ABSTRACT
This chapter critiques the economic farming of sustainability (discussed in Chapter 4), placing it in its context as a reflection of the rise of neoliberalism from the 1980s onwards. Neoliberal doctrines suggested that human wellbeing and environmental quality were best delivered by the market and not by the state. The chapter describes these ideas and explores a range of radical critiques and alternative ways of understanding questions of environment and development. In particular, it focuses on Marxist analysis of the relations between capitalism and nature, and particularly the paradox that while capitalism destroys nature it is also proposed as a means of protecting nature, through market-based environmentalism. The chapter then critiques the idea of the green economy (introduced in Chapter 3) and discusses the potential and limits of ecological modernism as an approach to dealing with environmental problems created by capitalist development. It describes the characteristics of markets for nature, looking in particular at payments for ecosystem services and carbon offsetting and the question of who wins and who loses in such arrangements.
