Paper short abstract:

By observing the proliferation of green standards and certifications in the green bonds market, we speculate these emerge through “parrhesiac acts” that produce distinct and situated “regimes of truth.” We question whether these are really displacing old hierarchies of valuation.

Paper long abstract:

By observing the proliferation of green standards, metrics and auditing practices that defines the green bonds market, we trace the evolution of the “techno-scientific apparatus” which seeks to produce a regime of truth. We draw on the ambiguity of the historically contingent concept of parrhesia (Foucault 1999): meaning sometimes “idle talk;” sometimes “true discourse” of those who hold certain moral and political characteristics–and thus are held accountable. We speculate that in the green bonds market, processes of certification emerge as “parrhesiac” acts. 

Through case studies of two different green bonds, we show that as “acts of enunciation” (Latour 2010), the certification of these bonds perform as “charismatic signifiers”  (Wengrow 2008), whose “regime of truth”  is bound to different moral, political and legal landscapes. Mobilizing the literature on legal materiality (Kang 2020) and anthropology of law, we thus contend that certification is only loosely bound to the metrics of the bonds’ green projects. If anything, rather than engaging in the verification of information, certification covers the metrics up, rendering it less visible and opaque. 

We question whether these new practices really displace old hierarchies of valuation, firmly grounded on financial ratings and other “fundamentals”.  As “parrhesiac act”, the act of green certification seeks to provide a super partes truth which abstracts both the essence of natural capitalised assets, both the forms of numeric measures. Yet, by supplying a ground of trust to investors, it provides the veridiction tool “the market” seems unable to deliver.