Elsevier

Land Use Policy

Volume 64, May 2017, Pages 307-316
Land Use Policy

Ecosystem services and neoliberal governmentality – German style

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2017.02.037Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Political implications of the ecosystem services concept are context-dependent.

  • Empirical analysis of the project “Natural Capital Germany – TEEB DE”.

  • Focus on relations between neoliberal and other arts of governing.

  • TEEB-DE (re-)produces neoliberal problematisations, but heterogeneous rationalities.

  • TEEB-DE integrates aspects of sovereign and disciplinary governmentalities.

Abstract

The ecosystem services concept and its political applications have been characterised by many scholars as manifestations of a neoliberal governmentality. However, the notion of ecosystem services can be linked to quite different policies and may thus lead to contradictory outcomes, depending on the context. It is largely unknown how policy-making in the field of nature conservation and landscape management in Germany will be influenced by the growing salience of the ecosystem services concept. The present study aims to close this gap by analysing the recent project “Natural Capital Germany – TEEB DE”. The objective is to examine the problematisations and rationalities of governing produced so far in the context of TEEB-DE and to assess them in the light of different ‘arts of government’. The most important finding is that the TEEB-DE discourse includes a relatively coherent neoliberal subdiscourse in terms of problematisations of governing, whereas with regard to rationalities it appears to be more polyphonic. The increased recognition of the ecosystem services concept in Germany as epitomised by TEEB-DE has so far not generated a consistent programme of neoliberal policy proposals. This is because TEEB-DE ties in with previous discourses in Germany that were mainly characterised by sovereign and disciplinary governmentalities, and interweaves them with the neoliberal framework of ecosystem services and natural capital.

Section snippets

A programmatic “reorientation of biodiversity policies”?

‘Ecosystem services’ has evolved into a key term of debate on nature conservation and landscape management at the global, European and national level (Chaudhary et al., 2015). The concept has also become popular in Germany. Some regard it as an indicator of a programmatic “reorientation of biodiversity policies […] in an economic vein”1 (Bundestag, 2015, p. 12). However, it is largely unknown how governing is changing in Germany with the

Analytics of government

By ‘governmentality’ I refer to an “analytics of government” (Dean, 2010, p. 27), i.e. an approach to studying historically contingent forms of governing. The notion of governmentality is based on his concepts of governing and the power-knowledge nexus (Hutter et al., 2014). According to Foucault (1982, p. 221), government and the practice of governing include all attempts to “act upon the possibilities of action of other people”, which is why it has been termed “the conduct of conduct” (

State of the art in terms of governmentality research on ecosystem services

Many authors have scrutinised “neoliberal natures” (Wynne-Jones, 2012, p. 1035) (cf. the overviews in Castree, 2010a, Castree, 2010b, Castree, 2011, Büscher et al., 2012) and the possible relations between neoliberalisation and the ecosystem services concept. According to Turnhout et al. (2014, p. 584), IPBES contributes to making biodiversity “transparent” in order to “assess its values, evaluate policy performance, and enhance effective and efficient policies and market strategies”. Regarding

Empirical material and methodological approach

The empirical analysis looks at TEEB-DE, specifically the publications that have been issued since the inception of this initiative in 2012. The project is supported and coordinated by the BfN with funding from the Federal Department of the Environment (BMU). Its objective is to prepare two brochures and four thematic reports, which are intended to “present […] the economic case for nature conservation, as a complement to ethical and ecological arguments” (UFZ, 2016, without page numbering).

Results

In the following I present the major elements of the TEEB-DE discourse and its sub-discourses as regards problematisations and rationalities of governing, drawing on the questions introduced in Table 1.

Discussion

The most important finding of the current investigation is that the TEEB-DE discourse includes a relatively coherent neoliberal subdiscourse in terms of problematisations of governing: Nature is made visible as an economic asset, or at least as something which is highly relevant to the economy, by relating it to ‘ecosystem services’. Consequently, the problem to be addressed is cast as an economic one, consisting chiefly of costs. It is traced back to economic factors such as insufficient or

Conclusion

In the previous sections I have scrutinised the effects of the growing interest in the ecosystem services concept in Germany, especially regarding the project TEEB-DE. I examined the problematisations and rationalities of governing produced so far in the context of TEEB-DE and assessed them in the light of different ‘arts of government’. The question was not whether TEEB-DE represents a neoliberal project, but rather in which way it is neoliberal, how it engages with existing policy approaches

Acknowledgement

This research was partly funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft – DFG) under the grant number LE 2255/4-1.

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