Publications

Examining how states assert control amid environmental crisis

ECOWAS and Inverted Sacrifice Zones

How can ECOWAS leverage mangrove ecosystems to build regional ecological infrastructure and foster economic integration? Anchored in the West African coast where 2 million hectares of mangroves store 854 million metric tons of carbon it critiques the region’s extractive neofunctionalism. Through a conceptual and theoretical intervention using theoretical synthesis, the paper introduces the Inverted Sacrifice Zone (ISZ) to theorise carbon territorialisation and propose nature-as-asset governance. Findings show that blue carbon markets and mangrove conservation can yield up to $460 per hectare, reinforcing state legitimacy and regional cohesion. Thus, a regional ISZ managed by ECOWAS could bring ‘grey zones’ under ecological control, functioning as an economic/security apparatus. The paper recommends a shift from commodity dependency to a non-extractive neofunctionalism rooted in reciprocal environmental exchange, calling for ecologically attuned regional strategies to map, restore, and govern mangroves as unified infrastructure – anchoring regional sovereignty in stewardship rather than exploitation.

Inverted Sacrifice Zones

How is traditional sacrifice inverted and institutionalized to sustain a capitalist system nearing its ecological limits? The paper develops the concept of the Inverted Sacrifice Zone (ISZ): a spatial formation reconciling ecological preservation with mechanisms of exclusion and labor discipline. Engaging literatures on green grabbing, accumulation by conservation, and capitalist state sovereignty, the ISZ reframes state-led conservation not as a rupture from capital but as a non-extractive deepening of its spatial and ideological logics. Focusing on the Brazilian state of Acre, the paper analyzes how the SISA initiative transforms forested landscapes into carbon assets and rural communities into stewards of commodified nature. The Acre illustrates, how ISZs allow states to acknowledge ecological limits while managing them to sustain accumulation. These zones mark neither a retreat of the capitalist state nor its ecological redemption, but its consolidation through the ethical and material infrastructures of preservation. Recognizing these dynamics is crucial to cultivating ecologies and politics that confront, rather than reproduce, state-led capitalism.