Corridors of Power: Assembling US Environmental Foreign Aid
Date
2018
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Abstract
Using the US Agency for International Development’s environmental program
in Madagascar as a lens, I offer a historically grounded, relational, and multi-sited
methodology for understanding the transnational processes that constitute political forests
in the contemporary era. Neoliberal reforms conditioned the emergence of a public–
private–non-profit alliance, which promoted biodiversity conservation as a US foreign
aid priority. As these reforms weakened state capacity and liberalised economies, the
downsized Madagascar and US governments became reliant on conservation actors to
mobilise political support for their programs. This reinforced the need to maintain strategic
relationships with capital-city actors, undermining prior efforts to devolve forest
management to local communities. By isolating deforestation as a peasant problem
“over there” and by expanding protected areas to meet global biodiversity targets, the
conservation alliance created an avenue to be green that did not threaten extractive
industries or key constituents. In this manner, saving the environment via protected
areas expansion offered politicians a pathway through the inherent contradictions of
green neoliberalism.
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Keywords
foreign aid, Madagascar, method