Helsus Brown Bag lunch talk, by Alizée Ville, April 23rd 2026

On Thursday April 23rd, 2026, Alizée Ville will be giving a talk at the Helsus Brown Bag lunch , based on a her new published article.

Ville, A., Wong, G. Y., Ongolo, S., & Brockhaus, M. (2026). From extraction to intraction: scientific knowledge and commercial practices in the forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Geoforum, 173, 104640.

Alizée Ville: From Extraction to Intraction: the Political Economy of Locking Nature In

The forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are increasingly hailed as a “solution” to climate change, positioned within global climate governance as sites of carbon sequestration, climate finance and planetary mitigation. This framing extends a longer history in which scientific knowledge has rendered these forests legible as resources for accumulation: throughout the 20^th century, forestry science promoted Congo’s forests as commercial timber reserves, facilitating an export-oriented industry largely shaped by foreign capital and colonial epistemologies. As avoided-deforestation schemes and carbon markets are attracting attention from researchers and investors alike, interrogating how knowledge practices have historically mediated forest commodification becomes essential for understanding the political economies underpinning contemporary climate interventions.

Informed by theories of Extractivism, we introduce the concept of intraction – the immobilization of natural resources for profit – to trace continuities between colonial logging regimes and present-day carbon offset initiatives. Drawing from archival records (n=249), interviews (n=15), and scientific publications (n=51), we examine whose knowledge shapes forest governance, who benefits, and for what purposes.

Our findings reveal that forestry science has consistently operated as an infrastructure of valuation, first enabling timber extraction and now facilitating carbon commodification. Timber extraction removed matter from place, while carbon markets now lock them in situ; yet, both forms of governance sustain distal societies while silencing local actors – particularly forest-dependent communities. The concept of intraction thus illuminates how contemporary climate governance reproduces historical power asymmetries, demonstrating that the shift from timber to carbon marks not a rupture, but a reconfiguration of extractive relations.

Presenter:  is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Forest Sciences, at the University of Helsinki. She is the recipient of a postdoctoral grant from the Maj and Tor Nessling Foundation for the project “Calling Trees by Their Name: Enhancing Biodiversity Literacy in Global Timber Trade.” Her research focuses on strengthening understanding of biodiversity within global supply chains, from the Forests of Finland to the Congo Basin. She is a member of the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS) and the Helsinki Inequality Initiative (INEQ). Her doctoral research examined the intersection of epistemological and economic inequalities within the forest sector, with particular attention to timber and carbon markets in Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Previously, she worked at the Stockholm Resilience Center, where her research explored the intersections of gender and forest policy in Sweden.

Discussant: Dr , scholar and journalist.