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 little capacity for action throughout the country, but which is nonetheless enabled 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 drafting regulations, the boundaries of the State and its sovereignty are blurred. How can the State be identified when the steering of public action seems, in many respects, to be beyond its control? This issue is particularly acute in Mozambique, where land policies, and in particular national parks, have traditionally been instruments of domination over territories and populations. The issue is therefore far from being exclusively ecological. Everywhere, in the north as in the south, parks are markers of the bureaucratisation of territory and, in this case, the centrepiece of a strategy to maintain and expand the political power of the Frelimo party-state.