Description
Recent, high-profile debt-for-nature swaps – which exchange debt relief for nature conservation commitments – have privatized structural conditionality. This most 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 three 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. Private structural conditionality’s intrusive nature further challenges restrictive conceptions of private environmental authority. Through these swaps, private actors leverage existing indebtedness to govern as authoritative principals delegating nature conservation commitments to debtor states. They thereby circumvent ex ante multilateral deliberation in environmental and sovereign debt forums.
