Bioprospecting, REDD and PES: innovative market-­-based instruments in an economy of promises

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Thispaperstarts from thepremise thatat theRio+20Summit,historyhas repeateditselfand that thesame expectations raised by bioprospecting 20 years ago are now attached to the market-basedinstruments associated with conservation policies (Payments for environmental services, REDDmechanisms, biodiversity offsets,...). The promise that market mechanisms are best suited to reachbiodiversity conservation goals has been renewed. Building on Polanyian definition of fictitiouscommodities and on the idea of the ‘economy of promises’ (developed by P.B. Joly in relation tobiotechnologies and nanotechnologies), we argue that beyond their ideological foundations, marketmechanisms require complex institutional arrangements that are often irrelevant and ineffective inreaching theirenvironmental objectives.Thesevariousmarket-based ormarket-like arrangements relyonthereassertedpromiseofasynergybetweenmarketandconservationratherthanonactualmarketmechanisms. They are supposedly meant as conservation tools. However, they rather foster thedevelopmentofamarketforconsultingandeconomicexpertiseinconservationissues,thegrowthandperpetuation of which depend on the renewal of this promise, in the form of changing institutionalarrangementsandmechanisms.