Publication Alert

Fresh off the presses from Progress in Human Geography, a paper I wrote with Jessica Dempsey of the University of Victoria entitled Ecosystem Services: Tensions, Impurities, and Points of Engagement within Neoliberalism.

The nutshell is that ecosystem services, both as economic theory and as policy, has plenty of very interesting internal fault lines and inconsistencies that make it a flexible and adaptive concept whose destination is unknown.  It hardly resembles the cartoon, straightjacketed by market logic, that is often straw-manned by both critics and advocates of market-based policy.

Ok, it's not 50 Shades of Grey, but we do what we can.

Wetlands Carbon: A new methodology

Heads up: American Carbon Registry came out in October with a methodology for defining carbon credits in wetland restoration sites along the Gulf coast.  As they note, deductions for methane will be important and perhaps significant -- it will be very interesting to see how many credits this methodology defines, and whether the market believes in it.

Edit: And a new one here for coastal wetland restoration under the Voluntary Carbon Standard.

Can we get a U MAD BRO?

My friend Becca Madsen at Madsen Environmental has done great work in advancing the merger of the rather nerdy if not actually straightlaced world of ecosystem services policy with the meme-driven communicative style of the modern internet.

I am of course in favor of this (as should be clear from my earlier posts), because something, ANYthing, is good if it helps us break through the wall that separates normal, everyday speech from policy talk.  And if it's not said with kittens or bad grammar -- does it really count as speech anymore?
Kids these days.