Political Economy of Neoliberal Climate Governance: Environmental Conservation and Agrarian Struggle in Gilgit Baltistan, Pakistan

The paper contributes to the ongoing debates on capitalist climate governance by drawing from a case study of Gilgit Baltistan (GB), Pakistan. The article underscores what has been largely ignored by economists, namely, that agroecological farming practices of small peasants offer useful insights for sustainable climate governance because they are rooted in a holistic conceptualization of nature that transcends the ontological separation between human and nonhuman nature. Further, it illustrates that a meaningful analysis of climate governance in the Global South should be grounded in the historical and localized socio-institutional milieu. As the power balance between capitalists and the local community has steadily shifted against the latter, climate governance has degenerated into green grabbing and carbon colonialism. This climate governance regime has undermined both the agroecological livelihoods of small peasant communities and environmental sustainability in GB. JEL Classification: B510, B520, Q56, Q57