For many, Maude Barlow, as well as her incredible body of work, are well-known and deeply appreciated. Maude co-founded the Council of Canadians, served as senior water advisor to the UN, and in 2005, along with the late Tony Clarke (former co-Director of Social Affairs for the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops) was awarded the prestigious Right Livelihood Award.
Author of over 20 books—several of which focus on protecting people, the planet, and especially water—her latest publication, Earth for Sale: The Fight to Stop the Last Plunder of the Planet, is of direct interest to ORCIE and can provide guidance for our organization’s on‑going work. Released in early May 2026, Earth for Sale issues a clarion call to avoid “the financialization of nature.”
To prepare for ORCIE’s June 25, 2026, online discussion with Maude, we encourage everyone to read Earth for Sale – but if that is not possible by then, participants may appreciate this quick review of the issues that Maude is encouraging us to understand and mobilize around.
Earth for Sale begins with a stark quotation from British environmental writer, George Monbiot: “Climate breakdown is the result of a global failure to address the power of private capital.” This theme guides the entire book.
The “financialization of nature” is nothing less than “a threat to the planet and human survival” (pg.2) encompassing measures variously described as carbon trading, water pollution trading, biodiversity credits, wildlife conservation bonds, nature bonds, plastics offsets, nature-based solutions, green growth, natural capital, water futures and ecosystem services. All are advanced – usually at least initially in good faith – to address the environmental crisis. But they threaten to be “just as dangerous to the planet as the plunderers of old” (pg. 8).
These processes of financialization replace government responsibility and regulation with the transfer of authority over natural resources to the private sector. This is most often accomplished by government deregulation or privatization. But large international institutions have been more than willing to turn nature into “an asset class,” in effect bringing nature into the market—where, of course, market experts take control.
Private money streaming into the green economy has “exploded” (pg. 39). According to the UN Environment Programme, private finance for nature surged elevenfold in four years, from US$9.4 billion in 2020 to US$102 billion in 2024 (pg. 40).
How this is done is described in Chapter 2. We know that 69 of the top 100 economies of the world by revenue are not countries but transnational corporations. As they search for “carbon neutrality” or “net‑zero” emissions claims to protect their brand while nevertheless maintaining current operations, several strategies exist for them to invest in “green bonds,” “carbon offsets,” or “ecosystem services” that often result in greenwashing or even “carbon neocolonialism” (pg. 63).
What could possibly go wrong?
In the name of protecting the environment, in many instances, community control is redirected, or lost entirely. Indigenous communities are particularly affected when states turn over ancestral territories to asset managers or sovereign wealth funds (to promote, as the Carney federal government like to say, “Projects of National Interest”). There are many examples of these schemes providing little to no results – especially not to protection of the 1 million species that now face extinction in our world (pg. 140).
Earth for Sale provides several examples of “false carbon solutions”—the same warning raised by the Catholic Churches of the Global South in their recent manifestos (see A Just Transition: The Global South Churches’ Call for Climate Justice and Participation – The Office of Religious Congregations for Integral Ecology). Our recent advocacy efforts reveal how these same “false solutions” approach take shape on the ground. Several ORCIE members participated in the UN’s Biodiversity COP15 in Montreal in December 2022, where we—alongside many other organizations—advocated for a cap on plastic production. Yet no global plastics treaty has been achieved, even as companies have turned to the use of “plastic offsets.” Likewise, ORCIE worked in coalition with half-dozen faith-based organizations during the 2025 Turn Debt into Hope campaign. While this effort did not result in debt cancellation for countries of the Global South, “debt‑for‑nature swaps” (pg. 133; 149) have become increasingly prevalent.
As Barlow notes, several major conservation organizations—including The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, and the World Resources Institute—have partnered with the same financial actors advancing these market‑based environmental “solutions”.
Conclusion
In the afterword of Earth for Sale, we read: “You put your hand out to touch the universe in a way that you can affect it, however small that may feel to you. But – and this is important – you must have faith that many others around the world are doing the same, even though you cannot know who they all are or what they are contributing. Hope requires action; action requires hope. Both require faith in a larger good.”
Maude Barlow, and her writings, provide hope, faith and compel us to action.
Questions to Deepen Our Collective Reflection
To help guide your preparation for the June 25 online book launch and discussion, here are some questions you may find helpful to consider asking the author.
- Is there a place for the private sector to play positive roles in the search for shared solutions to the environmental crisis? If so, what might good practices look like?
- What are the best practices that prevent congregational investments from being unwittingly used by asset managers in the financialization of nature?
- At the UN’s Climate COP26 in 2021, 40 countries agreed to phase out coal‑fired power. By COP28 in 2024, nearly 200 countries committed to transitioning away from fossil fuels. Building on this momentum, COP30 helped catalyze the first Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, held in Santa Marta, Colombia, where 57 countries named the root causes of the climate crisis and the political and economic systems—including trade and investment treaties—that perpetuate it. In light of these developments, where can meaningful progress still be made in international forums for change?
- If (as reported on page 186) two‑thirds of climate damage is created by just 10% of the population, what steps must be taken to “decarbonize the rich”?
- One of your favourite quotes seems to be Martin Luther King Jr.’s: “It may be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless.” What laws do we need to see passed in Canada to restrain the financialization of nature?
- In your 2022 book Still Hopeful: Lessons From a Life of Activism, you wrote that one of the lessons learned was to “go to the heart of the human story to touch hearts as well as minds if you want to get people out of their silos” (pg. 59). With that in mind, can you share some of the stories that moved you so deeply that they led you to write Earth for Sale?
