The tangled politics of conservation and resource extraction in Mozambique's green economy

Abstract

This article explores how Mozambique's green economy has been produced through the intersection of global ideas about green development, regional economic development dynamics, and local debates and political pressures around extraction and conservation. Mozambique's green economy aims to compress many of its current challenges into a seemingly attractive and compelling agenda. The green economy discourse has produced a new relationship between the conservation and extractives sector, characterized by 'green' financing and offsetting measures intended to handle (at least on paper) the contradictions between extractives-led growth and sustainable development. However, the green economy vision has also provided specific actors with ways to contest extraction. The article provides a lens onto the production of green economy policies and institutions in Mozambique, the way the policy combines neoliberal and non-neoliberal political ideas, and how green economy ideas are played out in the situated politics of debates over conservation and extraction. I consider how 'the' green economy is reworked through tracing a particular case – the recent debates over whether a large coal port should be built in the Ponta do Ouro Marine Reserve. This foregrounds the multiple and often ambiguous uses of green economy discourses to pursue different, and sometimes contradictory agendas. The article contributes new empirical information on the roll-out of green economies in a developing country context, while also seeking to expand current political ecology literature on neoliberalism and green economies more generally.Key words: Mozambique, green economy, neoliberal nature, extractives, conservation, assemblage

The Politicisation of the Atewa Forest Reserve in Ghana

“…Conflicts emerging from resource extraction and biodiversity conservation, as well as their interactions, are an ongoing concern in Political Ecology (Adams, 2017; Büscher, 2021; Büscher and Davidov, 2016; Enns et al, 2019; Huff and Orengo, 2020; Norris, 2017; Purwins, 2022; Symons, 2018). Political Ecology is a framework, to assess human–environment interactions, human decisions, and therefore impacts on the environment.…”

Producción científica sobre economía verde y sostenibilidad

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Crisis conservation and green extraction: biodiversity offsets as spaces of double exception

“…Political ecology studies have extensively considered both resource extraction and biodiversity conservation, but more rarely their interactions (Huff and Orengo 2020). Here, I seek to contribute to the growing literature addressing this gap through a discussion of the political ecologies of extraction and conservation (Adams 2017;Büscher and Davidov 2016;Enns et al 2019;Norris 2017;Purwins 2020;Symons 2018;). Building on studies from within political ecology and other disciplines (see Sonter et al 2018), I hope to help map out -both conceptually and literally -some of the main extraction-conservation relations.…”