Business Commons^™

Can Financialization Save Nature? The Case Of Endangered Species, Diane-Laure Arjalies, Delphine Gibassier

Business Publications

The current biodiversity loss is dramatic. Over the past 50 years, more than 68% of the mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish on earth have disappeared, putting the planet's survival and its inhabitants – including human beings – at risk (WWF, 2020). Financialization, or the transformation of nature into financial assets, is increasingly proposed as a solution to the biodiversity crisis. Proponents of financialization believe that assigning a monetary value to nature will incentivize human beings to protect habitats and their species. This article offers a four-mechanism model of nature’s financialization, explaining why it is virtually impossible to financialize nature. …

Prison Break From Financialization: The Case Of The Pri Reporting And Assessment Framework, Diane-Laure Arjaliès, Daniela Laurel, Nicolas Mottis

Business Publications

Purpose

This article seeks to unravel the mechanisms through which financial actors agreed upon a sustainability accounting standard without financializing social and environmental issues, i.e., assigning a monetary value to sustainability.

Design/Methodology/Approach

The article examines the Reporting and Assessment Framework created by the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UN-PRI), the leading reporting sustainability framework in the asset management industry. It relies on a longitudinal case study that draws upon interviews, participant observation, and archival data.

Findings

The article demonstrates that the conception of the framework was a funnelling process of sustainability valuation comprising two co-constituted mechanisms: a process of …