An object or flow of services becomes a financial asset to the degree that it offers a future income stream which will warrant investment in it. In financial markets, nature has to be able to pay. Offsets are a way in which it can be made to do so. This is their promise to nature conservation organisations. However, a perverse feature of this financialisation is that to act as an income stream at all, offsets require developments elsewhere that are destructive of environmental goods. It is these developments which give habitats and other natural resources their economic value as offsets. The economic value of the forest as a carbon offset depends upon the continued existence of excessive carbon emissions. Without those emissions the forest as carbon sink is economically valueless. Without the destruction of biodiversity, a habitat as a biodiversity offset is economically worthless. Nature conserving activities become dependent upon nature destructive activities. The relationships of dependence are realised as relationships between owners or managers of natural resources on the one hand and developers on the other. The future income stream of the manager depends on the activities of the developer. ...Such dependencies are not simply the result of incidental actions of particular organisations. They are structural outcomes of the financialisation of nature in which environmental goods as an asset class created through offsets are themselves rendered dependent on the continued existence of environmental damage.
John O’Neill, Life beyond Capital
