The missing link in natural capital markets. An enabler of transparency, accountability and efficiency. A game-changer for natural resource management.
These are some of the buzzwords through which, in 2020, I first got to know blockchain and its applications in nature conservation. At that time I was a volunteer and board member for an Amsterdam-based environmental non-profit which was exploring ways in which it could make its tree planting projects in Spain more transparent for donors. The idea was that with the help of GPS-tags, donors could see exactly where their sponsored trees were planted. Blockchain here served as an immutable and transparent ledger via which these data would be recorded and exchanged. The technology fascinated me. It seemed like a solution for many issues, but I could not fully wrap my head around its workings and technical jargon yet. Critical environmental-social science literature was (and still is) scarce.
It was during the same period that I had started my master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies in Environmental, Economic and Social Sustainability at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. There, through the lectures of Giorgos Kallis, Sergio Villamayor, and Isabelle Anguelovski, I first came across the field of political ecology. Discovering political ecology to me was discovering an intellectual ‘home’. It brought together my growing interest in political economy (which I had explored through extracurricular courses in my undergraduate degree in Sociology) care about social justice (present ever since I started reading newspapers as a teenager) and concern for the environment. Intrigued by the promises of blockchain for environmental degradation and climate change, and equipped with concepts from political ecology, I wrote my masters thesis about blockchain for nature conservation and environmental sustainability. The master thesis culminated in what eventually became a research paper in Conservation & Society. This paper argued that many environmental blockchain projects do not challenge the underlying causes to environmental degradation and climate change, but that at the same time this does not mean they are necessarily flawed – they can still be useful to communities in the places where they are deployed.
This last aspect of blockchain in nature conservation is, however, scarcely studied and this is one of three things I set out to study with my PhD. First, I study the commodities that blockchain nature conservation sells and take them as an analytical departure point to better understand the blockchain nature conservation space. Drawing from Marxist commodification and commodities literature, I ask if blockchain – as a transparency-enhancing technology – manages to defetishize the commodity, i.e., the extent to which it makes visible social and ecological relations that usually become invisible in global commodity markets. Second, I am interested in how and which aspects of nature conservation and restoration blockchain succeeds in making visible and valuable, i.e., how it translates nature into Natural Capital. Using a political ecology and critical metrology lens, I depart form the idea that environmental data do “not simply paint a neutral, more comprehensive picture of the planet” (Nost and Goldstein 2021: 4) – they necessarily both illuminate and obscure aspects of nature conservation, thereby serving some actors more than others (i.e., choices are made over what is economically valuable and what is relevant to make transparent, and what is not). Third, and finally, I am interested in the classical political ecology question of who ‘wins’ and who ‘loses’ from all of this.
My PhD is relevant to data justice in two ways. First, among other things, I try to illustrate how the partial transparency that data-in-blockchain brings (re)arranges power relations, and how these in turn inform and govern nature conservation and restoration. Second, and flowing from the first point, my study aims to cast a light on the justice implications these solutions as such have for the communities and natures involved. Ultimately, blockchain-enabled transparency in nature conservation and restoration sets out to leverage enhanced transparency (enabling for commodification and capitalization of nature, among other things) to solve environmental issues, and through that, benefit particular communities. What I hope to illuminate is whether it is achieving those goals and how. I’m excited and looking forward to be doing this as part of the CONDJUST team!
