Abstract
Despite recent attention to “frontier” green economies and the governance of emerging ecosystem services, the specific division of labour in these economies has been little studied. As many such initiatives are in the global South, labour’s marginality potentially contributes to the existing precariousness of those who are more often identified as “participants”. This article examines the roles and vulnerabilities of these actors: the carbon counters, species identifiers, GIS mappers, tree planters and others operating in the shadows. We draw on current understandings of labour and precarity to examine the geographical contours of an apparent and emerging “eco‐precariat”: a socio‐economically diverse group of labourers that address the volatile demands of an ever‐expanding environmental service‐based economy. We illustrate our analysis drawing on examples from a Blue Carbon project in Kenya, ecosystem services project in the Philippines, and REDD+ scheme in Cambodia. We use these examples to theorise the nature of labour in these frontier economies and put forward a framework for analysing the eco‐precariat. We highlight the need to understand the precarity and marginalisation potentially created by this green division of labour in the provision of new ecosystem products and services. This framework contributes to ongoing analyses of labour as a central part of the green economy discourse and to larger discussions in the geographies of labour literature around the future of work in the global South and beyond.
Highlights
In the green economy context, participation is more often than not observed as a “performative practice that produces new socio-spatial relations” (Grove and Pugh 2015:1), rather than as a site of uneven labour relations. We argue that this is a gap in our analysis, which ensures that green economy is left out of relevant discussions of labour geographies, in the global South
Drawing on feminist political ecology, we develop a framework of eco-precious labour that considers social relations in the green economy through a structural and labour-oriented lens (Elmhirst 2011)
The service-based economy does not just create a new precarious workforce through a separation of workers and their means of production (Buck 2009). It may solidify existing class relations of skilled and unskilled labourers, who are drawn into programmes in order to legitimise the market—this may include, GIS experts and remote sensors and government employees, many of whom must stratal on short-term contracts between the eco-precarity and what we, drawing on Standing (2009), call “proficians” or recognised formal environmental service work
Summary
The term gained prominence as scholars were trying to make sense of “new” working-class distinctions where flexible forms of service economies were widening and deepening capital accumulation along spatial and social lines (Munck 2013) Within this literature, the global precariat is more generally defined as a fragmented socio-economic group who operate in a highly flexible and open labour market, and typically lack community or state support in times of need (Standing 2012, 2014). The service-based economy does not just create a new precarious workforce through a separation of workers and their means of production (Buck 2009) It may solidify existing class relations of skilled and unskilled labourers, who are drawn into programmes in order to legitimise the market—this may include, GIS experts and remote sensors and government employees, many of whom must stratal on short-term contracts between the eco-precarity and what we, drawing on Standing (2009), call “proficians” or recognised formal environmental service work.
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