Summary

This book shows the close relationship between nature policies and the nature of the State, applied to the case of Mozambique. The study of public policies on nature over the long term highlights the (re)deployment of a State with limited capacities throughout the country, but which has nevertheless been made possible by the emergence of new builders: an administrative elite in the service of the State, paid by international donors, who steer public policies that are now transnational.
In a context of "neither war nor peace", Mozambique is under an aid regime: international organisations, NGOs and philanthropic foundations "do with" or "do in place of" the State. Whether it's a question of controlling the national territory or drawing up regulations, the boundaries of the State and its sovereignty are blurred.

How do you find the State, when the steering of public action seems to elude it in so many respects? This is a live issue in Mozambique, because land-related policies, and in particular national parks, are traditionally instruments of territorial and population domination. The issue is therefore far from being exclusively ecological. Everywhere, in the North as in the South, parks are markers of territorial bureaucratisation and, in this case, the centrepiece of a strategy to maintain and expand the Frelimo party-state.