COERCING CONSERVATION - THE POLITICS OF STATE RESOURCE CONTROL

International environmental agreements assume that nation-states have the capacity, internal legitimacy, and the will to manage resources within their territorial boundaries. Although many state agencies or factions may be interested in joining international conservation interests to preserve threatened resources and habitats, some state interests appropriate the ideology, legitimacy, and technology of conservation as a means of increasing or appropriating their control over valuable resources and recalcitrant populations. While international conservation groups may have no direct agenda for using violence to protect biological resources, their support of states which either lack the capacity to manage resources or intend to control 'national' resources at any price, contributes to the disenfranchisement of indigenous people with resource claims. This paper compares two examples of state efforts to control valuable resources in Kenya and Indonesia. In both cases, the maintenance of state control has led to a militarization of the resource 'conservation' process. International conservation interests either directly or indirectly legitimate the states' use of force in resource management.