"Conservation Booms" with Agricultural Growth?: Sustainability and Shifting Environmental Governance in Latin America, 1985-2008 (Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia)

Conservation-development interactions intensified as a consequence of environmental and land-use changes in Latin America during the 1985-2008 period. This study examines predominant changes in five countries (Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, Peru, and Bolivia). Multifold increase of protected areas for environmental conservation occurred together with agricultural growth and intensification. Conservation and agricultural trends were fraught with conflicts and contradictions, yet they also showed partial compatibility in the search for sustainability. Conservation, indigenous, and social movement organizations operating at multiple scales (local, national, and international) contributed to distinctly configured national conservation "booms" and sustainability discourses in the five countries. Neoliberal governments and global organizations sanctioned protected-area conservation via increased state institutions, national and subnational administrative mechanisms, widely publicized sustainability rationales, expanded territorial management and a property rights focus, spatial devolution, and official multiculturalism—the 1990s were a heyday of these activities. Subsequently Latin American conservation and sustainability efforts have evolved both as a global center of governance through payment for environmental services and under increased and diverse social agendas.