Soil carbon markets for climate change mitigation? Pragmatic economists and matters of concern

Soil carbon markets are increasingly promoted as climate mitigation instruments, yet their emergence is uneven, contested, and shaped by complex socio-technical configurations. Through comparative research in Taiwan and the United Kingdom, this paper examines how these markets are actively constructed rather than pre-given, highlighting the critical but often overlooked role of mediators whom we conceptualise as pragmatic economists. Drawing on interviews, workshops, and stakeholder mapping, we show how pragmatic economists translate scientific and metrological knowledge, assemble infrastructures for measurement and certification, and align agricultural, policy, and commercial interests. Their practices extend but also complicate Callon’s concept of economists in the wild, revealing marketisation as a situated, relational, and performative process. Across both sites, we identify key matters of concern, including scientific simplification, fragmented governance, unequal power relations, and new dependencies between farmers and mediators. By foregrounding pragmatic economists, the paper advances debates on the political economy of environmental markets and underscores the need for more reflexive, ecologically attentive, and socially just approaches to governing soil carbon within wider decarbonisation strategies.