Debt-for-Nature Swaps and the Privatisation of Structural Conditionality
27 Jan 2025
12:30 -14:00
Times are shown in local time.
Open to: All
CRASSH-Meeting Room
Alison Richard Building (Sidgwick Site)
7 West Road
CB3 9DP
United Kingdom
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Speaker: Connor O’Brien, King’s College, University of Cambridge
About this seminar
Recent, high-profile debt-for-nature swaps – which exchange debt relief for nature conservation commitments – have privatised structural conditionality. This controversial form of conditionality, whereby public creditors transform debtor state institutions and policymaking agendas, is now an instrument of private-led nature conservation promotion. Drawing on evidence from large-scale, albeit understudied, commercial swaps with Belize, Barbados, Ecuador, and Gabon, I advance 3 claims.
The swaps are private as international NGOs and investment banks have led the design, negotiation, and implementation of their nature conservation commitments. They are structural because these commitments transform domestic nature conservation governance. And they constitute conditionality due to their stringent enforcement mechanisms.
Thus, recent debt-for-nature swaps confound the scholarly consensus that only public actors deploy structural conditionality. The swaps’ intrusive nature further challenges restrictive conceptions of private environmental authority. In leveraging existing indebtedness, private actors govern as authoritative principals delegating nature conservation commitments to debtor states.
Agenda
12.30 – 13.00
Light lunch and networking
13.00 – 14.00
Talk and Q&A
Register
No registration required.
Please note, this workshop is an in-person event, but in case you are not able to attend, you can also join the workshop virtually on Zoom.