Financialization and Conservation Aid: From D/development to E/environment

Earth System Governance Bath Research Centre

Claudia Horn explores how environmental aid networks have promoted the privatization of natural resources in the Brazilian Amazon.

CB 5.8

AbstractEnvironmental and climate aid from Global North to Global South countries increasingly reflects the Wall Street Consensus’s tendency to mobilize private finance. However, financialization processes in forest conservation are hardly new, with schemes like debt-for-nature swaps emerging as early as the 1980s. This article examines the major transformations in environmental aid, the relationship between the aid apparatus, and the uneven socioecological processes and transformations on the ground. I apply the distinction between ‘big D’ and ‘small d’ development in development studies, which considers how interventions, approaches and concepts of the international development apparatus (big D’) seek to improve and simultaneously deepen the dynamics of neoliberal capital accumulation and uneven development (small d’) in countries of the Global South, proposing the framework of an E/environment dialectic. The article examines thirty years of European aid for protecting the Brazilian Amazon, drawing on five years of field research in Brazil and at international climate negotiations. The article examines how environmental aid networks and interventions have promoted the privatization and financialization of natural resources, as well as public-private partnerships in conservation. The article finds that these approaches risk normalizing extractivism and resulting inequality in the region, while neglecting needs-based and climate justice issues.

Claudia Horn is a lecturer in political economy at the Department of European and International Studies at King's College London. Her research explores the international politics and local agrarian impacts of environmental aid and climate finance, particularly market-based conservation and nature-based solutions. Her book manuscript, Where Money Grows on Trees. European Carbon Politics in the Brazilian Amazon, under review at MIT Press, examines the impacts of environmental aid on land conflicts. Her book, <a href="https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.waterstones.com%2Fbook%2Frosa-luxemburgs-herbarium%2Fclaudia-horn%2F9781682196496&data=05%7C02%7Ccob46%40bath.ac.uk%7Ce6fc22a0e0a5451f69eb08de7ef31387%7C377e3d224ea1422db0ad8fcc89406b9e%7C0%7C0%7C639087779628306472%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=YxfrEmjBOt0EkRTPZQ%2Ba%2FJzC6y2sdRI2uSDFyfkfSu4%3D&reserved=0" title="https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.waterstones.com%2Fbook%2Frosa-luxemburgs-herbarium%2Fclaudia-horn%2F9781682196496&data=05%7C02%7Ccob46%40bath.ac.uk%7Ce6fc22a0e0a5451f69eb08de7ef31387%7C377e3d224ea1422db0ad8fcc89406b9e%7C0%7C0%7C639087779628306472%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=YxfrEmjBOt0EkRTPZQ%2Ba%2FJzC6y2sdRI2uSDFyfkfSu4%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">The Herbarium of Rosa Luxemburg. Radical Ecology and the Global Plantation</a>, published by OR Books in April 2026, combines the first transcription and translation of Luxemburg’s original annotated botanic notebooks with a discussion of her critical ecology.

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Financialization and Conservation Aid: From D/development to E/environment

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