This dissertation focuses on the creation of carbon commodities and reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+) carbon projects in Malawi. REDD+ projects are carbon offset project in which carbon credits can be generated from halting or slowing the rate of tree cutting and engaging in activities that promote conservation of plants, soils, and trees that remove carbon from the atmosphere. How do the different actors involved in the creation of these carbon projects--villagers, community organizers, government officials, aid workers, representatives from donor organizations, investors, carbon developers, and NGO personnel--transform the chemical element carbon that is present in the trees, plants, and soils of forests in Malawi into a commodity that can be bought and sold internationally on the voluntary market? Based on 12 months of field research in 2009 and 2011-12, this dissertation describes the micro-processes of creating carbon commodities and carbon projects and provides a thick description of how conservation and human relationships are mediated by market capitalism. The actions of people engaged in production are the visible, material practices through which markets are made to work in the world. The work done by different actors as they measure carbon stocks, craft programs to promote forest conservation, generate models to estimate emissions reductions, draft national and international policies regulating carbon sales, and explain the project to rural communities are all actions which bring carbon commodities--and carbon markets--into being. I describe the technical rationality employed by experts as they produce carbon credits as objects which can be enumerated, mapped, and managed, as well as the disjunctures which occur as they attempt to explain the concept of "selling air" to rural Malawians and other non-experts. I explore the intersection of conservation, community forest access, and the protection of carbon stocks within the protected areas. I also consider the role of public aid money in subsidizing the creation of REDD+ projects, as well as the importance of investor preference in shaping carbon projects and determining their ultimate success or failure. Throughout, I attend to the compromises and contingencies which shape REDD+ projects, as well as how the process of creating carbon commodities is shaped by and (re)produces particular systems of organization and relations of power. An ethnography of carbon commodity production is one way to engage with larger questions about the expansion of markets into conservation. Scholars studying market-based conservation have had difficulty establishing a clear link between theoretical discussions of capitalist expansion with case studies detailing the impacts of these projects in specific places and on certain populations. My research offers a thick description of carbon commodity production as one way to understand how these markets are manufactured and what impacts this will have on social relations, environmental management, and social and environmental justice.
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