‘Natural Capital’ is Unnatural for Capital
For decades, the commodification of nature and agriculture to the detriment of the planet and population — be it of humans, animals or plants — has been criticized by the scientific community and society at large. Rampant deforestation threatens all life on earth, and most damage done to ecosystems in Brazil, the most biodiverse region in the world, is due to industries that are not aimed at immediate human needs such as food and clean water. Instead, they are directed at fuel, cattle feed, oils and so on — all of which intensely rely on pesticides. “[T]he land, this common good, meets the demand of capital, but it does not meet the human demand.” (Bombardi, 2017)
Arguably, agriculture can be a natural process, but the industrialization of it, particularly through the use of dangerous pesticides, are harder to perceive as such. Researcher Larissa Bombardi argues that the conversion of food production into ‘commodities’ is done through “the massive use of pesticides” (2017). Meanwhile, “Brazil has been the world’s largest consumer of pesticides since 2008”; its “consumption has increased by 190% in the last decade” (N. M. X. Faria et al., 2014).
The “30 million hectares” used — or deforested — for soybean cultivation in Brazil are the destination of more than half (52%) of the “pesticides sold in the country” (Bombardi, 2017). When considering that this soy is transgenic in its overwhelming majority (95.5%) (Bombardi, 2017, p.35) and “its main role in the food industry is as raw material in livestock” (D. Carreira, et al., 2015), we can undoubtedly categorize it as a ‘commodity’. Therefore, as more data about the dangers of pesticides and deforestation are accumulated, one of the largest and most biodiverse countries in the world not only fails to slow down the process of commodification of natural resources but accelerates it instead.
Data outlining the environmental damage and its repercussions are well known by academics and journalists, but they have not been enough to bring about significant change. Possible solutions to this unsustainable land use by the agribusiness have been tossed around among the most powerful world leaders in summits, treaties have been forged, signed and promoted. But time and time again, we see ourselves moving faster and faster towards the obliteration of natural ecosystems across the globe.
In her 2021 paper, “Geography of Asymmetry: the vicious cycle of pesticides and colonialism in the commercial relationship between Mercosur and the European Union”, Larissa Bombardi highlights how several pesticides are manufactured in Europe, then used to produce commodities in Brazil, which are then sold back to Europeans. The Netherlands, for instance, consumes billions of euros worth of fruit juice produced in Brazil, using substances which are not only deadly and banned in the European Union, but also manufactured and sold by its members.
"In the last ten years, 56 thousand people were poisoned by pesticides used in Brazilian agriculture. The country has registered an average of 5,687 cases of this type of poisoning per year, which is equivalent to 15 people poisoned by pesticides every day." (Larissa Bombardi, 2021)
In this scenario, Brazilian farmers suffer the most from this unbalanced cycle of resource distribution, dealing with health issues ranging from intoxication to cancer and suicidal ideation. In her 2017 Atlas, Bombardi argues that the number of pesticide intoxication nationwide are underreported at a rate of 1 to 50 — for every 1 case reported, an average of 50 are possibly not (page 54). Almost half of the cases reported were suicides (40%, page 55). Pesticides have been shown to play a role in “Minor Psychiatric Disorders” such as depression, and financial struggles among farmers are said to exacerbate these symptoms (Faria, 2014).
As a possible solution to this crisis, major international organizations, such as the United Nations (e.g., System of Environmental Economic Accounting), have invested in the idea of ‘Natural Capital’ — a tool in the field of economics for factoring environmentally unsustainable trade practices into risk assessments. It offers a system to arrive at a number, or a price. This algorithm calculates the environmental damage potential of a business or trade, and the number symbolizes the size of the dent this damage can cause to their profit margin.
The document entitled “Natural Capital Risk Exposure” (Carreira, 2015), financed by a German Ministry on economic “development”, consisting mostly of jargon for potential investors of the agricultural sector, reveals how much of the obstacle to arriving at a solution lies in the attitudes of powerful people rather than on the evidence of the problem. In other words, more enlightening than the data in the report is the culture which enables this data to persist in an apocalyptic direction.
“In order to value the impacts on biodiversity, a study must define biodiversity, quantify biodiversity losses due to emissions of toxic substances through dispersion and deposition models, and then place a monetary value on these losses.” Page 79, under the subtitle “Water Pollutants”.
This study leads to, for instance, a formula which estimates “the monetary cost per kilogram of toxic substances deposited on freshwater environments”. The first variable is “willingness-to-pay to restore”, based on the “species richness” of the area. Meaning that, the biodiversity ‘grade’ of an area will influence the price-tag attached to its potential destruction. It’s not so much a question of whether damage is being done and to what extent, so we can minimize it. It’s a matter of how much are we willing to pay to continue destroying.
“Quantify”, and “place a monetary value” in the context of biodiversity loss and human health is quite telling of the attitudes toward the issue at hand. Though this style of discourse might have been developed with the intention of communicating the cost of environmental damage in a language that the industry can understand, the result ends up being the channeling of time and resources towards a dead-end.
As a concept, ‘Natural Capital’ is contrary to what environmentalists have been trying to achieve for decades, and it is also contrary to the nature of capital. If the endless debates between world leaders and bogus global accords weren’t enough, a gamble over people’s lives is happening behind piles of paperwork and financial transactions. The value of lives, both human and more-than-human, are turned into variables in an algorithm designed to estimate their cost to billion-euro industries. This cost, they are clearly willing to pay, because what is natural for capitalism is maximum profits, not minimum damage.
In practice, data shows that ‘Natural Capital’ does not work to minimize the damage done to the planet and to human health. Commodifying a problem caused by commodification is like trying to depollute water with toxic substances. Sadly, this is not a metaphor, it really happens. A publication from this year (Aranha, 2022) revealed that over 700 Brazilian cities have waters with toxicity levels above legal limits, which are considerably higher than the European limits. Over half of these contaminants, which include radioactive substances, pesticides, organic and inorganic matter, are water treatment by-products.
For those who opt for or see the health value of organic vegetables and fruits, water treatment is beyond individual scopes of influence. Washing an apple before biting into it may just add to the problem. Supervision of water quality by government institutions is weak, and if testing is done, results are too often concealed from the public. The population is not only denied clean water, but also information about this water. All the while, having access to this information is far from enough to bring about change.
When and if influential people in the agricultural sector choose to implement ‘Natural Capital’ algorithms to give their environmental footprint a price-tag, perhaps they are willing to take it on because they know that farmers are the ones paying for it upfront. Those who are getting sick and dying right now, and in the last decades, are not the ones analyzing risk assessment reports and signing off on these projects. Not all of us have the power to steer multinational agricultural industries in a more sustainable direction, but we are all paying for their damages on some level. What we can do is not waste time and energy trying to learn the language of those who understand ours very well but choose not to listen.
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References:
Aranha, A. et al. (2022) “Exclusivo: água da torneira tem produtos químicos e radioativos em 763 cidades brasileiras".
Bombardi, L. M. (2017) "Geografia do Uso de Agrotóxicos no Brasil e Conexões com a União Europeia".
Bombardi, L. M. (2021) “Geography of Asymmetry:the vicious cycle of pesticides and colonialism in the commercial relationship between Mercosur and the European Union".
Carreira, D. et al. (2015) “Natural Capital Risk Exposure of the Financial Sector in Brazil”.
Faria, N. M. X. et al. (2014) “Occupational exposure to pesticides, nicotine and Minor Psychiatric Disorders among tobacco farmers in southern Brazil".
System of Environmental Economic Accounting, United Nations, “Natural Capital Accounting and Valuation of Ecosystem Services – Brazil”.
Mirna Wabi-Sabi
is a writer, editor and translator. She is founder and editor-in-chief of the Plataforma9 initiative and author of the bilingual pocket book Anarcho-Transcreation.