 5: Value as a justification in water resource development

Chapter 6: The effectiveness and equity of payments for reducing forest loss

Chapter 7: Selling nature: Narratives of coercion, resistance and ecology

Chapter 8: Putting peoplehood at the centre of the green economy

The book provides a very timely commentary on the current scenario where natural resources and habitats are increasingly becoming scarce, a number of conflicts between marginalised communities and big corporations have brought some serious issues--of development and displacement, natural and tailored environments, the right to natural resources and the control over it--to the forefront. It questions the very idea of business-led, mechanical solutions to the current environmental crisis that threaten to destroy the environment at the costs of the local, marginalised and poor communities and their livelihoods.

Through these chapters, the book aptly points at the inadequacies of these business-led solutions to find sustainable, inclusive, localised and appropriate alternatives and the political and ecological limits of this business-oriented approach. The book does not provide any easy solutions, but questions the very idea of regulation and the control of nature as a resource and the various ways in which this brings up ethical, legal dilemmas that one will need to deal with in the future.

A copy of the book can be bought from this site