Banking Nature (2014), new WBCSD environmental markets | see also Planet of the Humans (2020) & The Bankers at the Helm of ‘Natural Capital’ 

This documentary was removed from the monoconomy channel in late 2024, early 2025 for reasons unknown – at the time it was the only online copy of this most instructive film. For the sake of humanity, and sanity, please make sure that never happens again. You know what to do. Alternative link: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1R2VuAQn7q/

Privatization Of Nature – Who is behind the new environmental wave of interest in planting forests in Afrika, making you buy rain-forest and climatic quotas for pollution? It surely wouldn’t be the same which made the last financial crises in sub prime loans?

“Buying landscapes, protecting landscapes, accumulating new landscapes-it’s a phenomenal opportunity.” -Steve Morgan, CEO, Wildlands Inc.

BANKING NATURE is a film about the growing movement to monetize the natural world: to turn endangered species and threatened areas into instruments of profit.

It’s a worldview that posits capital and markets as the planet’s salvation-turning nature into “natural capital.” In this view, the best way to protect endangered species and habitats is to assign them dollar values and measure the “ecosystem services” they provide. These services can then be converted into securitized financial products.

The results can be grotesque. In Uganda, we meet men who measure trees to determine how much carbon they store-and a banker from the German firm that sells the resulting carbon credits. Meanwhile, in Brazil, steel giant Vale destroys rainforest, replaces it with tree plantations, and reaps the benefits of environmental credits.

Can we trust the same people whose mismanagement of the mortgage market led to a global economic meltdown to safeguard nature, by turning it into financial instruments for speculators?

“Successfully outlines the theory behind ‘financializing nature’… making this complex aspect of the modern market system comprehensible… Does a real service. Recommended.”—Video Librarian

“This is a fascinating work, investigating an inventive plan to protect nature… The portrayal of both sides of this impalpable concept is laudable. Huge assembly of opponents gives this film a distinct objectivity. The work has brilliant foresight into the issues, turning points, dangers, and ethical dilemmas of the proposal. Highly recommended.”—Educational Media Reviews Online

“A beautiful and very challenging and provocative treatment of the current effort to save nature and the planet by applying market economics, models, and tools to global environmental crises such as species extinction, the loss of biodiversity, degradation and loss of whole ecosystems like the world’s rainforests, and global warming.”—Science Books and Films

Privatization Of Nature (2015)
Director: Sandrine Feydel, Denis Delestrac
Stars: Bertrand Dussy, Framboise Gommendy, Laurent Jacquet
Genre: Documentary
Country: France
Language: English (with subtitled German, French and Spanish)
Also Known As: Banking Nature
Release Date: February 3, 2015 (France)

Synopsis: We investigate the commercialisation of the natural world. Protecting our planet has become big business with companies promoting new environmental markets. This involves species banking, where investors buy up vast swathes of land, full of endangered species, to enable them to sell ‘nature credits’. Companies whose actions destroy the environment are now obliged to buy these credits and new financial centres have sprung up, specialising in this trade.

Many respected economists believe that the best way to protect nature is to put a price on it. But others fear that this market in nature could lead to companies having a financial interest in a species’ extinction. There are also concerns that – like the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 – the market in nature credits is bound to crash. And there are wider issues at stake. What guarantees do we have that our natural inheritance will be protected? And should our ecological heritage be for sale?

Also Known As (AKA):
(original title) Nature, Le Nouvel Eldorado de la Finance
France Nature, le Nouvel Eldorado de la Finance
Germany Natur – Spekulationsobjekt Mit Zukunft
Norway Naturens Kapital
United Kingdom Banking Nature
United States Banking Nature
World-wide Banking Nature (English)

Banking Nature
Neo-Liberalism and the Defanging of Feminism, Social Engineering, Whiteness & Aversive Racism

In “Banking Nature”, directors Denis Delestra and Sandrine Feydel document the growing movement to monetize the natural world, and to turn endangered species and threatened areas into instruments of profit – 2014. 90 minutes

This film investigates the financialization of the natural world.

Protecting our planet has become big business with companies promoting new environmental markets. This involves species banking, where investors buy up vast swathes of land, full of endangered species, to enable them to sell “nature credits.” Companies whose actions destroy the environment are now obliged to buy these credits and new financial centres have sprung up, specialising in this trade. Many respected economists believe that the best way to protect nature is to put a price on it. But others fear that this market in nature could lead to companies having a financial interest in a species’ extinction. There are also concerns that—like the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008—the market in nature credits is bound to crash. And there are wider issues at stake. What guarantees do we have that our natural inheritance will be protected? And should our ecological heritage be for sale?

[Source: Via Decouvertes Production]

Grand Prize of the City of Innsbruck nature film festival. Jury statement:

“Whoever thought that capitalising natural resources could be a solution for our ecological crisis knows better now: thanks to the investigative approach of the directors. It is clear that the protection of endangered species should not be left to multinational companies and financial consultants. Although the topic is highly complex, the film remains exciting to the very end. The development to profit from nature as revealed by the film is frightening.”