No, air, don’t sell yourself …

GRAIN

I don’t know who you are, but one thing do I ask of you, don’t sell yourself. No, Air, Don’t sell yourself, Don’t let them channel you,

Don’t let them run you through tubes, Don’t let them box you Nor compress you, Don’t let them make you into pills, Don’t let them bottle you, Take care! ...

Pablo Neruda, “Ode to the Air”

Some 50 years ago, the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, wrote these lines in his “Ode to the Air”.

At that time, everyone took these ideas as metaphor: another example of the poet’s imagination and genius. Today, in 2005, those fears imagined by Neruda have a real foundation that grows daily. The air surrounds us, allows us to breathe, messes our hair and flows freely. But along with water, the weather, the oceans and the rain, the air has become viewed as an “environmental service”, another class of merchandise available for market transactions and for which all of us must pay, like it or not.

The concept of “environmental services” has become popular over the last decade. Originally coined by economists the term now appears frequently in documents produced by governments, the World Bank and other international bodies, universities and business associations. It has also been adopted in the vocabularies of development agencies, NGOs and social organisations. Terminology and legal definitions surrounding the concepts of paying for environmental services and charging for them are still in a formative process (see box for one definition). Nevertheless, environmental services have crept insidiously into our collective consciousness without setting off the alarm bells they should have done, and have largely been accepted as obvious and unquestionable.