Traceable Futures: The Rise of Traceability Infrastructures in Global Environmental Governance
Traceability infrastructures – the technical and institutional arrangements that allow states, corporations and concerned citizens to secure the legal and sustainable origin of a variety of environmentally sensitive commodities– have become fundamental imperatives in the governance of a variety of transnational supply chains associated to tropical rainforests, from soy to palm oil, and from cattle to tropical timber. Amidst mounting international anxieties with the fate of tropical rainforests, the goal of traceability infrastructures is to prevent the expansion of forest degradation, unsanctioned land use change and intractable deforestation around the world. But as the imperative of traceability consolidates in domestic and international policy arenas, it also transforms the conditions upon which political sovereign claims are articulated in relation to many tropical environments today. This presentation will argue that traceability can be understood as an emerging technology of global environmental governance that is progressively redefining how planetary well-being is to be governed in the context of climate change and biodiversity loss. First, the presentation will track the rise of traceability as both a policy idiom and as a political horizon since the late 1990s. Second, the presentation will examine how the imperative of traceability is being materialized today via novel multilateral agreements, due diligence requirements, net-zero deforestation commitments and bilateral consultation mechanisms, and how such rising transnational regulations transform the sovereign political claims through which questions of legality and sustainability are articulated in relation to tropical rainforests. Finally, the presentation will consider the implications of these wider transformations for imagining the politics of planetary well-being, and what new kinds of ethical, epistemic and geopolitical tensions might underlie a world increasingly perfused by various kinds of traceability infrastructures.
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