Law, markets and the valuation of nature: legal infrastructures, financial instruments, and the contest over ecological value
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This article critically examines the legal frameworks underpinning the financialisation of nature, interrogating how legal instruments codify ecological entities as assets, risks, and services. It demonstrates that valuation regimes, exemplified by Natural Asset Companies (NACs), biodiversity credits, green bonds, and disclosure frameworks like the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), do not neutrally protect ecosystems but actively reshape them into investable, commodified units. Such frameworks marginalise alternative Indigenous and relational ontologies, which organise ecological relationships through reciprocity, responsibility, and obligation rather than commodification. Drawing on examples from Indigenous legal orders, the article argues that procedural reforms and superficial inclusivity are insufficient to address fundamental epistemic conflicts. Instead, it calls for a radical reimagining of environmental law towards plural legal ontologies and relational forms of governance, concluding that truly sustainable futures depend upon contesting the ontological assumptions that define whose values count, whose nature is protected, and whose laws prevail.
Source: Transnational Legal Theory
Author: André Nunes Chaib
Institution: Maastricht University
Language: English
Topic: Environmental law and policy
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7221040983