Temporal appropriation: discounting, valuing and owning the future

This article proposes the notion of temporal appropriation to account for the extension of the dynamics of appropriation in the Anthropocene. It examines the valuation technique of discounting, which derives the value of things from the flows of costs and revenues that they are likely to generate in the future, as a technique of temporal appropriation. Revisiting the argument of terra nullius that accompanied colonial appropriations of land, the article argues that the focus on the future produces an ‘open’ time prone to appropriation. The argument is developed through two cases: the origins of discounting in scientific forestry and its uses in the settlement of investor-state disputes over extractive projects. They show that temporal appropriation involves the delineation of actors capable of acting on the future, the characterization of such action as a sacrifice that requires reward, and the transformation of expectations about the future into rights on the future.