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International audience ; Increasingly, large international conservation organizations have come to rely upon market-oriented interventions, such as sport trophy hunting, to achieve multiple goals of biodiversity protection and 'development'. Such initiatives apply an understanding of 'nature'-defined through an emerging discourse of global ecology-to incorporate local ecologies within the material organizational sphere of capital and transnational institutions, generating new forms of governmentality at scales inaccessible to traditional means of discipline such as legislation and enforcement. In this paper, I historicize debates over 'nature' in a region of northern Pakistan, and demonstrate how local ecologies are becoming subject to transnational institutional agents through strategies similar to those used by colonial administrators to gain ecological control over their 'dominions'. This contemporary reworking of a colonialist ethic of conservation relies rhetorically on a discourse of global ecology, and on ideological representations of a resident population as incapable environmental managers, to assert and implement an allegedly scientifically and ethically superior force better able to respond to assumed degradation. In undertaking such disciplinary projects, international conservation organizations rely on, and produce, a representation of ecological space as 'global' to facilitate the attainment of translocal political-ecological goals.

Increasingly, large international conservation organizations have come to rely upon market-oriented interventions, such as sport trophy hunting, to achieve multiple goals of biodiversity protection and 'development'. Such initiatives apply an understanding of 'nature'-defined through an emerging discourse of global ecology-to incorporate local ecologies within the material organizational sphere of capital and transnational institutions, generating new forms of governmentality at scales inaccessible to traditional means of discipline such as legislation and enforcement. In this paper, I historicize debates over 'nature' in a region of northern Pakistan, and demonstrate how local ecologies are becoming subject to transnational institutional agents through strategies similar to those used by colonial administrators to gain ecological control over their 'dominions'. This contemporary reworking of a colonialist ethic of conservation relies rhetorically on a discourse of global ecology, and on ideological representations of a resident population as incapable environmental managers, to assert and implement an allegedly scientifically and ethically superior force better able to respond to assumed degradation. In undertaking such disciplinary projects, international conservation organizations rely on, and produce, a representation of ecological space as 'global' to facilitate the attainment of translocal political-ecological goals.

ABSTRACT This article uses theories of virtualism to analyse the role of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) project in the production of natural capital. Presented at the 10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, the project seeks to redress the 'economic invisibility of nature' by quantifying the value of ecosystems and biodiversity. This endeavour to put an economic value on ecosystems makes nature legible by abstracting it from social and ecological contexts and making it subject to, and productive of, new market devices. In reducing the complexity of ecological dynamics to idealized categories TEEB is driven by economic ideas and idealism, and, in claiming to be a quantitative force for morality, is engaged in the production of practices designed to conform the 'real' to the virtual. By rendering a 'valued' nature legible for key audiences, TEEB has mobilized a critical mass of support including modellers, policy makers and bankers. We argue that TEEB's rhetoric of crisis and value aligns capitalism with a new kind of ecological modernization in which 'the market' and market devices serve as key mechanisms to conform the real and the virtual. Using the case of TEEB, and drawing on data collected at COP10, we illustrate the importance of international meetings as key points where idealized models of biodiversity protection emerge, circulate and are negotiated, and as sites where actors are aligned and articulated with these idealized models in ways that begin further processes of conforming the real with the virtual and the realization of 'natural capital'.

This article critically examines the production of economistic fields of environmental governance in the context of global summits like Rio + 20. It focuses on the constitutive work performed by diverse actors in extending corporate sustainability logics, social technologies, and organizational forms initially enacted at the 2012 Corporate Sustainability Forum (CSF). Fields are defined as dynamic, relational arenas featuring particular logics, dynamic actor positions, and organizational forms. Corporate sustainability exemplifies how the language and practices of economics have reshaped approaches to environmental protection and sustainable development. Although numerous studies have looked at the implementation of market-oriented approaches, less attention has been focused on the constitutive processes that animate and expand economistic fields of governance over time. Our analysis emphasizes diffuse processes of economization as central to the reproduction and extension of fields. The article addresses three key issues: (1) how global corporate sustainability networks help to constitute economistic fields of governance, (2) the extent to which major events contribute to field configuration, and (3) the processes through which field elements—logics, social technologies, and organizational forms—transpose onto related fields of governance. Field configuration produces economistic environmental governance by solidifying business logics, enabling new actor-networks, launching new global-scale initiatives, and enhancing the role of UN agencies in promoting corporate sustainability. We illustrate field configuration with two examples: the Natural Capital Declaration and the Green Industry Platform. Our analysis highlights the diffuse power of field dynamics in which discursive and social entanglement and transposition reproduce and extend corporate sustainability beyond current institutional boundaries.