Jones Faculty Lecture by Caleb Gallemore, Associate Professor of International Affairs

“This is not (just) a market: Non-market aspects of international market-based environmental policies”

 Market-based approaches like cap-and-trade schemes, offset systems, payments for ecosystem services, and environmental certification are commonly used to fight deforestation and habitat destruction. While the jury is still out on these approaches’ overall impacts - and their effectiveness depends on local contexts - it does seem they can work as well as protected areas in stemming deforestation, under ideal conditions. Still, these approaches have their problems. Critics of “neoliberal nature” strategies point out that they are also associated with expulsions, can undermine pro-environmental attitudes in the favor of market motivations, and bolster capitalism, which they see as the driving force of environmental destruction. While folks have become more and more polarized in these debates, however, a lot of recent studies point out that, in practice, market-based conservation projects don’t actually look that much like markets, anyway. I think there might be a better way to think about this debate. `Against market critics, I argue that “market-based” conservation approaches can be effective, though not necessarily for the reasons Market purists might expect. Against market purists, I argue that making market-based environmental policy more closely resemble commodity markets may not be as important as formulating interventions targeted toward non-market aspects of these projects. Instead, insights from areas like behavioral economics and social network analysis might generate bigger impacts than trying to “get the prices right.”

The talk is sponsored by the Thomas Roy and Lura Forest Jones Faculty Lecture and Awards Fund, established in 1966 to recognize superior teaching and scholarship at Lafayette College.