A good drainage economy: the elemental politics of Dutch carbon farming

For centuries, peatlands in the Netherlands have been valued by draining water, shaping a drainage economy. Through drainage, a specific carbon relation, that of carbon-reacting-with-oxygen, enabled turf production and dairy farming. Yet, this carbon relation also resulted in peat oxidation, causing carbon dioxide emissions. In this article, we focus on carbon and trace how its relations become the object of intervention in a carbon market arrangement called Currency for Peat. Drawing upon scientific reports, policy documents, and conversations with scientists, NGO representatives, and farmers, we examine four key practices – framing, pacifying, farming, and commodifying carbon – through which an alternative valuation of peatlands emerges. We show how carbon, saturated with water, becomes an elemental force in shaping a ‘good drainage economy’ that contributes to climate change mitigation, an increase in biodiversity, and the land stewardship of dairy farmers. Analytically, we focus on the ‘elemental’ as a strategy for thinking about the relations in which carbon engages and which it enables while undergoing differential valuations. Such analytical attention to elemental manifestations sheds light on versions of nature made (im)possible through marketisation.