A Basic Income for Nature and Climate? Reimagining Conservation and Climate Futures at the AAG, 2025

This year, the American Association of Geographers (AAG) held their annual conference in Detroit around the theme “Making Spaces of Possibility,” encouraging participants to reflect on how geographers can contribute to making spaces of possibility, spaces that allow for imagining and enacting more equitable worlds, that are tuned into local and global processes, and respect and validate the experiences of diverse residents, advocates, and activists? As stated on the conference website, “To make spaces of possibility is to leverage geographic insight, knowledge, and tools to counter the historical legacies of racial exclusion and (settler) colonialism, to address current challenges to democracy and the environment, and to work toward climate justice.” 

Dahdaleh Research Fellow James Stinson was invited to present a co-authored paper with Lee Mcloughlin (Florida International University) and Filiberto Penados (Galen University, Belize) titled “Could a Basic Income for Nature and Climate support Indigenous Maya efforts to promote social and ecological wellbeing in southern Belize?” Their paper was part of a panel centred on the theme “Reimagining the Spaces of Conservation 1: Past, Present, and Future,” organized by Libby Lunstrum (Boise State University) and Rod Neuman (Florida International University). The panel aimed to highlight the work of political ecologists and others that are critically investigating developments on the ground in and around national parks and other protected areas pointing toward more just and inclusive engagements between conservation institutions and Indigenous peoples and local communities. The panel divided presentations into a series of three sessions on the topics: 1) Indigenous Activism; 2) Biologists, Wildlife and Indigenous Knowledge; and 3) Restoration. Collectively, this series of sessions highlighted and stimulated productive discussions on many encouraging trends in conservation, from Maasai efforts to promote #landback and restorative justice in Tanzania, to Indigenous led conservation across Canada and the U.S.A, and contested forms of Indigenous environmental activism and care in Columbia.

Presenting as part of the first session on “Indigenous Activism”, James’ presentation critically examined whether a new funding mechanism, a basic income for nature and climate (BINC) could promote planetary health and wellbeing in southern Belize. Located in the heart of the Mesoamerican biodiversity hotspot, Belize has placed more than 40% of its territory under protected status and is often viewed as a leading success story in global conservation. The southernmost district, Toledo, exemplifies this with 75% remaining forest cover and 50% of its territory under protection. However, this narrative overlooks the socio-economic cost to communities living within and around these biodiverse spaces. Indigenous Mopan and Q’eqchi’ Maya communities that comprise the majority of the district’s population, remain the poorest of the poor, with poverty indicators consistently below the mean for every country in Latin America and the Caribbean other than Haiti. 80% of people in Toledo are cash poor, with nearly 40% living below the poverty line. Further, the district ranks highest in multidimensional poverty (measuring health, education, employment, and living standards), at 60.3% (almost double the national rate of 35.7%). Moreover, amidst attempts to reconcile outstanding biodiversity values with socio-economic development, Maya communities of Toledo have been subjects of a long history of failed and socially and ecologically disruptive market-based development interventions. Yet, far from passive observers, Maya communities have engaged in decades of struggle to win communal customary tenure of their lands, achieving legal recognition at the regional appellate Caribbean Court of Justice in 2015. Central to this struggle Maya communities have worked to build a vision for the future centred around the principle of se’ komonil (togetherness, community, and dignity).

Given this social and ecological context in southern Belize, the paper questioned the potential of a Basic Income for Nature and Climate (BINC) to promote planetary health and wellbeing in region. BINC is an emerging concept for a new funding mechanism to address the social and environmental challenges associated with biodiversity conservation and climate change. Developed and advanced by conservation researchers and practitioners affiliated with the Freiburg Institute for Basic Income Studies (FRIBIS), BINC responds to growing recognition that market-based instruments, like Payment for Ecosystem Services and carbon markets, have largely failed to either prevent biodiversity loss or alleviate poverty. Emerging from this, proposals for a BINC that draw inspiration from the concept of universal basic income (UBI) have been gathering attention and support (de Lange et al., 2023; Fletcher & Büscher, 2020). BINC is envisioned as a non-market mechanism to support sustainable livelihoods and wellbeing in conservation and climate critical areas. Proponents of BINC claim that unconditional cash payments could help people improve their lives and wellbeing in self-determined ways, while supporting conservation by alleviating poverty traps that often force people to overexploit natural resources.

Whilst these claims are attractive, James, Lee, and Filiberto highlighted some of the potential risks of such an intervention, including 1) whether unconditional cash payments might strengthen rather than weaken creeping neoliberal individualism that is in fact one of main drivers of environmental degradation; and 2) whether the emphasis on individual income might undermine reciprocal relationships and collective institutions that Maya communities have identified as central to their cultural identity and relationships with nature. They concluded by asserting that a potential BINC intervention in southern Belize must be thoughtfully and ethically co-developed with Indigenous Maya communities to ensure that it is aligned with their values, priorities, and relations with the land.

Works Cited:

de Lange, E., Sze, J.S., Allan, J., Atkinson, S., Booth, H., Fletcher, R., Khanyari, M. and Saif, O. (2023). A global conservation basic income to safeguard biodiversity. Nature Sustainability, 6(8): 1016-1023.

Fletcher, R., & Büscher, B. (2020). Conservation basic income: A non-market mechanism to support convivial conservation. Biological Conservation, 244, 108520.

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