Between Bolivar and Bureaucracy: The Mesoamerican Biological Corridor

Abstract

"This article explores how the different elements of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor (MBC) may not be so naturally united as implied by this slogan. I trace the history and evolution of this conservation corridor from its roots in the Central American environment movement to its transformation by the World Bank into a vague bureaucratic framework. The shift to embrace green neoliberalism, in turn, has served to mask threats to biodiversity from three other more powerful economic corridors being simultaneously constructed in the Mesoamerican region, namely: (1) the Puebla to Panama Plan, (2) Mundo Maya, and (3) the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). I conclude by describing some lost opportunities for indigenous and bottom-up environmental initiatives to suggest what a Bolivarian alternative might have been before the MBC became bureaucratised by transnational conservation interests."