Political Economy

POLITICAL ECONOMY I. Ness et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism © Immanuel Ness and Zak Cope 2016 Conservation as a change in land use across vast swathes of forestland to agricultural and mining pur- Economic Imperialism poses. With increasing scarcity of raw materials affecting capitalist production, colonial Introduction governments adopted ‘scientific’ manage- Protected areas (PAs) have historically been ment of forests that dictated land use and viewed as a desirable (and sometimes the land management practices. In the US, while only) way to engage in conservation of for- scientific management was adopted with a ests and biodiversity. In 2010, the World view to stemming unbridled laissez faire capi- Database on Protected Areas recorded talism in the interests of enhanced efficiency nationally designated PAs of 17 million km2 (Guha and Gadgil, 1989), scientific manage- (or 12.7%) of the world’s terrestrial area, ment in the colonies maintained its efficiency excluding Antarctica (including inland objective but, without a thriving capitalist sec- waters) around the world. A higher pro- tor, directed its ire toward the ‘natives’. Thus, portion of total area of the ‘developing’ indigenous (and in British India non-indigenous world (13.3%), is classified as PAs than the but local) populations, with their seem- ‘developed’ region (11.6%), with the Latin ingly bewildering and overlapping usufruct American region offering the highest level rights and incomprehensible use of forest of ‘protection’ (20.4%) (Bertzky et al. 2012). land, were viewed as anathema to advancing Popular perception holds that PAs act as bul- planned use and were often removed through wark against over-extraction by capitalists as the threat or actual use of violence. Thus, the well as the local populace. dominant policy was to engage in fortress Since European colonialism, however, conservation and the forcible expropriation of the colonised and residents of dominated the forest commons from its inhabitants. states, on the one hand, have been fighting For instance, the British in India enforced against capitalist over-extraction (although state monopoly by nationalising forests in this is not to suggest that they have not been the late 1800s. The main objective of the incorporated into a consumer society). On Indian Forest Act, 1865 and its subsequent the other hand, they have been resisting the amendment in 1878 was to establish PAs to imposition of conservation. Forest conser- secure a steady increase in timber production vation is viewed as yet another way to con- and silvicultural improvement. Forests were trol nature and the labour of the dominated categorised according to their commercial population. While conservation is desirable value, and the degree to which local commu- from an ecological perspective, the specific nities were excluded was determined accord- form and nature of conservation require ingly. Images of severe scarcity, famine and attention because they can mask imperialist environmental annihilation were invoked by aspirations. Conservation under these cir- colonial foresters to justify the severe social cumstances would either provide a source of and political costs of expropriating the com- capital accumulation or safeguard imperial- mons. Indian teak was used in building ist interests, but lead to what David Harvey ships employed by the military in the Anglo- refers to as accumulation-by-dispossession French wars in the early 19th century (ibid.). (Harvey 2003). The incorporation of conser- Also, timber extraction for railway sleepers, vation into the imperialist project forms the required to build an extensive rail network in basis of resistance against conservation by India, exhausted large swathes of forests in regulation as well as conservation through the country. The rail network transported raw market forms. In the interests of brevity, the materials needed by capitalists and the British discussion will focus on the incorporation state especially during the two world wars. of forest conservation into imperialism. Forests were thus transformed into instruments of state power that allowed the imperi- alists to discipline the local populations, and Fortress conservation at the same time incorporate nature into the Early colonialism was characterised by eco- capitalist project and aid in war efforts. logical imperialism (Crosby 1993) and highly The actions of the imperial state were intensive extraction of valuable minerals consistent with seeking to resolve the crisis and biological matter (e.g. Clark and Foster of capitalism. The resolution was through 2009) to profit the colonisers. This effected a piece of legislation but enforcement was Conservation as Economic Imperialism 977 assumed through means of violence and instruments. DNSs usually involve an interna- conflict. However, ‘conservation’ was under- tional agency that buys the debt of a ‘develop- taken not as a result of a crisis of over- ing’ country in the secondary market. It then accumulation, but a crisis in the availability of sells the discounted debt back to the debtor raw materials to fulfil the needs of the impe- country for local currency. This money is rial state (Magdoff 2003). Colonial poli- used by a local government agency or envi- cies formed the basis of post-Independence ronmental group for use in an environmental neo-Malthusian forest conservation policies programme agreed on by the agency buying in Asia and Africa (e.g. Fairhead and Leach the debt and the debtor country. In addition, 2005). swap agreements may also include the bank holding the debt. While the Paris Club has been forced to engage in debt forgiveness in Markets and forests some cases, its interventions have proved to While post-Independence states were free be a boon for surplus capital (Harvey 2003). of direct control, imperialist interests con- In 1987, the first DNS was agreed on between tinue to influence their economic and for- Conservation International, a US conservation est policies. This influence was accentuated group, and Bolivia. In exchange for the debt, with the debt crises of the 1980s and 1990s. Bolivia agreed to expand the 334,000 acre Due to the subsequent structural adjust- Beni Biosphere Reserve by 3.7 million acres. ment programmes imposed by the IMF and By 1993, conservation groups had raised $128 World Bank, many economies (willingly or million at a cost of $47 million for 31 environ- by force) liberalised their trade and invest- mental projects primarily in Latin America ment regimes. Conservation policies were and Africa (World Bank 1993 cited in Didia not immune to the tremendous impact of 2001). neo-liberalisation consequent to the interven- DNS has been made possible by multiple tion of the international economic regime. actors – environmental NGOs, development There has been a change in economic ide- agencies, and governments of the credi- ology, and discourses of the state and local tor and debtor countries. It has also allowed communities. Despite the alleged progres- for a reorganisation of internal social rela- sive agenda of community participation and tions to accommodate the needs of interna- a ‘bottom-up’ approach, the associated focus tional capital looking for a spatio-temporal on decentralisation has opened the field for fix (Harvey 2003). For instance, the Canada/ market-based forest conservation (McCarthy Costa Rica DNS investment was signed in 2005), and allowed international develop- 1995 and the conservation was to be over- ment and conservation agencies direct access seen by the Costa Rican National Institute to their intended audience. In many coun- for Biodiversity (INBio), a Costa Rican NGO, tries, PAs are heavily financially dependent and the Canadian Worldwide Wildlife Fund on international organisations. In 2003, only (WWF-C). It led to the creation of the Arenal 3 per cent of funds for PAs in Bolivia were project over an area of 250,561 hectares, of supplied by the Bolivian state (La Prensa 2005 which 116,690 hectares were declared as cited in Boillat, et al. 2008). Furthermore, in PA; local inhabitants from 108 communities many countries PAs are administered directly were expelled (Isla 2001). Conservation of by international conservation NGOs (Boillat trees on this land is sold as pollution credits et al. 2008). This has not diminished the role to countries including Canada. Local inhab- of the state, which, with its monopoly on itants, previously engaged in subsistence legalised violence and significant control on production, are employed by INBio under instruments of ideology, facilitates accumula- the direction of the World Bank and are ‘ser- tion by dispossession. vice providers’. The employed inhabitants produce inventories of local species which Debt-for-nature swaps are used in bioprospecting for new pharma- The debt crises led to significant interven- ceutical and agricultural products (ibid.). tion by the Paris Club, a group of 19 credi- The Arenal project also promotes micro- tor countries formed to resolve and manage enterprises aimed at women’s participa- international debt. The Paris Club includes tion in small-scale marketing of biodiversity debt swaps, including debt-for-nature swaps financed by international funds at an interest (DNSs), in its arsenal of debt management rate of 20–30 per cent (ibid.). 978 Conservation as Economic Imperialism As part of the Paris Club, the US has also of the indigenous people who had lived on the played a significant role. The US Congress land for centuries. The DNS deal collapsed authorised three channels through which in 1990 after negotiations between the indig- DNS was put into practice: (a) in 1989, enous Chicame people and the Bolivian gov- the United States Agency for International ernment (Hobbs 2012). It was later revealed Development (USAID; a federal government that government agencies involved in the agency that disburses and administers for- negotiation received significant funding from eign aid, and which reportedly has close ties concessionaire logging companies that would to the CIA) was permitted to purchase com- have potentially been affected by the Reserve mercial debt of foreign countries as part of a (ibid).

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