Chapter 3: Robin Hood in the Untenured Forest
“…[S]tate officials tried to act like “Robin Hood,” as one of SISA’s developers told me: they took money from the wealthy—who would have received it in a private forest carbon project—and distributed it to the propertyless poor.” (Greenleaf 89)
Synopsis
“Chapter 3 traces how the Acrean state made forest carbon’s new international value into a kind of public wealth it then redistributed to some rural people. Examining this as a form of statecraft, it also argues that this approach engendered an environmentally premised welfare state that, while inchoate and not always effective, differed substantively from the private property–making and -enforcing state envisioned in both supportive and critical discussions of forest carbon and neoliberal capitalism. Yet, in avoiding property, this approach also skirted the powerful forms of belonging that rights to land can engender.” (Greenleaf 32)
Discussion Questions & Key Concepts
Key concepts: Green redistribution, ecosystem services, benefits, property, statecraft
What made the Acrean state’s sidestepping of property rights inclusive, and what are the limitations of this strategy?
What work does the concept of “ecosystem service provider” do?
How does forest carbon’s new value support statecraft? What kind of state did it help to create?