Prof. John O’Neill, Bec Sanderson and Dr. Mike Hannis at Forum

Distinguished speakers from across Europe will be joining the Forum on Natural Commons including philosopher John O’Neill, University of Manchester (pictured, left).

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Speakers Dr. Mike Hannis, Open University and Bec Sanderson, Common Cause (pictured, right) will contribute their viewpoints on the value of nature and Tamra Gilbertson from Carbon Trade Watch in Barcelona (pictured, centre) will be sharing her experiences of monitoring the carbon trading in the European Union.

We’ll discuss their contributions and those of our other speakers over dinner for an sociable and enlightening evening.

Places are free but limited for the Forum so we strongly encourage you to register as soon as you know you’re coming.  We very much hope you’ll consider it.

First speakers include Activist Camila Moreno, Brazil

Our first speakers are confirmed for the Forum on Natural Commons, 21 November in Edinburgh, Scotland.

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Brazilian activist Camila Moreno will be joining us directly after representing Friends of the Earth Brazil at the UN Climate talks.  We’ll also hear from global finance campaigner Nick Dearden on the links between the financial and ecological crisis and Antonio Tricarico from Re:Common in Italy.

We’ll be announcing many more speakers in the coming weeks, in the mean time register now to confirm your place for an wonderful evening of food and ideas.

Fighting the Great Nature Sale

On 21st November governments, international institutions, corporate actors and mainstream civil society groups will meet in Edinburgh for the first ‘World Forum on Natural Capital’.

Following the launch of the Natural Capital Declaration, promoted by major global banks at the occasion of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Rio in June 2012, business and governments are working to assign monetary value to services provided by nature’s different services, under the banner of the so-called “Green Economy”.

In an era dominated by global finance where trading money, risk and derivative products is more profitable than trading actual goods and services such a move comes as no surprise. Global finance requires the constant development of new assets: their next target, nature itself. This is what we call the financialisation of nature.

The first large scale implementation of this idea is the carbon market where carbon emissions are traded and as if it were financial commodities. Despite their profitability carbon markets have failed to addressing the climate crisis, succeeding only in generating huge profits to financial and corporate actors.

In order to enable the trading of nature and natural services an enormous amount of work is being done by consultancies, banks and governments to define what nature’s services are and how they can be commodified. That’s why the ‘World Forum on Natural Capital’ aims at giving a monetary value to all ecosystem services. The next step for banks and governments is to facilitate the trade in these services, as has already been done with carbon. This market is expected to be worth many trillions of dollars per year.

We believe nature’s value is priceless and has to be protected. That’s why we reject this new wave of commodification and financialisation of nature promoted by governments, corporations and banks. Putting a price on nature will not save it from pollution and destruction. To the contrary, these new commodities will only guarantee extra profits to the few, while leaving the environment at risk in the long-run.

Ecosystems and their services are common resources and must not be enclosed for private gain. Compliance with existing environmental regulation would be replaced with financial compensation. Instead of saying that a polluter does not have the right to pollute our common resources, markets sell that right. Once a price is put on nature, all of our common resources can be bought, sold and packaged. Worse, as we have seen in the recent financial crisis, a market can be manipulated, repackaged and resold as financial derivatives, bonds and other products.

Ultimately, accounting natural capital will result in increased exploitation of natural resources instead of protecting them. Join us in Edinburgh to stand up to global finance and share ideas to protect the commons for the benefit of all.

Berber Verpoest, Counter Balance
Antonio Tricarico, Re:Common