Hijacking the Narrative: The First World Forum on Natural Capital, #natcap13, and Radical Dissent

The first World Forum on Natural Capital (WFNC) was an important moment in the production of “valued” nature. It brought together bankers, CEOs, and business elites to promote financialized environmental accounting as a solution to ecosystem degradation. Anti-capitalist activists, however, opposed the further intrusion of economic logic to environmental decision-making and resisted its progression. While WFNC organizers were able to advance the concept of “natural capital” through traditional (print and web 1.0) media, they struggled to control the social media narrative. Digital activists were able to challenge the official narrative on Twitter and compel organizers to address the associated social and environmental justice concerns. As such, social media produced the conditions for both abstracting nature into value-bearing commodities and, simultaneously, resisting such abstraction. Drawing on theories of counterpublic organization, public spheres of deliberation, and agonistic confrontation, this paper explores the discursive co-production of nature in a new digitally mediated world.