I'm terrible at asking questions so this may just come across as a pointless diatribe, but here we go anyway.
I asked a question about this on c/askchapo earlier, but I felt like I needed to follow it up with a proper post, because it's something I've been thinking about for a very long time. It's actually one of the things that began my radicalisation when I was a teenager.
The OG post was as follows:
What's the use value of a wildlife/nature park/reserve?
I’ve been thinking about this recently.
I still have trouble with the concepts of use and exchange value so this might be a silly question, but humour me (someone had to ask, right?)
Link: https://hexbear.net/post/207148
My edit/ new post:
Edit: to follow up, whilst many people have pointed out that nature is not a commodity, I can assure you that to neoliberal governments, it is most definitely something to be bought and sold. The land on which a forest stands would generate far more wealth as a wheat field or housing development than a woodland, and they know it. As one of my old college lecturers put it, "a woodland that pays is a woodland that stays."
Additionally, one of the defences of the Amazon rainforest I hear is that "who knows what scientific advancements have yet to be discovered?" This clearly boils it down to "it's still useful to us, so we should keep it around." The problem here is that not all environments are as diverse as the amazon; by this metric therefore, the big belt of conifer forests that runs just below the Arctic circle isn't as worthy or our protection. That's why no-one kicks up as much of a fuss when climate change causes huge fires in these woods (and it does) compared to the Amazon.
The idea that nature is worth conserving on the principle that it has a right to exist is never seen. When I mention "left-wing conservation", this is what I'm talking about.
I suppose my follow up is, do you agree that the direction of environmental conservation is flawed? Any other thoughts? I know some people here actually work in Ecology, so it would be nice to have their perspectives. If you could recommend some books on this subject, that would be cool as well.
I'm an ecologist. What immediately comes to mind is the benefit forested/native refuges provide to agriculture for pest management, pollination, and decomposition. There was a study that quantified the value that insects provide through their ecosystem services, and it was about $57 billion through feeding wildlife, cleaning up grazing lands, and the services I mentioned above.
If you want a more jaded opinion by having a preserve it allows capitalists and cities to justify further development of nature because they're already preserving that sliver over there so their job is done and nature is officially preserved.
Dont work in ecology, am talking out my ass. In australia we're financialising forest by way of accounting it as carbon offsets
In practice its a rort to allow trading on forest futures rather than actually do anything about regulating emissions
I expect this type of grift to become more common as time goes on. Tree planting is kind of a grift too, tbh
I like the false hope of planting trees. it's not for much unlesswe do a no growth but
Have you ever owned a fish tank?
Try having one without a filter, bonus points if the plants are plastic. Log how many days it lasts before it becomes an ammoniated hell.
do you agree that the direction of environmental conservation is flawed
I do agree its a flawed approach.
Trying to appease neoliberals by attempting to trick them into thinking some natural thing has a dollar value that is higher when left alone than when drastically changed for rapid exploitation is just going to backfire. As soon as somebody comes along with different set of "cost/benefit" analyses, or the natural cash value fluctuates past certain points, or the committee that makes decisions doesn't understand the proposal, the preserved habitat will be bull dozed for a Chili's or a Walmart. The depressing irony, is that it never works in the opposite direction. I've never seen a Walmart be built, not generate enough sales, close down, and then the entire lot dozed with the concrete and asphalt removed to be replaced with soil and native flora.
Its the whole "capitalist realism" thing but through the lens of ecology and environmental conservationism.
Half-Earth by EO Wilson is probably something you should look into. A criticism of it from the left is Half Earth Socialism, in particular the idea that you could leave uncommodofied fully half of the planet but maintain capitalism.
There are attempts to articulate ecological conservation under capitalism but you're right, they're inherently contradictory to the system of capitalist production which must and will extract every last scrap of use-value from the Earth until the death of us all.
For some reason I'm reminded of this from an artist called CM Koseman, he said it's a saying of some kind in the scientific community. What's the smallest unit of physics? A particle or waveform or whatever. Chemistry? Nuclei and electrons. Biology? The cell. What's the smallest unit of ecology? Not an animal or plant, not a geological formation. The only answer is: the entire ecology.
