Failing Forward: The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal ConservationFailing Forward documents the global rise of neoliberal conservation as a response to biodiversity loss and unpacks how this approach has managed to "fail forward" over time despite its ineffectiveness. At its core, neoliberal conservation promotes market-based instruments intended to reconcile environmental preservation and economic development by harnessing preservation itself as the source of both conservation finance and capital accumulation more generally. Robert Fletcher describes how this project has developed over the past several decades along with the expanding network of organizations and actors that have come together around its promotion. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis, he explores why this strategy continues to captivate states, nongovernmental organizations, international financial institutions, and the private sector alike despite its significant deficiencies. Ultimately, Fletcher contends, neoliberal conservation should be understood as a failed attempt to render global capitalism sustainable in the face of its intensifying social and ecological contradictions. Consequently, the only viable alternative capable of simultaneously achieving both environmental sustainability and social equity is a concerted program of "degrowth" grounded in post-capitalist principles. |
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accumulation achieve actors actually alternative analysis approach asserts Biodiversity biopolitics biopower Büscher capitalist carbon central chapter claim Climate Change commonly Consequently Costa Rica Credit Suisse critique decoupling degrowth Dempsey describes disavowal discourse discussion dynamic Ecological Economics economic growth Ecosystem Services ecotourism emissions Environment environmental governance Environmental Services explains extraction fail forward failure fantasy Fletcher forest forms Foucault function funding Geoforum global Green hence highlights human ideology impact implementation initiatives institutions intervention investment IUCN jouissance Kallis Lacanian land London MBIs mechanisms ment natural capital natural resources neoliberal conservation neoliberal conservation project offset organizations overarching paradoxically payments perspective Political Ecology potential poverty practice production profit promotion psychoanalysis public secrecy reality REDD+ redistribution Rica’s Rican sector social Society strategy Sukhdev Sustainable Development TEEB tion transformation UNEP UNFCCC University Press violence vision WBCSD World Bank York Žižek