Equivalence as Ecocide: Payments for Ecosystem Services, Compensatory Afforestation, and the Case of Great Nicobar Island

India’s ruling BJP government amended the country’s Forest (Conservation) Act in the summer of 2023, exempting development projects in forested areas located in frontier regions of the country or in areas of deemed to be of “national security” interest. The revised Forest Act in effect criminalizes dissent of ecological harm as tantamount to being “anti-national” or submissive to foreign and colonial interests.

These assertions have been mobilized to strip two Indigenous communities of their territories and their rights and to justify the deforestation of 131sq km of pristine tropical forest on Great Nicobar Island in the Bay of Bengal for a transshipment hub.

In this presentation, I highlight how national security is used to justify ecocide and cultural erasure on Great Nicobar Island; how equivalence-making collapses ecological relations across space and time, and how “eco-friendly” development through ex-post-employment opportunities accrue as profitable market spinoffs that mask environmental crimes. Through the illustration of these connections between national security, environmental policy, and the silencing of dissent, I highlight how incentive programs like Payments for ecosystem services (PES) become embedded within a geopolitical economy of extraction.

Part of the GPE Brown Bag Seminar Series. All welcome.