THE COMMODIFICATION OF NATURE, MULTILEVEL ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE SCHEMES, AND NATION-STATES IN ECOLOGICAL CAPITALISM

The ecological degradation that we are facing today has the nature of a common goods problem, which presents itself on a global scale. Capitalism’s solution to the ecological crisis is the commodification and the integration of these goods into a market system, with cap-and-trade policies for GHG emissions, carbon taxes etc. Current multilevel environmental governance schemes don’t look at the root causes of the ecological crisis, which reside in capitalist forms of production. Commodification of Nature and common goods has implications for roles, responsibilities, capacities and legitimacy of nation-states in environmental politics. Global environmental governance schemes have multilevel governance structures that legitimizes non-state actors like ENGOs, transnational networks, epistemic communities, multinational and transnational companies etc. The legitimacy and capacity of nation-states, their overall activities, have not been effective against the ecological crisis that we face today. Thus, we see the formation of these multi-level environmental governance schemes that surpass nation-states in certain capacities.