Disappearing Waste and Wasting Time

From Productive Fallows to Carbon Offset Production in Madagascar's Forests

Bibliographic Data

ID2143149
AuthorsSara Peña Valderrama (independent scholar, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume88
Issue3
Pages491-511
Publication date2023-05-27
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthnos (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0014-1844 • E-ISSN: 1469-588X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00141844.2020.1796737
OpenAlexW3044342949
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited40

In this article I argue that generating carbon credit value centres on a double movement of first naming something as waste and then removing it, a movement entangled with imagined pasts and futures. I explore this through the transformations that TAMS, a project to restore fallows from slash-and-burn agriculture in Madagascar's rainforest, underwent through its engagement with carbon markets. TAMS initially aimed to benefit both forest and local farming communities. Its objective was then shifted to using the forest for carbon credits. I argue that the 'calculative logic' of carbon offset production drove this move by first identifying the fallows as waste and then removing them; other forms of understanding and using these fallows were systematically 'unknown': debased and forgotten. Reformulating the fallows as waste excluded local farmers from their livelihood. The promise of carbon value was never realised, but the effects of its anticipation were wasted present livelihoods

Agriculture · Agroforestry · Business · Carbon offset · Economics · Geography · Greenhouse gas · Livelihood · Natural resource economics · Offset (computer science · Production (economics · Shifting cultivation · Slash-and-burn · Value (mathematics · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Computer Science · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management · Environmental Science · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance

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