“Qué es eso de la Amazonía?” Global value appropriation through carbon offsetting and environmental subject-making in Colombia

While environmental scholars have long been denouncing the poor science behind technological solutionism, social sciences have yet to fully explore – especially on an empirical level – the issues of socio-environmental injustice related to ‘green’ growth and carbon offsetting. By taking a global historical perspective on the extraction and flow of raw materials and challenging the depoliticisation of the environmental debate, this dissertation aims to highlight the neocolonial geographies of carbon trading and offer a conceptual framework to question its social feasibility. More specifically, the dissertation makes a twofold contribution: first, by taking an understudied REDD+ project in the Colombian Amazon as a case study, it begins to uncover the subtle socio-economic and political impacts of carbon forestry on a small semi-nomad indigenous community while exposing the questionable motives of some of the actors involved. Second, it offers a novel quantitative contribution by estimating the South-North value drain through carbon offsetting (as well as the value drain from Colombia as a national-level case study), thereby exposing an unequal distribution of mitigation work on a global scale. While recognising the nuanced perceptions about mitigation schemes among Global South communities, the dissertation questions overly optimistic net-zero narratives, discusses what can be saved of the current offsetting paradigm, and ends by bringing into relief potential alternatives with the common vision of a post-growth society centred on environmental justice.