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Enclosure and Micro-enterprise as Sustainable Development: The Case of the Canada/Costa Rica debt-for-nature investment

2001; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 22; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/02255189.2001.9669949

2158-9100

Ana Isla,

Climate Change Policy and Economics

ABSTRACT This study demonstrates that debt-for-nature investment conforms to the neoclassical model of economic development which itself underlies the current environmental, social, and cultural crisis. The NGOs funded under the debt-for-nature swap operationalize the ostensible commitment of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the corporate environmental NGOs to pursue “sustainable development” and “gender equity” by means of the capitalist market. A small fraction of Costa Rica's debt is relieved at the cost of criminalizing citizens excluded from “the commons,” newly legislated as parks, and via incorporating rural women into global market circuits which impoverish and disempower them. In documenting these practices and their consequences for local populations, this research challenges the claim that debt-for-nature investment reduces poverty and ecological destruction and, instead, uncovers the inadequacy of market-based “solutions” which in practice worsen the problems they claim to solve.