Department of Management Seminar with Dr Maud Borie, Kings College London Biodiversity credit methodologies as calculative devices: What do they account for?

The Global Biodiversity Framework adopted by the Convention on Biological Diversity was regarded as a turning point in green finance, signaling the irruption of biodiversity as a matter of concern for corporates and financiers. Since then, new biodiversity credits schemes are regularly announced; most of them labelled as ‘science-based' and ‘high-integrity'. While these developments could be analyzed as an experiment in market-making, this contribution focuses on the ecological dimension of biodiversity credits methodologies — attending to how ecologists engage with their design and to the forms of knowledge enrolled. Ecology comprises multiple strands, methodologies, sensibilities, and the idea of biodiversity itself not to be taken for granted (Takacs 1996). Building on the Science & Technology Studies (STS) concept of calculative devices (Callon 2007), the paper examines what kind of nature is accounted for in different methodologies before discussing the socio-ecological implications are associated with these differences. The research draws on multi-sited ethnography (Marcus 1995) and combines data from participant observation, document-analysis and interviews with ecologists. The comparison between two distinctive credits schemes, respectively focused on conservation and restoration, illustrates how these calculative devices account for different socio-natures — reflexively designed to perform in the service of specific forms of environmentalization.

Bio: Drawing on Science & Technology Studies and Political Ecology, Maud Borie's work looks at the politics of environmental knowledge and data, particularly in the context of (global) biodiversity governance and in the green finance industry. She interrogates the relationship between knowledge and transformation, asking what counts as knowledge, how, and with what implications. Dr Borie is a Senior lecturer in Environment, Science & Society at King's College London and associate editor for the journal Environmental Science & Policy.