ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the production of value from nature within the two-year DEFRA biodiversity offsetting pilot study in England. It investigates the translation of ecological value into economic value by way of constructed commensuration between new value entities vis-à-vis the DEFRA biodiversity metric. The metric transforms ecosystems and habitats into value-bearing units, with the goal to create equivalence between ecological impact at a development site and the biodiversity offset that is designed to compensate for this loss. In this instance, biodiversity value is first constructed as a new conceptual category, stabilised as a commodity and thereby “made” into a unit of exchange. The production of new value derives principally from two overall processes of commensuration: the translation of ecological information into numbers and the monetisation of those numbers. The chapter details how this occurs by following Castree in his typological review of the commodification of nature. First, it focuses specifically on the operation of the value metric as a calculative device and the resulting processes of both functional and spatial abstraction, whereby nature’s relational complexity is rendered “passive” as eco-functional units of quantitative value. Second, it considers individuation, in which ecological value is translated into the logics of capital. It is through these iterative layers of value creation that ecological qualities transmute into a form that can be assigned market value.
