The Neoliberalization of Nature: The Highest Stage of Ecological Imperialism?

Cover: Indigenous leaders and their water-protector allies set up camp to protest a pipeline in front of the Minnesota Capitol Building. Michael Nigro/AP, via https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/04/criminalization-indigenous-land-defenders/

Mariko Frame || One of the more critical arguments being made in political ecology concerns the ‘neoliberalization’ of the environment. Heynen et al. (2007) have argued that neoliberalism has restructured the social and property relations governing nature and ultimately allowed for its enclosure, privatization, and marketization. A number of case studies have been conducted describing this process of intensified enclosures and privatization (Robbins and Luginbuhl 2007). In addition to the re-formulation of property relations in the favor of private capital, some scholars have documented the scaling back of environmental protections by the state (McCarthy 2007). In the developing world, for example, this has resulted in the illegal logging of protected areas, the poaching of endangered species, increased corruption, and usurpation of indigenous lands (Tockman 2001). This neoliberalization trend is seen as the most recent phase of capitalism (Heynen and Robbins 2005). Heynen and others denote this broad agenda as the ‘neoliberalization’ of nature, consisting of a number of cohesive ideological and policy attributes, even as this ‘neoliberalization’ often manifests differently according to localized context (Heynen et al. 2007).

Frame, M. (2015). The Neoliberalization of Nature: The Highest Stage of Ecological Imperialism?. World ecology Network.