Paper short abstract:

Over the last decade, development policymakers and planners have placed growing emphasis on infrastructure-led development. In this paper, we argue that infrastructure-led development is driving the reorganisation of ecological space.

Paper long abstract:

Over the last decade, development policymakers and planners have placed growing emphasis on infrastructure-led development, which is the idea that investment in infrastructure provides a sure pathway to development by integrating previously bypassed or disconnected rural areas into global networks of production and trade. The ambition of infrastructure-led development is to ‘get the territory right’ by reorganising national space, so that it can be made accessible and plugged in to global value chains to foster export-oriented growth (Schindler and Kanai 2019). In this paper, we reflect on a parallel process of ‘getting the ecology right’ in infrastructure-led development. We argue that infrastructure-led development is driving the reorganisation of ecological space, as there are growing expectations around the greening infrastructure investments from regulatory authorities, lending bodies, and even investors. At the same time, reorganising ecological space serves to make nature more accessible and attractive to global capital, thereby preparing nature to be propelled into new global networks of production and trade once new infrastructure is built. To make this argument, we draw on qualitative data collected in Kenya and Tanzania between 2016 and 2019 using walking interviews, key informant interviews, focus group discussions, oral histories, and participant observation. We focus specifically on the creation of new wildlife corridors around sites of infrastructure investment, suggesting that these corridors function much like transport infrastructure by enabling capital and ‘wild’ commodities to flow, land, and accumulate in previously bypassed or disconnected rural areas.