Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests
Abstract
Payments for ecosystem services (PES) are increasingly employed to address a range
of environmental issues, including biodiversity conservation, watershed protection,
and climate change mitigation. PES initiatives have gained momentum since the 1990s,
and market enthusiasts have promoted them as not only cost effective but generative
of social and ecological co-benefits for local communities. Whereas the neoliberalization
and commodification of nature has been well explored in geographic and critical scholarship,
there is a dearth of theoretically informed, empirically grounded research exploring
the dynamics and outcomes of the formation of “markets for nature.” Our study applies
theories of commodification and embeddedness to examine these themes in comparative
cases of two emergent markets for forest-based carbon offsetting initiatives in Mexico:
Scolel Té in Chiapas and the Integrator of Indigenous and Campesino Communities of
Oaxaca (ICICO). Although developed over similar time periods and in contiguous states,
the two cases vary greatly in the degree to which carbon has been commodified and
the markets embedded within the socionatural systems of the sites of production. Through
detailed case studies, we demonstrate how interactions of these markets with preexisting
social relations, institutions, and social and cultural values—the stuff of embeddedness—are
critical for understanding the outcomes associated with markets for ecosystem services.
We conclude that greater embeddedness is likely to lead to more positive local outcomes
but that the embedding of forest-based carbon markets requires considerable time and
extensive networks of nonmarket support and is furthermore dependent on the structure
and orientation of finance and the political, institutional, and economic agrarian
context of the sites of production.
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/15221Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657Publication Info
Shapiro - Garza, E; & Osborne, T (2017). Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's
Forests. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 107(5). 10.1080/24694452.2017.1343657. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/15221.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Elizabeth Shapiro - Garza
Associate Professor of the Practice of Environmental Policy and Management in the
Division of Environmental Science and Policy
Elizabeth Shapiro-Garza is an Associate Professor of the Practice of Environmental
Policy and Management at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University.
She serves as the Faculty Director for Engaged Scholarship for Duke University, the
Director for Community Engagement for the Duke University Superfund Research Center
and the Director of the graduate Certificate in Community-Based Environmental Management.
Shapiro-Garza is Human-Environment Geographer whose research expl

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