Romain Felli

On Climate Rent

As environmental degradation becomes a growing concern, this article argues that the development of international law on climate change expresses the deep social contradictions between accumulation and reproduction under capitalism. These contradictions are translated into the creation of a form of public property over the right to emit greenhouse gases (and not the ‘privatisation’ of the atmosphere). This public property is unequally distributed amongst states in an imperialist manner. The distribution of these rights at the domestic level amounts to the distribution of rights to climate rent. Contrary to popular accounts of the ‘commodification’ of nature, I argue that emission rights are not ‘commodities’, and emissions trading and carbon markets are not ‘accumulation strategies’. These are merely depoliticised forms in which climate rent is extracted and circulates to preclude political debates about the goals of production.

Global labour unions and just transition to a green economy

Questions of justice in the transition to a green economy have been raised by various social forces. Very few proposals, however, have been as focused and developed as the “just transition” strategy proposed by global labour unions. Yet, labour unions are remarkably absent from discussions of the transition towards a green economy. This is surprising as labour unions are arguably the largest organizations in the world fighting for basic rights and more just social relations. This paper tries to advance the potential contribution of labour unions in this arena by asking: what is the full scope of “just transition” today and how have labour unions developed and refined it over the years to render the move towards a green economy both environmentally and socially sustainable? The concept of just transition is hotly debated within labour unions and has different interpretations, and hence different strategies. The last section assesses these interpretations by means of a normative framework, which seeks to fuse political economy and political ecology. Empirically, we add to the growing literature on labour environmentalism, as well as transitions more generally. Analytically, our goal is to place the various approaches to a “just transition” within a heuristic framework of environmental justice that is explicit about power relations when demanding justice, two themes central to this special issue.

An alternative socio-ecological strategy? International trade unions’ engagement with climate change

ABSTRACT In the context of a global ecological crisis, it is an important move when trade unions turn to environmentalism. Yet, the form that this environmentalism takes is often overlooked. This is especially the case with international trade unions. Based on an empirical study of international trade unions’ engagement with the climate change issue, this article argues that international trade unions follow three different (and partially conflicting) strategies. I label these strategies as ‘deliberative’, ‘collaborative growth’ and ‘socialist’, and I examine each in turn. I argue that such analysis is important if we want to identify the potential for transforming the social relations of production that are at the root of the current climate crisis, and for identifying an alternative socio-ecological strategy.

Environment, not planning: the neoliberal depoliticisation of environmental policy by means of emissions trading

The turn to market-based instruments, such as emissions trading, in environmental policy has received considerable attention. Contributing to a critical assessment of these instruments by investigating the political theory of emissions trading, one of their central mechanisms, namely their depoliticising effect, is highlighted by discussing the early contributions of neoliberal thinkers and proponents of market-based instruments (Hayek, Coase, Dales) in environmental governance. These thinkers responded to the growing politicisation of environmental limits to economic growth by devising a mechanism by which the implementation of these limits could be depoliticised. This ensured that the fundamental questions of ‘what is produced, by whom, and for whom’ (Hayek) are not raised politically. Emissions-trading mechanisms are neoliberal, not in the sense that they commodify or privatise nature, but because they entrench the power of investors.

‘We do have space in Lausanne. We have a large cemetery’: the non-controversy of a non-existent Muslim burial ground

In the context of the administration of spaces assigned by municipalities for the burial of the dead, this article provides a critical analysis of the techniques for the governance of political collectives of citizens implemented by public authorities. More broadly, this article shows how funerary practices (i.e. the social practices surrounding death—the rituals, the legislation, etc.) can be used to develop a critical reading of the social relations that structure the social production of space. To this end, the authors use the conceptual tools provided by critical legal geography to explore the controversy surrounding the development of a ‘carré confessionnel’ (denominational area) within the Bois-de-Vaux Cemetery in Lausanne, Switzerland. Here, a focus on the techniques that allow ‘nomosphere’ technicians to convene a subset of the citizens within the public space reveals the administration of cemeteries as a means of governance, a method for mobilising bodies and a paradoxical means of managing flux.

The World Bank’s Neoliberal Language of Resilience

Abstract The language of resilience is increasingly used by International organizations that seek to respond to contemporary social, economic, and environmental crises. This paper focuses on the World Bank’s World Development Reports, and its uses of resilience. By deploying a quantitative critical discourse analysis, this paper shows how in the recent years resilience has gained traction within the Bank’s discourse. It further analyses the evolution of the genre, the style, and the ideational content of the Bank’s discourse related to resilience. Resilience is now depicted as something that can be built and not just observed. Furthermore, it is increasingly reified in these reports and ascribed to a whole gamut of entities. The ontological indistinction of resilience reinforces its fit with contemporary neoliberal governance.

The Wrath of Capital: Neoliberalism and Climate Change Politics

universal coverage was impossible: the Cambridge gardens aspired only to be ‘tolerably illustrative’ of tropical plants (p. 123). There is, however, less on the plants themselves; work remains to be done on how these nonhumans came to form a living archive of botanical knowledge. Third, the book neatly shows the importance of personal networks of knowledge and patronage. Johnson usefully builds on recent work emphasising the awkward relations between gardens at the centre of Empire, particularly Kew and those elsewhere (e.g. Endersby 2001; Ginn 2009). Nature Displaced contains plenty of stories about individual botanists, from the disastrous Underwood who drank himself out of a job in Dublin to the dispute between superintendent Ninian Niven and the Dublin Royal Society over a move away from Linnaean taxonomy. The archival record usually leaves little trace of subjugated, Indigenous or lay knowledges, and this theme is not picked up by Johnson, which perhaps misses an opportunity to examine the politics of knowledge in the Irish gardens particularly. Overall, though, the skilfully marshalled evidence demonstrates how a fertile network of contacts was needed to secure good circulation—both to and from gardens—of seed and thus build the scientific reputation of a garden and its curator. Finally, Nature Displayed passes the ‘can I read it on the sofa?’ test—it is pleasingly written, the illustrations are excellent, and a well-paced structure makes it easy to follow. Johnson knows her archives—she skilfully arranges the multiple practices, competing impulses, scientific debates and personal politics of three institutions in a genuinely synthetic manner, an admirable achievement not to be underestimated. References

Book review: Remaking Scarcity: From Capitalist Inefficiency to Economic Democracy, by Costas PanayotakisPanayotakisCostasRemaking Scarcity: From Capitalist Inefficiency to Economic Democracy, Pluto Press, London, UK, 2011, 224 pp: 9780745330990, £18.99 (pbk)

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