Frédéric HuybrechsUniversity of Antwerp | UA · Institute of Development Policy
Frédéric Huybrechs
PhD in Development Studies - M.Sc. International Development - M.Sc. Applied Economic Sciences
About
38
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Introduction
I am a post-doc researcher at the Institute of Development Policy (IOB) in Antwerp, Belgium. Currently, I study the role of microfinance in the advancement of the cattle-driven agricultural frontier in Nicaragua. In my PhD thesis, I analysed the topic of Green Microfinance from a political ecology perspective and in the context of rural development, including fieldwork experience on a particular Green Microfinance project in Nicaragua. Generally interested in the political ecology of finance.
Publications
Publications (38)
In this review, we explore the potential of green microfinance to contribute to transformations to sustainability. Green microfinance aims for environmental objectives in addition to microfinance’s traditional financial and social goals. We argue that the questions of whether and how these instruments contribute to social-ecological change on the g...
A recent trend of green microfinance aims for the inclusion of environmental objectives in addition to microfinance’s traditional financial and social goals. This PhD dissertation contributes to the further exploration and understanding of this incipient practice. It elaborates conceptually and empirically on the political and socio-institutional r...
Authoritarian and populist regimes have used the coronavirus pandemic as another excuse to further push back on democracy. Through the lens of boundary-making, we discuss power processes in pandemic politics of three countries whose governments and power constellations rely on authoritarian and/or populist politics (Hungary, Nicaragua, and Guatemal...
In dit hoofdstuk belichten we de verschillende manieren waarop ongelijkheid is verweven in het klimaatvraagstuk, en tonen we aan dat vicieuze dynamieken plaatsgrijpen tussen klimaatverandering en sociale ongelijkheid, die elkaar neigen te versterken. De brede noemer van sociale ongelijkheid omvat een patroon van ongelijkheden dat zich aftekent lang...
This contribution presents the perspective on rural transformations to sustainability of the TRUEPATH action-research project in the agrarian frontier in Nicaragua. We start from a ‘territorial pathways’ framework, assembled from diverse theoretical building blocks and empirically grounded in experiences with local development interventions. This f...
Payments for Environmental Services (PES) are premised upon the provision of monetary incentives to induce land-use practices viewed to be beneficial for advancing tropical conservation. A recent article published by Pagiola et al. in this journal claims that PES successfully transitioned land-use from agricultural use in Matiguás-Río Blanco, Nicar...
This chapter reflects on a possible role for microfinance in the complex challenges posed by climate change, both in terms of adaptation and mitigation. The analysis is based on lessons from recent ‘green Microfinance Plus’ experiences of the Fondo de Desarrollo Local (FDL) and the institute Nitlapan-UCA (Universidad Centroamericana) in rural cattl...
Building on the argument for a ‘double bottom line’ of financial and social/poverty objectives, some argue for a third bottom line to engage with environmental crises. In this chapter, we provide an overview of nascent practices of ‘green microfinance’ and develop a perspective on how (micro) finance relates to the transformation to sustainability....
The inclusion of environmental criteria in microfinance products to promote sustainable activities, access to clean or more efficient use of energy or to reduce climatic and environmental risk for low- income households or microenterprises (i.e., green microfinance)—is a dynamic and growing market in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), with exis...
In this commentary we respond to Fletcher and Büscher's (2017) recent article in this journal on Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) as neoliberal ‘conceit’. The authors claim that focusing attention on the micro-politics of PES design and implementation fails to expose an underlying neoliberal governmentality, and therefore only reinforces neoli...
In this commentary we respond to Fletcher and Büscher's (2017) recent article in this journal on Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) as neoliberal ‘conceit’. The authors claim that focusing attention on the micro-politics of PES design and implementation fails to expose an underlying neoliberal governmentality, and therefore only reinforces neoli...
This article reflects on a possible role for microfinance in light of the complex challenges posed by climate change, both in terms of adaptation and mitigation. The analysis is based on lessons from recent 'green Microfinance Plus' experiences of the Fondo de Desarrollo Local (FDL) and the institute Nitlapan in rural cattle and coffee regions in N...
En el año 2015, el instituto Nitlapan de la Universidad Centroamericana, el IOB de la Universidad de Amberes y ADA Luxemburgo pusimos en marcha una agenda de investigación sobre Microfinanzas Plus para entender las complejidades del territorio, las oportunidades de desarrollo y los desafíos de las Microfinanzas Plus en Nicaragua, y más concretament...
En el año 2015, el instituto Nitlapan de la Universidad Centroamericana, el IOB de la Universidad de Amberes y ADA Luxemburgo pusimos en marcha una agenda de investigación sobre Microfinanzas Plus para entender las complejidades del territorio, las oportunidades de desarrollo y los desafíos de las Microfinanzas Plus en Nicaragua, y más concretament...
The article describes the socio-environmental tensions of the conventional coffee production
model, the gap between theory and practice in the Microfinance Plus model, and the need for the model
to consider different development pathways. The article also analyses the political, social and economic
dynamics of the stakeholders in the coffee value c...
The historically dominant model of extensive cattle ranching in Nicaragua has led to a concentration of land in few hands and pushed small farmers towards the younger agricultural frontiers. It thereby contributes to social polarization and alarming levels of deforestation. This model is not sustainable in either social or environmental terms. As a...
The historically dominant model of extensive cattle ranching in Nicaragua has led to a concentration of land in few hands and pushed small farmers towards the younger agricultural frontiers. It thereby contributes to social polarization and alarming levels of deforestation. This model is not sustainable in either social or environmental terms. As a...
Microfinance for Environmental Services. What Are the Policy Takeaways from Proyecto CAMBio in Nicaragua?
There has recently been growing interest for the introduction of environmental objectives in microfinance. Similarly to the social impact of microfinance, it is necessary to examine how these objectives are taken into account in practice and ho...
This report is the first attempt in the microfinance sector to address the area of green performance monitoring in a comprehensive manner. While the sector currently abounds with a diverse set of qualitative tools for green performance monitoring, the same cannot be said of quantitative indicators. As a result, microfinance institutions (MFIs) lack...
En Nicaragua, el modelo histórico dominante de la ganadería extensiva produce concentración de la tierra en pocas manos y expulsión de pequeños productores hacia la nueva frontera agrícola, contribuyendo a una polarización social y deforestación alarmante. Este modelo no es sustentable en términos sociales ni ambientales. En consecuencia es impresc...
Drawing from discussions on the panacea problem in microfinance and natural resource management, we scrutinize a ‘green microfinance plus’ programme – Proyecto CAMBio – in a specific setting in Nicaragua, focusing in particular on its interaction with local development pathways. The programme was designed to promote biodiversity-friendly land uses...
As Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) continues to gain attention as a policy tool for securing efficient and effective environmental governance, a rising tide of criticism warns of the potentially detrimental social–ecological consequences of nature commodification and ‘green neoliberalism’. These concerns are also expressed at international po...
This paper proposes a normative and an analytical framework for an actor-oriented conceptualization of the development of rural territories with the aim to inform practitioners’ interventions. For the latter, we stress the need for a more realistic and modest positioning vis-à-vis the endogenous strategies of interacting actors in the rural territo...
This paper proposes a normative and an analytical framework for an actor-oriented conceptualization of the development of rural territories with the aim to inform practitioners’ interventions. For the latter, we stress the need for a more realistic and modest positioning
vis-à-vis the endogenous strategies of interacting actors in the rural territo...
Recently there has been growing interest in green microfinance, referring to the role of microfinance to support environmental management by micro-enterprises and poor households. Worldwide, the number of green microfinance projects increases, yet there seems to be little discussion on how green microfinance interacts with rural development, and ho...
This article presents the analysis of Proyecto CAMBio,
a green microfinance project. The intention of the
project was to stimulate biodiversity-friendly land-use
practices through microcredits, bio-premiums and
technical assistance. The preliminary results of the
fieldwork do not show a straightforward positive impact
of the intervention on the evo...
This chapter looks at ecosystem services-thinking from the perspective of rural development and land-use dynamics in developing countries. In this context, the concept of ecosystem services seems to be prevalent as a foundation for market-based conservation and development policy tools such as Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES). We assess a PES s...
Based on empirical evidence from two Nicaraguan case studies, we scrutinise the PES approach from both a supply and a demand-side perspective. First, our analysis of a silvopastoral PES project suggests that a combination of economic and non-economic factors motivated farmers to adopt the envisaged practices. The second case study assesses local wi...
Basado en evidencia empírica de dos estudios de caso en Nicaragua, en este artículo examinamos el concepto de Pagos por Servicios Ambientales (PSA) tanto desde una perspectiva de demanda como de oferta. Primero, nuestro análisis de un proyecto de PSA para la promoción de prácticas silvopastoriles sugiere que una combinación de factores económicos y...
Projects
Projects (2)
(1) to co-generate actionable knowledge for and to contribute to the transformation of unsustainable cattle-based development in agricultural frontiers (AF) in Latin America and elsewhere and
(2) to produce a better understanding of how such processes of knowledge cogeneration generate transformations to sustainability.
In addition to microfinance’s financial and social goals, a recent trend of ‘green microfinance’ also aims for the inclusion of environmental objectives. It thereby adds to the list of policies seeking to combine poverty alleviation and the tackling of environmental concerns. Microfinance’s social impact has been questioned in recent years, among others with the argument that the underlying understanding of poverty is deficient and fails to engage with the relational nature of the problem. I argue that a similar reflection is needed for ‘green’ microfinance, as there is currently a tendency to engage uncritically –if at all– with natural resource governance and microfinance’s broader interaction with social-ecological systems.
