Policy Reports & Briefs
Dempsey, J., L Steichen, and A. Irvine-Broque. (2025). Transformative biodiversity policy at a stalemate: consensus on “age old” problems, coherent pathway forward needed. The Centre for Climate Justice, Climate and Community Institute, and Third World Network https://climatejustice.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/2025/02/Transformative-biodiversity-policy-at-a-stalemate-Consensus-on-age-old-problems-coherent-pathway-forward-needed-1-1.pdf
Dempsey, J., Irvine-Broque, A., Gaster, T., Steichen, L., Bigger, P., Duque, A.C., Linett, A., Porto Ferreira, G., & Kaechele, N. (2024). Exporting extinction: How the international financial system constrains biodiverse futures. The Centre for Climate Justice, Climate and Community Project, and Third World Network. Available at: https://bit.ly/extinction-report. Read in English, Spanish and French.
- Submission to incoming UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, Astrid Puentes (2024). Download here.
Dempsey, J., A. Irvine-Broque, J. Christensen, P. Bigger. (2024). Thin and shallow: Financial instruments for biodiversity conservation and their outlook. Third World Network: Kuala Lumpur. Available at https://www.twn.my/title2/books/Thin%20and%20Shallow.htm
Dempsey, J., & Biodiversity Capital Research Collective. (2024). Briefing note for UN biodiversity conference 2024 — Financial resources, debt and tax. Climate and Community Institute. https://climateandcommunity.org/research/cop16briefing/
Bigger, P. (2023). Blended finance. Climate and Community Institute Memorandum. https://climateandcommunity.org/research/blended-finance/
Bigger, P. (2023). Debt for environment swaps. Climate and Community Institute Memorandum. https://climateandcommunity.org/research/debt-for-environment-swaps/
Gaster, T., Dempsey, J., Irvine-Broque, A. & Bigger, P.. (2022). The CBD must address debt as a driver of biodiversity loss. (Briefing Paper). Third World Network. Available at: https://www.twn.my/title2/biotk/2022/btk221107.htm
Nelson, S., P. Bigger, M. Elias, and A. Schuldt. (2022) High Roads to Resilience: building equitable forest restoration economies in California and beyond. Climate and Community Project. Available at http://www.climateandcommunity.org/high-roads-to-resilience.
Dempsey, J. & Irvine-Broque, A. (2022). Addressing debt is critical to halting biodiversity loss. (Briefing Paper). Third World Network. Available at: https://twn.my/title2/biotk/2022/btk220305.htm
Dempsey, J., Irvine-Broque, A., Christensen, J. & Bigger, P. (2021). Thin and Shallow: Financial instruments for biodiversity conservation and their outlook. Working paper prepared for the NGFS + INSPIRE joint study group on Biodiversity and Financial Stability.
Christiansen, J. & Lim LC. (2021). Unheeded risks in the turn towards blended biodiversity finance. Third World Network. Available at: https://twn.my/title2/briefing_papers/twn/Blended%20finance%20TWNBP%20Aug%202021%20JC&LLC.pdf
Biodiversity Capital Research Collective. (2021). Beyond the Gap: Placing Biodiversity Finance in the Global Economy. Third World Network. Available at: https://twn.my/title2/books/Beyond%20the%20Gap/BeyondTheGap%20complete%20report.pdf
Dempsey, J., Nelson, S., Christiansen, J., Irvine-Broque, A., Rojas-Marchini, F., Bigger, P., DiSilvestro, A., Schuldt, A., & Shapiro-Garza, E. (2021). Resource mobilization and the Convention on Biological Diversity: Moving beyond the gap. The Third World Network. See versions in different languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Spanish.
Bigger, P. et al. 2019. Submission to the Secretariat to the Convention on Biological Diversity on resource mobilization RM_Submission.
Published papers and books
Christiansen, J. A. Irvine-Broque, J. Dempsey. (2025). A capital change for biodiversity? Examining current challenges for the biodiversity capital market. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 75: 101544
Johnson, L., Mikulewicz, M., Bigger, P., Chakraborty, R., Cunniff, A., Griffin, P. J., Guermond, V., Lambrou, N., Mills‑Novoa, M., Neimark, B., Nelson, S., Rampini, C., Sherpa, P. Y., & Simon, G. (2023). The invisible labor of climate change adaptation. Global Environmental Change, 83, 102769. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2023.102769
D’Orazio, P., Scholtens, B., de Mariz, F., González‑Ruiz, J. D., Ullah, S., Adegbite, O., Thompson, B. S., Liu, F. H. M., Harris, J. L., Bigger, P., Pill, M., Hammersley, G., & Berg, M. (2023). Catalyzing the transformation to sustainable finance. One Earth, 6(10), 1271‑1276. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2023.09.011
Irvine-Broque, A. & Dempsey, J. (2023). Risky Business: Protecting Nature, Protecting Wealth? Conservation Letters, 16(4). https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12969
Webber, S., Nelson, S., Millington, N., Bryant, G., & Bigger, P. (2022). Financing reparative climate infrastructures: Capital switching, repair, and decommodification. Antipode, 54(3), 934–958. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12806
Dempsey, J., Irvine-Broque, A., Bigger, P., Christiansen, J., Muchhala, B., Nelson, S., Rojas-Marchini, F., Shapiro-Garza, E., Schuldt, A. & DiSilvestro, A. (2021). Biodiversity targets will not be met without debt and tax justice. Nat Ecol Evol (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01619-5. Also available at: https://rdcu.be/cE6PN.
Christiansen, J. (2021). Fixing fictions through blended finance: The entrepreneurial ensemble and risk interpretation in the Blue Economy. Geoforum, 120, 93–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.01.013
Irvine-Broque, A., DiSilvestro, A. & Dempsey, J. (2021). The road less travelled: Finance for diverse ecological futures. In: Reparative accumulation? Financial risk and investment across socio-environmental crises (Eds. Cohen, D., Nelson, S., & Rosenman, E). Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space. July 2021. doi:10.1177/25148486211030432
Nelson, S. H., & Bigger, P. (2021). Infrastructural nature. Progress in Human Geography, 030913252199391. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132521993916
Christiansen, J. (2021). Fixing fictions through blended finance: The entrepreneurial ensemble and risk interpretation in the Blue Economy. Geoforum, 120, 93–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.01.013
Nelson S., L. Bremer, K. Meza-Prado and K. Brauman. (2020) The Political Life of Natural Infrastructure: Water Funds and Alternative Histories of Payments for Ecosystem Services in Valle del Cauca, Colombia. Development and Change 51(1):26-50
Dempsey, J., Martin, T. G., & Sumaila, U. R. (2020). Subsidizing extinction? Conservation Letters, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12705
Dempsey, J., & Bigger, P. (2019). Intimate Mediations of For-Profit Conservation Finance: Waste, Improvement, and Accumulation. Antipode, 51(2), 517–538. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12503
Bigger, P. and J. Dempsey. (2018). Neoliberal Natures: a review of the field. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space.
Dempsey, J. (2017). The financialization of nature conservation? In Money and finance after the crisis, Wiley-Blackwell (London), eds. B. Christophers, A. Leyshon and G. Mann. Available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781119051374.ch8/summary
Dempsey, J. and D.C. Suarez. (2016). Arrested development? The promises and paradoxes of “selling nature to save it”. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 106: 653–671. http://doi:10.1080/24694452.2016.1140018
Dempsey, J. (2016). Enterprising nature: economics, markets and finance in global biodiversity politics. Wiley-Blackwell (London).
Edited collections
Bigger, P. and J. Dempsey (eds). (2018). Failures and accomplishments of neoliberal natures: an edited forum. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space (An edited collection of eight short essays).
Presentations (selected)
Dempsey, J. and A . Irvine-Broque. How the International Finance Architecture matters to biodiversity. Invited presentation to the 2nd Global Convening on Just Transition for Land, Forests and People, Madrid. June 30 2025.
Dempsey, J. and A. Irvine-Broque. Tale of two risks. Colloquium lecture to Department of Environmental Studies, Ashoka University, India. March 4 2025.
Dempsey, J. and A. Irvine-Broque. What holds extractivism in place? Invited presentation to side event at COP 16. October 23 2024.
Dempsey, J. and A. Irvine-Broque. Exporting Extinction. Invited presentation to Global Convening on Just Transition for Land, Forests and People. October 17 2024.
Dempsey, J. Beyond the gap: from Wall Street conservation to nature-based reparations. Keynote to Neoliberal Natures Symposium. Princeton University. December 8 2023.
Irvine-Broque, A. and Dempsey, J. Risky Business: Protecting Nature, Protecting Wealth?American Association of Geographers Annual Conference. Sustainability Capitalism III: Finance and Investment. Denver, CO, March 2023.
Bigger, P. and Irvine-Broque, A. Debt, biodiversity and climate crises: addressing fiscal barriers on the path to transformative change. Panel at the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. Montreal, QC, December 2022.
Bigger, P. and Irvine-Broque, A. Fiscal justice for the ecological crisis beyond the gap. Presentation for African People’s Counter COP. Money Matters: finance and economics of climate and biodiversity crisis. Webinar, October, 2022.
Irvine-Broque, A. and Dempsey, J. Risky Business: Protecting Nature, Protecting Wealth?North American Congress for Conservation Biology. Examining private sector engagement in biodiversity conservation. Reno, NV, July 2022.
Dempsey, J. and Irvine-Broque, A. Presentation for Virtual Workshop: Financialisation of Nature, Green Investment and Biodiversity Conservation; Transformative Change or Veneer for the Status Quo? Department of Asian and North African Studies, Ca’ Foscari University Venice, April 2022.
Irvine-Broque, A. A Political Ecology of Financial Supervision? Evaluating Measurements of Biodiversity Risk to the Financial Sector. Dimensions of Political Ecology Conference. Political Ecologies of Finance. Virtual, March 2022.
Irvine-Broque, A. The Mangrove Fix: the Making of a Nature-Based Solution.” American Association of Geographers Annual Conference. “Challenging Nature-Based Solutions as a Panacea for Environmental Change. Virtual, March 2022.
Dempsey, J. Biodiversity and Financial Stability: invited panelist. Global Research Alliance for Sustainable Finance 4th Annual Conference. Beijing. Sept 22, 2021.
Bigger, P. and S. Nelson. 2019. Fighting fire with finance? Remaking nature as infrastructure in California’s forests. Keynote for Infrastructures of Climate Crisis workshop, University of Manchester. Manchester, UK, May 2019.
Dempsey, J. 2018. Why conservation finance needs critical research. Invited presentation to workshop Conservation Finance: Promise and perils. Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, UBC, Vancouver, BC, March 2018.
Bigger, P. and J. Dempsey. 2017. Extra-terrestrial finance? Land and the “hustle” to make for-profit conservation assets. Invited presentation to workshop Finance as a response to global environmental crises? at the University of Hamburg, Germany, November 2017.
Dempsey, J. 2017. Rendering biodiversity economic: at Stanford and at the Beijer Institute. Invited presentation to workshop Capitalizing nature: forms and strategies for economizing the environment, 19th to 21st century Convened by École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHSS) and École Normale Supérieure (ENS), Paris, June 2017.
Dempsey, J and P. Bigger. 2017. Making biodiversity an asset class. Invited colloquium to Department of Geography, University of Colorado, Boulder, May 2017.
Dempsey, J. and P. Bigger. 2017. Making biodiversity an asset class. Session at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, 2017.
Dempsey. 2017. Enterprising nature. Invited presentation to Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, May 2017.
Popular media
Irvine-Broque, A. and J. Dempsey. 2023. Towards serious biodiversity policy: foreign debt in the long duree of extrativism. https://metapolis.net/project/towards-serious-biodiversity-policy-foreign-debt-in-the-long-duree-of-extractivism/
Collard, R & J Dempsey. 2022. ‘Extractivism’ is destroying nature: to tackle it Cop15 must go beyond simple targets. The Guardian, 8 December: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/08/extractivism-is-destroying-nature-to-tackle-it-cop15-must-go-beyond-simple-targets
Dempsey, J. 2021. Conservation and capital in Kenya. The Architectural Review. 9 Feb 2022. Available https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/conservation-and-capital-in-kenya
Dempsey, J. 2018. The tragedy of liberal environmentalism (edited reprint). Harvard Design Magazine. Spring 2018.
Dempsey, J. 2017. The tragedy of liberal environmentalism. Canadian Dimension Spring 2017 edition. Available at https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/the-tragedy-of-liberal-environmentalism
Dempsey, J. 2016. Director, scriptwriter of ENTERPRISING NATURE, a short animated film by The Bioeconomies Media Project: www.bioeconomies.org/enterprising-nature