“It Becomes Scientific…:” Carbon Accounting for REDD+ in Malawi

I present a case study of project planning meetings during which meticulous accounting procedures are used to convert social and ecological life into marketable carbon credits. This focus on the micro-processes of carbon credit production nuances the understanding of: (1) the politics involved in these calculations in small-scale interactions; (2) the particular mechanisms through which social and ecological life is made equivalent to carbon units, social actions, and other places across the globe; (3) how these equivalencies and quantifications co-constitute one another; and (4) how this process (re)imbues these objective numbers with a particular context that is generated from the nexus of local and cosmopolitan expertise. This process lends legitimacy to an otherwise imprecise set of accounting practices and translates social and ecological data into forms legible to transnational commodity markets and investors.