Radio Mundo Real

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11 de julio de 2014 | | |

Second Conceptual Dialogue: A price on nature?

“What happens to people when we talk about financialization of nature?”, asked the German activist Jutta Kill, representative of the World Rainforest Movement (WRM), in the second conceptual dialogue held on the second day of the working meeting organized by Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) about financialization of nature, in Paris, France, on May 26-28. (Watch the video of the complete second dialogue below).

Kill quoted a participant of the meeting when she made that question. Then she explained: “because in most of our images, when we hear the word nature, the word is shaped by a concept that goes back to a very utilitarian way of looking at land use. We have some areas that are very intensively used and therefore we need to make up for that very intensive use (...) by putting aside nature. Nature in that context is usually understood as places where people don’t have a space”. “That is particular in the Western science, that’s how we reach nature. That’s how those who write studies like the economics of biodiversity and ecosystem services understand nature: a place where human intervention has to be reduced to a minimum. But that’s not how nature presents itself to people. People are part of nature”, Kill added.

The first conceptual dialogue focused on the privatization, commercialization and financialization of nature, and the one in which Kill participated was about the issue of putting a price on nature, a value on nature. The activist shared the table with Friedrich Wulf, member of Pronatura – Friends of the Earth Switzerland and Maxime Combes, representative of ATTAC France, was the facilitator. Different participants of the meeting also spoke in the activity. Among them, FoEI Forest and Biodiversity and Climate Justice and Energy Program coordinators, Isaac Rojas and Dipti Bhatnagar respectively.

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