Risk capital: Urban political ecology and entanglements of financial and environmental risk in Washington, D.C.
Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: In endeavouring to deal with a longstanding problem of contamination of waterways in Washington, D.C. due to combined sewer overflows, the responsible utility, DC Water, has recently embarked on a two-fold, simultaneous ‘greening’ – firstly of the physical infrastructures being installed to address the overflow problem, and secondly of the financing of this capital investment. This article examines DC Water’s turn to green infrastructure and green bonds in order to consider the question of how environmental and financial processes in general – and environmental and financial risks in particular – co-determine not just one another but the transformation of contemporary urban socioecological landscapes more broadly. In the process, it aims to inject a greater sensibility both to finance and to ‘green capitalism’ into urban political ecology. Through a critical consideration of the interlocking temporal, spatial and monetary dimensions of DC Water’s two-fold greening project, the article shows that this project has served significantly to augment levels of environmental and financial risk, entangling them in significant new ways.
Author: Brett Christophers
Institution: Uppsala University
Language: English
Subfield: Finance
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2802873134