Between Preservation and Exploitation: Transnational Advocacy Networks and Conservation in Developing Countries by Kemi Fuentes-George (review)

An increasingly salient issue in Latin America, and elsewhere in the developing world, is the proliferation of conflicts between megaprojects linked to global capital and the preferences of local communities. These conflicts may include economic, sociocultural, and/or environmental dimensions. In the wake of neoliberal shrinkage of the state’s mediating role, grassroots resistance has necessarily evolved new strategies of transnational alliances. Fuentes-George’s detailed study of four cases of environmental activism—one in Jamaica, two in Mexico, and one in Egypt—makes a valuable contribution in bridging the international organizational concepts of “transnational advocacy networks” (TANs) and “epistemic communities” and the political ecology literature on environment and development.

Drawing on constructivist frameworks and international regime theory, the author argues that the influence of environmental TANs depends on three main factors (xxxiii): knowledge consensus among the scientific community, environmental justice issue framing, and socialization among scientists, policymakers, and civil society. All the cases examined represent developing countries where economic arguments for mining or tourism weigh heavily, but this study finds that local justice appeals are more effective mobilizing tools than attempts to marshal strictly economic counterarguments.

In a case study of tourist development in Quintana Roo that involved damage to coral reefs and mangroves, Fuentes-George shows that even if local hoteliers came to see the long-term harm to their own economic interests, the project’s far-off investors and policymakers were insulated from the effects of resource overexploitation (93–94). By bowing to the neoliberal premise that the value of conservation should be measured in economic terms, environmental networks found themselves outflanked by powerful interests seeking short-term economic gain.

In the case of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, environmental organizing was undermined by splits between “local NGOs and Mexican agencies who were concerned about local welfare . . . and some scientists who had a preservationist view of biodiversity management” in which nature is to be “protected from people” (122–123). In the Jamaican case of bauxite mining versus bird habitats in the Cockpit Country region, local communities and their allies succeeded by “linking natural resources to autonomy, subsistence, and the cultural and aesthetic needs of local populations” (46). In the case of the Egyptian Rift Valley/Red Sea, where tourist development threatened migratory soaring bird corridors, the study finds that environmentalist efforts were hindered by the insulation of civil society from environmental agencies and government branches (exacerbated by the autocratic nature of the Mubarak regime), and by the failure to reframe conservation in local justice terms (163–164).

This work points to the North-South power dynamics in environmental networks, seen in the privileging of “expert” knowledge by groups such as Conservation International. Latin Americanist readers may wish for further elaboration of this theme, particularly as it relates to the rising valorization by indigenous and Afro-descendant groups of “other ways of knowing” and concepts such as “Buen Vivir,” and the growing attention to horizontalism in social movements. The constructivist framework could also be complemented by more analysis of political economy, in the face of neo-extractivist policies of left-of-center governments in Latin America in the twenty-first century that have altered the contours of struggle over local autonomy and control of land and territory.

On a minor note, the publishers’ choice to use endnote references and omit a separate bibliography, as well as the absence of a glossary for the book’s numerous abbreviations, pose unfortunate inconveniences for readers.

Overall, this book makes important linkages between the literatures on development, environmentalism, and transnational organizing. The carefully researched case studies, enriched by interview material, offer valuable on-the-ground perspectives on the dynamics of organizing in a globalized era.