Capital accumulation and climate change. Production of value in REDD+ projects implemented in Colombian Afro-descendant communities
Abstract
The market for greenhouse gas emissions, also known as the carbon market, was instituted by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as the principal means of addressing the climate threat. In the critical literature on the carbon market, a controversy has developed regarding the origin of the profits that companies and countries appropriate by participating in it. On the one hand, there are the advocates of the rent thesis, who point out that profits arise from the capture of value produced in economic activities unrelated to the carbon market. On the other hand, there are the advocates of the surplus value thesis, who claim that the carbon market is a new space of accumulation and that profits arise from new commodities loaded with value and surplus value. Based on the case study of a project on Reducing Emissions from Avoided Deforestation and Forest Degradation, this article provides evidence to support the thesis of surplus value: the carbon market creates new productive processes focused on reducing emissions in which surplus value is produced, which would be the source of profits.
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