The Mangrove Fix: The Making of a Nature-Based Solution

Keywords: Climate resilience, nature-based solutions, blue carbon, mangroves, coastal adaptation
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 66

Abstract

“Limb for limb, the mangrove is perhaps the most important tree species on Earth,” declared Conservation International in a recent update (Price, 2020). What followed was an account of the value of mangroves, in dollar terms: estimated billions in flood risk prevention, ten times the carbon sequestration potential of terrestrial forests, and improved livelihoods for coastal communities in the Global South. The ascent of the mangrove as a “nature-based solution” marks a shift towards climate and conservation policy that promises to remedy numerous social, ecological, and economic crises at once. But what kind of approach to managing socio-ecological problems do these solutions reproduce? This research explores how mangrove projects that deliver on certain types of climate outcomes, and certain types of “justice,” remain discursively decoupled from political-economic transformation, even as they work within a financial project that aims to fund these outcomes through return-generating finance, largely through de-risking private investment into public goods (Gabor, 2021). In the name of climate resilience and adaptation, the mangrove “fix” thus promises that capitalist accumulation is not at odds with socio-ecological well-being, while creating solutions that selectively narrate which conditions of North-South inequality and vulnerability are in need of repair.

References:

Gabor, D. (2021). The Wall Street Consensus. Development and Change, 52(3), 429–459. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12645

Price, K. (2020) The oceans are on the brink. Here are 3 ways to save them. Conservation International. Retrieved September 1, 2021, from https://www.conservation.org/blog/the-oceans-are-on-the-brink-here-are-3-ways-to-save-them