The "commodification" of nature: an anthropological look at the Payment for Environmental Services (1002)

The paper poses the anthropological question "What does man returns to the nature or how he takes care of the nature?" Until the 20th century, man received goods from nature or levied them in counterpart of rituals that guaranteed the sacred and compulsory nature of the rules of management and preservation of natural resources. The extension and globalization of the merchant exchange put an end to it. Facing the inevitable and accelerated degradation of the environment, states and international organizations have been unable to set up a global regulatory environment organization. States and firms only agree on policies of commodification of nature that quickly become carbon market, compensation fund for pollution in the USA and their financialization. There is also a "commodification" of nature through certain forms of payment programs for environmental services (paying landowners and producers for services rendered by nature). Faced with the drifts of speculation in the carbon or biodiversity markets what kind of anti-utilitarian policy alternatives can be proposed? I propose to extend the hypothesis of Ostrom - about management of the common resources by the collective of farmers (peasants, fishermen, foresters) on the basis of practices of gift and reciprocity - to an hypothesis on the production of local public goods by groups or associations of rural people. The paper has two parts: 1) a theoretical return about reciprocity between man and nature 2) an analysis of the commodification of nature through green economy and payment for environmental services policies. (Résumé d'auteur