Capitalism and Conservation: The Production and Reproduction of Biodiversity Conservation

His Royal Highness rightly says that our rainforests are worth more alive than dead. This is absolutely true. Leaving aside the immeasurable value offered by our rainforests’ diversity and water conservation functions, we are facing an almost unfathomably large business opportunity, one which we can share with the Rainforest nations of the world . . . With an estimated 610 billion tonnes of CO2 sequestered by our tropical rainforests, a vast $18 trillion business opportunity is before us . . . [I]t is increasingly clear that the solution to this problem lies not only within a free market system but also within our field of expertise. What the people of Rainforest nations need is a system that values the services locked up in their land . . . The rainforests are at the very centre of these countries’ identities; they seek to preserve them even as they struggle against them . . . With capitalism at the centre of OUR identity, we must be bold enough to see the world at its widest, even as we struggle in our own way . . . To seize this $18 trillion business opportunity, valuing the services of our rainforest will not only require innovation in market-based mechanisms but also unprecedented global cooperation between the brightest minds of the nations of our world. Many structures and mechanisms will need to be created, but it should be our expertise that defines them, and our appetite for these markets that forces political support for them.1