Paper short abstract:

UN-REDD promises forest conservation based on carbon trading, raising questions about the ownership of forest land. The study of native Amazonian concepts of ownership offers ways to reflect upon local and global perspectives on the role of property in conservation.

Paper long abstract:

Forest conservation has received a new impetus from international climate-change politics, giving rise to UN-REDD, which promises to evolve into a giant international 'payment for ecosystem services' scheme. Many scholars and activists are concerned about potential social costs in the absence of forest peoples' land rights (or of respect for such rights). Meanwhile, other skeptics question the creation of forest carbon ownership rights on the grounds that the commodification of nature is merely a further expansion of capitalism: as Evo Morales, President of Bolivia, recently said, 'some propose to commoditize forests on the false argument that only what has a price and owner is worth taking care of' (2010). I suggest that native property regimes can help reflect on the dilemma imposed by these two criticisms of REDD. Among the Trio of southern Surinam, contrary to received ideas about indigenous peoples of Amazonia as living in egalitarian collectivities free from property, the ownership and appropriation of (in)dividuals pervades inter-human relations and kinship. These property relations form the basis for human interactions with the non-human actors who constitute the living environment, and they can be seen as a concrete articulation of the 'disequilibrium' characteristic of Amerindian thought according to Claude Lévi-Strauss (1991). In this paper I describe the Trio's perspective on their involvement in the commodification of the living environment through a conservation project promoting market-based conservation. I offer conclusions about the implications for larger-scale attempts to achieve forest conservation through ownership and commodity trading.