Carbon's Calculatory Spaces: The Emergence of Carbon Offsets in Costa Rica

Abstract

This paper analyzes the practices of calculation needed to create carbon forestry offsets in Costa Rica, paying special attention to the spaces that are produced through such practices. I argue that the calculations needed to bring a carbon offset into being as a commodity is a process that results in the coconstitution of relational space, absolute Cartesian spaces, and the bounded territory of the nation-state. I develop my argument by drawing on Martin Heidegger's writings on calculation, technology, and the question of being and examine the spaces that result from carbon offset calculations performed by the Costa Rican state. Central to my argument is the idea that the practices of calculation are productive of a technological metaphysics, where the world becomes disclosed to us as an object of orderability. This ontological orientation allows for the objects and subjects of the world, in this case carbon commodities as well as producers and consumers of carbon offsets, to become relationally embedded in the world through the production of bounded Cartesian space. The production of such ‘graspable’ spaces simultaneously reinforces and undermines the territoriality of the Costa Rican state.