The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres articulated this worldview at the launch of a State of Finance for Nature report in 2021 when he said:“By taking profits of nature-based solutions, we can vastly improve human well-being and prosperity.”

All this heightens the risk of increased inequality . For instance, as most of the world's land is owned by only a few people, those people will be at advantage when it comes to selling carbon credits (by planting trees or protecting peat bogs on their land, for instance). This concentrates the ability to make money out of carbon in the same hands. (This is similar to large property owners being able to charge rents and accumulate more wealth).

The idea that nature is something that can be bought and sold in a market was originally a Western concept but has now spread across the world. As market thinking is extended further into the natural world, those remaining non-Western frameworks risk being further marginalized.

The “Mother Earth law” in Bolivia, for instance, enshrines in law the idea that people take care of nature because it is like taking care of family. Ideas like this are not particularly compatible with a world in which forests are protected and species are saved because there is money to be made doing so.

Despite evidence of the risks of nature commodification , alarmingly little attention is being paid to it in the newly supercharged advocacy for green finance, which has a feeling of a new gold rush.

The UK is a good example of how a push for private finance to fix the climate and biodiversity crises means the problems of nature commodification are ignored. In 2023, the then government set a target to stimulate £500 million ($626.6 million) per year of private investment into nature recovery, aiming to increase it to £1 billion ($1.25 billion) per year by 2030 (there are no signs yet that the Labour government, elected in 2024, will change this strategy).

But when we analysed 19 policy and advisory documents that form this green finance strategy, we found they overwhelmingly think of risks in terms of how they affect investors or the market.

There is lots of talk of uncertainty around financial returns, or the chances of losing consumer confidence due to“greenwashing.” Just one document, a discussion of “natural capital” , provides specific examples of ethical and cultural threats for rural communities.

Overall, there seems to be an implicit narrative in favor of commodification. Critically, it is not that the risks are unknown, but the framing remains decidedly commercial, centering the potential challenges for consumers and investors, and not in our relationship with nature.

Sign up for one of our free newsletters

• The Daily Report Start your day right with Asia Times' top stories
• AT Weekly Report A weekly roundup of Asia Times' most-read stories

Meanwhile, red flags are already flying, as more stories emerge of market-based“carbon offsetting” policies that benefit big landowners and can end up widening rural inequalities and preventing local communities from accessing the income generated by wind farms, forests or peat bogs.

Those with a vested interest in making profits from nature may underplay the issues with commodification. And those same issues might be inadvertently ignored by people who are strongly committed to nature recovery but frustrated with slow progress.

However, if we fail to engage with the way that private green finance fundamentally changes how we relate to nature, we might make things worse.

This is not to discount the possibility of ethical initiatives to invest in nature, but simply applying“good standards” will not be sufficient. We need a deep collective reflection on whether this is what we really want as a society and, if so, how we effectively prevent and mitigate those risks.

Julia Martin-Ortega is professor at the Sustainability Research Insitute and associate director water@leeds, University of Leeds ; Joshua Cohen is research fellow of water and sanitation governance, University of Leeds , and Ruth Bookbinder is research fellow, University of Leeds

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

Sign up here to comment on Asia Times stories Or Sign in to an existing accoun

Thank you for registering!

An account was already registered with this email. Please check your inbox for an authentication link.

• Click to share on X (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
• Click to print (Opens in new window)