Issue 108 - Privatization Puts Nature up for Sale

privatization puts nature up for sale

Over the past decade, many governments have privatized publicly owned assets, often under duress, due to structural adjustment programs imposed as loan conditions by international financial institutions. Neoliberal policy-makers in the fields of biodiversity and water management have promoted market-based conservation mechanisms including the privatization of the provision of drinking water, the sale of protected areas to eco-tourism companies and big conservation NGOs, the sale of genetic resources and associated knowledge to pharmaceutical companies, and the sale of forests to oil companies and other industries that want to offset their carbon emissions and other polluting activities. This has resulted in the emergence of an ‘environmental services market,' which entails corporate ‘ownership' and management of vital livelihood resources like water, fuelwood and traditional medicinal plants.

Indigenous peoples and local communities increasingly find themselves excluded from the forests and other biologically rich areas where they have traditionally lived as their lands are handed over to logging, tourism and private park management companies. Land is also being reserved for a new breed of company that establishes ‘carbon parks' to offset the carbon dioxide emissions of rich consumers in the North. As a general trend, these marketbased conservation mechanisms tend to block access for those who cannot pay for the environmental ‘services'nature provides.

Friends of the Earth International is calling for common assets like water to be removed from the ongoing services liberalization negotiations in the World Trade Organization. The inclusion of natural resources in the environmental services market tends to make women, who rely more on natural resources in providing for their families, more dependent on men, who have better access to paid work. It makes indigenous peoples and local communities more dependent upon jobs that provide them with a monetary income, forcing them to abandon their traditional lifestyles and seek external employment. In short, it makes those without money more dependent upon those with money.