Discourses of biodiversity finance in an Australian case: innovation, regulation and disruption

Neoliberal conservation is enjoying its latest zenith in the form of ‘biodiversity finance’. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) seeks to close a biodiversity finance ‘gap’ of $700 billion per year, and emphasises the role of private finance in meeting this goal. The endurance of neoliberal conservation is rooted in often unseen negotiations of knowledge and power; hence it is crucial to understand how material futures are being shaped by discourse. Here we draw on twenty-nine (29) interviews with Australian biodiversity finance professionals to interrogate the main discourses driving post-GBF neoliberal conservation in Australia, consider how they shape power and material realities, and suggest potential avenues for disruption of harmful biodiversity futures. Using a diverse theoretical apparatus consisting of poststructuralism, feminist theory, and regulatory theory, we identify two primary discursive themes in the data: innovation and regulation. Discourses centred on innovation obfuscate the material losses and death enabled by biodiversity markets and empower the expert knowledge and elite networks of the often-male ‘innovators’. The salience of regulation discourses highlights an opportunity for re-centring regulatory purpose towards biodiversity protection rather than market creation, and the Taskforce on Nature-Related Financial Disclosures as a source of fear and locus for potential disruption.