Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

Adelman, Sam --- "Tropical forests, climate change and neoliberal environmental governmentality" [2017] ELECD 1048; in Tan, Celine; Faundez, Julio (eds), "Natural Resources and Sustainable Development" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) 186

Book Title: Natural Resources and Sustainable Development

Editor(s): Tan, Celine; Faundez, Julio

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781783478378

Section: Chapter 10

Section Title: Tropical forests, climate change and neoliberal environmental governmentality

Author(s): Adelman, Sam

Number of pages: 22

Abstract/Description:

This chapter analyses tropical forests as objects of neoliberal environmental governmentality regimes which combine a range of discourses, rationalities and techniques and legal regimes with the aim of conserving them as sources of livelihoods and carbon sinks by treating them as sources of profit best managed by market forces. The chapter discusses the discourses of green governmentality and ecological modernization and the degree to which technology enables forests to be subject to surveillance, monitored and measured and their inhabitants subjected to market discipline under REDD+ regime. It examines indigenous rights and the unexpected inclusion of REDD+ as a standalone Article in the Paris Agreement. A discussion of the vexed relationship between international environmental law and neoliberal environmental governmentality is discussed provides the basis for the conclusion that conflicting principles and inadequate enforcement mechanisms limit the efficacy of international environmental law and suggest that effective forest governance which safeguards the interests of forest dwellers ultimately depends as much on political will as legal regulation. Keywords: climate change; green governmentality; indigenous peoples; international environmental law; REDD+;sustainable development; tropical forests