All together or going it alone? Normativities and the variety of markets for biodiversity offsets

Can local markets, designed as solutions to local problems, ever be generalised for deployment at a global scale? Globalisation processes and the spread of the tools and discourses of economics suggest they can. The familiar advice to ‘think global act local’ has become a well-rehearsed adage employed for many social and environmental problems, a prevalent mnemonic which translates a single belief: that there is a preferred ‘better way’ of doing things, of solving problems, and of achieving the best possible outcomes. The invitation to ‘think global, act local’ encompasses not only a faith in individual cosmopolitanism as a mechanism for tackling some of the world’s most intractable problems, but a belief in the existence of a single set of normative preferences, shared by all in society, and delivered through the same mechanisms everywhere. Markets, in this view, are local solutions to local problems which can – ought to, in fact – expand, unhindered, to deliver the best possible solution everywhere. One of the areas where this is most visible is in discussions about environmental protection.