Neoliberal Confluences: The Turbulent Evolution of Stream Mitigation Banking in the US
Fields of Knowledge: Science, Politics and Publics in the Neoliberal Age
ISBN: 978-1-78350-668-2, eISBN: 978-1-78350-667-5
Publication date: 22 July 2014
Abstract
Market-based approaches to environmental management are increasingly common. In 1983 when Joeres and David published their pioneering collection, Buying a Better Environment, the concept was seen as at best novel, and at worst far-fetched. Yet today, conservation and water quality credits are for sale in many developed countries, and the idea of payment for ecosystem services is ubiquitous in environmental policy circles. This paper traces that shift from command-and-control to market-based environmental management through analysis of the evolving practice of stream mitigation banking (SMB) in the US. In the most common form of SMB today, a for-profit company buys land with a damaged stream on it and restores it to produce mitigation credits which can then be purchased by developers to fulfill their permit conditions under the Clean Water Act. Though decidedly noncommercial in origin, SMB was converted into for-profit tradable regulatory mechanism in 2000 and has since spread rapidly across the US with the strong support of the US Environmental Protection Agency. Using Bourdieu’s field concept as a framework, I argue that the neoliberal transformation of mitigation banking is a product of both relations within the regulatory field, of that field’s relations with the fields of science, and of power.
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
This paper benefited greatly from discussions at the Political Sociology of Science Workshop on the Neoliberal State, Science, and Technology organized by Daniel Lee Kleinman, Scott Frickel, David J. Hess, and Kelly Moore, which was held in June 2012 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Kelly Moore provided very useful commentary on the first version of the manuscript, as did David J. Hess on the revised manuscript. This paper has also benefited from discussion with audiences at the Geography Department at University College London; the RESTORE workshop in Uppsala, Sweden; the Institute for Environmental Sciences & Technology (ICTA) at the Autonomous University of Barcelona; the workshop on the Political Economy of Research & Innovation at the Sociology Department at Lancaster University, UK; the Dimensions of Political Ecology conference at the University of Kentucky; and the Association of American Geographers. Last and most importantly, this paper is a product of an NSF-funded collaborative research project with Martin Doyle and Morgan Robertson (The Emerging Commodity of Restored Streams: Science, Policy, and Economics in New Markets for Ecosystem Service Commodities (NSF-BCS-0961551)). The opportunity to work with the two of them over the last five years has been a tremendous gift.
Citation
Lave, R. (2014), "Neoliberal Confluences: The Turbulent Evolution of Stream Mitigation Banking in the US", Fields of Knowledge: Science, Politics and Publics in the Neoliberal Age (Political Power and Social Theory, Vol. 27), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 59-88. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0198-871920140000027010
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2014 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited