Description
Book SynopsisFailing Forward documents the global rise of neoliberal conservation as a response to biodiversity loss and unpacks how this approach has managed to fail forward over time despite its ineffectiveness. At its core, neoliberal conservation promotes market-based instruments intended to reconcile environmental preservation and economic development by harnessing preservation itself as the source of both conservation finance and capital accumulation more generally. Robert Fletcher describes how this project has developed over the past several decades along with the expanding network of organizations and actors that have come together around its promotion. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis, he explores why this strategy continues to captivate states, nongovernmental organizations, international financial institutions, and the private sector alike despite its significant deficiencies. Ultimately, Fletcher contends, neoliberal conservation should be understood as a failed attempt to render glo
Table of ContentsContents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: Capitalism on Trial
1 • Conceptualizing Neoliberal Biopower
2 • Conjuring Natural Capital
3 • Imagining the Market
4 • The Neoliberal Ecolaboratory
5 • The Anti-regulation Machine
6 • How to Fail Forward
7 • Neoliberal Conservation in Ruins?
8 • There Is No Alternative to Degrowth
Conclusion: Traversing the Neoliberal Fantasy
Notes
Bibliography
Index
