Imagining nature politics in the era of Australia's emerging market in environmental services interventions

Abstract

With the advent of environmental 'governance by commission', associated with evidence-based policy and market mechanisms, there is a need to (re)imagine Australia's nature politics. I identify two distinct domains of nature politics - one associated with distribution of goods produced in nature, and another concerned with constituting nature itself. The paper offers two analytically distinct readings of a tender bids hearing to select a contractor to assemble a diagnostic design for a government funded project of river rehabilitation. The tool that enables these incommensurable accounts is a purposefully crafted ethnographic story of the hearing. These dual readings engage alternative framin..