A major contribution to understand how the environmental crisis is viewed globally and responded to by policy This book highlights the manner in which key aspects in policy discourse--commodity, pricing, ownership, and regulation--have borrowed economic and trade principles to address the environmental crisis and to what effect. The book addresses a fundamental issue in environment: if nature is no longer available as a limitless resource, how has the policy discourse on the environmental crisis come to view it, value it, and live with it? Analysing policy instruments across sectors that respond to local ecological conflicts and challenges, the book offers a conceptual understanding of how natural elements are transformed into mobile, tradable commodities through the use of market-based instruments.