Estimations of value in “Belgrade's Amazonia”

Abstract

In this article, I analyze the arguments marshaled in favor of and against the project to build a new port on the Danube River in the wetland area popularly referred to as Belgrade's Amazonia. Building on scholarship on ascribing value to infrastructures and the environment, I use the term estimation to highlight ambiguity in the process of ongoing and open-ended valuation. Estimation denotes a rough determination of value, a process of valuation based on approximation rather than measurement or enumeration. In estimations articulated by disparate social actors in this case, various economic and socioenvironmental values sometimes clashed, sometimes blended with one another. The flexibility in the use of registers of value enabled contradictory outcomes: a coalition was formed to protect Belgrade's Amazonia despite the heterogeneous arguments against the project, and later, the project's critique was co-opted by the government. Estimations are fundamentally open to opportunistic political uses owing to their malleability, with implications for the politics of valuation with regard to infrastructures and environmental protection more broadly.