ABSTRACT
Through a range of initiatives, from the ‘debt-for-nature’ swaps pioneered by the US government (Enterprise for the Americas Initiative Act, Dept of Treasury press release, 27 June 1990) to the phenomenal growth in ‘green tourism’ operators and to lending agencies placing environmental conditions and caveats on their loans and grants, a greening of social relations is being promoted. It is a kind of eco-structural adjustment where Third World places and peoples must fall into line with First World thinking. For example, the Domestic Technology Institute (a US-based non-profit organisation), which planned a ‘multinational organisation to develop and co-ordinate low impact tourism in Third World countries’, had warned, ‘These [Third World] countries can be forced into establishing natural and cultural resource policy before they can get World Bank loans’ (Pleumarom 1990: 14).
