عنوان

Carbon Capital:

TL7x53h64b

انگلیسی

Carbon Capital:

[Thesis]

Osborne, Tracey Muttoo

The Political Ecology of Carbon Forestry and Development in Chiapas, Mexico

Kammen, Daniel;Hart, Gillian

UC Berkeley

2010

UC Berkeley

2010

This dissertation explores contradictions of development within market-based carbon forestry projects that aim to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions associated with climate change. Through the mechanism of the carbon market, forestry-based offset projects are in theory intended to reduce carbon emissions in a cost-effective manner, while also generating development and livelihood co-benefits for communities that participate by growing carbon-sequestering trees. However, I have found that in the multiple dimensions of sustainable development - the economic, social, and ecological - carbon forestry has largely failed to generate sustainable development benefits. This finding largely corresponds with previous empirical studies exploring questions of development through the carbon market. This dissertation, however, takes a different approach, in an attempt to understand not only project impacts but how and why market-based efforts at sustainable development have attracted participants despite failing to meet stated social and environmental goals. Through an engagement with debates on sustainable development, neoliberalization of nature, and agrarian change in Mexico, I draw on a relational approach and political ecology analytical framework. This framework gives attention to the social relations of carbon forestry development in Chiapas, in historical and geographical perspective. And the approach allows for an analysis that goes beyond mere recognition of the failure of development through carbon markets; it also demonstrates the ways in which project contradictions are produced and integrated with earlier and ongoing processes of development and agrarian transformation. I argue that this historical perspective, combined with an understanding of the interconnected relations of power stretching from local rural communities through national and global arenas of policy making and governance, can help better guide political strategies aimed at more just and plausible alternatives for social and ecological change.

Osborne, Tracey Muttoo

Kammen, Daniel;Hart, Gillian

UC Berkeley

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y