Presentation short abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between biodiversity credit methodologies and different strand of Ecology through an empirical examination of two contrasting cases: one focused on the restoration of degraded ecosystems, the other on the conservation of tropical forests.

Presentation long abstract

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. This focus enables examination of the ways in which different forms of knowledge and scientific references are used to construct these methodologies and to give them legitimacy, but also analysis of the different versions of nature that they embed/

Methodologically, 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 embed different socio-natures – reflexively designed to perform in the service of specific forms of environmentalization.