Daniel Chiu Suarez

Middlebury College · Environmental Studies

For over two decades, proponents of "ecosystem services" approaches have endeavored to transform the field of biodiversity conservation. In this article, I examine the work of the Natural Capital Project to show how the "mainstreaming" of ecosystem services has required not just hard work but specific forms of work performed by specific types of ac...

This dissertation investigates the growing influence of “ecosystem services” (ES) ideas in biodiversity conservation. Once an esoteric neologism, ES refers to the conceptual framework and now-burgeoning field of research dedicated to analyzing in measurable, often monetary terms the range of valuable “services” provided by nature to people. Over th...

Mainstream environmentalism and critical scholarship are abuzz with the promise and perils (respectively) of what we call for-profit biodiversity conservation: attempts to make conserving biodiverse ecosystems profitable to large-scale investment. But to what extent has private capital been harnessed and market forces been enrolled in a thoroughly...

For decades, conservationists have remained steadfastly committed to protected areas (PAs) as the best means to conserve biodiversity. Using Collaborative Event Ethnography of the 10th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD/CoP), we examine how the PA concept remains hegemonic in conservation policy....

Over the past decade, the concept of ecosystem services has become a central guiding framework for environmental conservation. Techniques of valuation, payments to protect ecosystem services, and efforts to put a price on nature increasingly characterize environmental policy. We analyze the 10th Conference of the Parties (COP-10) to the Convention...

Current theoretical frameworks within economics have so far been unable to adequately explain why people tip. This chapter synthesizes anthropological method and theory into a symbolic interactionist approach, attempting to access, through ethnography, the negotiated meanings underlying and actuating tip payment in Vancouver restaurants. Customers...