Argentina lost an indigenous forest 320 times the length of its capital, Buenos Aires, between 1998 and 2018, according to a report published on 29 July through the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development.
The Chaqueño forest accounted for 87% of the 6.5 million hectares lost, with the expansion of agricultural land being the main in deforestation in the provinces of Santiago del Estero, Salta, Chaco and Formosa that make up this region of the country.
These figures are the official popularity of a crisis that has long manifested itself in the region. In October last year, 55 Organizations of Argentine civil society joined forces to publicize the Argentine Un Gran Chaco 2030 Commitment. The initiative aims to involve citizens, government and the sector in preventing the degradation of Chaco, the largest forest ecoregion in South America after the Amazon.
Each signatory of the commitment called for a replacement in the region’s economic model, which lately relies on extractive industries. Among its demands is greater compliance with the Indigenous Forests Act of 2007 which regulates land use and promotes conservation, but has been criticized for being far from ideal. According to the ministry’s report, 2.8 million hectares of forest were cut down after the enactment of the law.
The report notes that while the law helped the rate of deforestation in its early years (from 0.94% in 2007 to 0.34% in 2015), since 2016, the rate has increased, reaching 0.42% in 2018, a loss of 180,000 hectares (445,000 hectares). acres) that year.
To date, 108 organizations have signed this commitment, ranging from foundations and NGOs to clinical and educational institutions.
But the COVID-19 pandemic has stifled progress in selling the cause. “Quarantine measures did not allow for seamless communication between actors,” explains biologist Cristian Schneider, a member of the Indigenous Forest Defense Coordinator (Codebona), one of the first teams to join the effort. “Some of the other people involved had casual virtual meetings outdoors under the pact. It was difficult to continue the steps we proposed.
At the same time, extractive activities in Gran Chaco did not prevent the pandemic. According to Schneider, deforestation and the burning of grasslands detected in the closing months are symptoms of a persistent crisis. “Political and industry decisions have turned their backs on the pillars of commitment. It is very discouraging and desperate that the environmental calendar remains the last one,” he says.
Gabriel Seghezzo of Fundapaz, an organization that works with rural communities in the Chaqueño forest in access to land, calls this commitment “an opportunity to generate fundamental situations about how economic activity expands in the region”.
Echoing Schneider, he hopes to resume coordination with other stakeholders soon, a task that has been interrupted by the lockout measures. However, he says long-term customers are gloomy. “If we look at the nation’s agri-food plan, we see that it is very likely that after the pandemic the deforestation of Chaco is encouraged to generate a source of income for the country. There will be an increase in conflict,” he says. Seghezzo.
Greenpeace’s latest satellite follow-up report suggests that, despite quarantine, there was more logging in the Chaco Forest in the first part of this year than at the same time in 2019. The follow-up covers the provinces of Santiago del Estero, Salta, Formosa and Chaco. It shows that approximately 39,000 hectares (96,400 acres) of local forests have been razed, approximately 2,000 hectares (5,000 acres) more than in the first part of last year.
“Quarantine has confused the responsibilities of citizen control,” explains Riccardo Tiddi, an Italian physicist based in the Gran Chaco and an active member of the Somos Monte collective. “For environmental groups, it is to succeed in rural areas. Access to data is confusing because administrative responsibilities no longer paint the same way now. It was hard to know if the clear [deforestation] that happened were old or new.”
Tiddi says it maintains close contact with residents, who have expressed fears of the continued advertising activities that can spread the coronavirus in the area.
According to Emanuel Carrocino, director of the Chaco Provincial Forestry Department, Greenpeace’s analysis implies that the scenario is less serious in its jurisdiction. “Last year, in the province, about 10,000 hectares [25,000 acres] were cleared in the first six months. Greenpeace now claims that Chaco has about 6,000 [hectares or 15,000 acres]. This would mean a significant reduction.
Carrocino says that during quarantine, the province did not authorize any further land use changes. “The legal refund that had been approved in advance continued. Of course, they were unable to enter with their bulldozers until mid-May. During the first two months of quarantine, it was banned. In addition, we have illegal land clearings, which we check to succeed as soon as possible ‘to punish those responsible.
Since the beginning of the 40 in Argentina on March 20, the Chaco Provincial Government has detected 189 forest canopy adjustments affecting a general domain of 3,317 hectares (8,196 acres) in the province. Based on these alerts, the Forestry Department generated 158 warnings of violation of forest laws. In some cases, the interventions ended with the confiscation of bulldozers through the officers.
Carrocino says there is a desire on the crusade for forest conservation.
Compliance with the Forestry Law of 2007 is one of the main objectives of the Gran Chaco’s commitment. To this end, the Wildlife Foundation (an NGO promoting the project) and the Foundation for the Environment and Natural Resources (farN) presented a report in June that identifies the disorders that have occurred in the more than thirteen years. . The report aims to advise on the proper implementation of the law, its authors say.
“We have taken the report to five provinces that make up the Gran Chaco (Santiago del Estero, Salta, Formosa, Tucumon and Chaco). Deputies and senators too,” says Daniela Gomel, Public Policy and Governance Coordinator at the Wildlife Fund. “We’ve been looking to locate a non-unusual floor for law enforcement.”
Natalia Morales, a Member of parliament of the province of Jujuy, recognizes the guidelines of commitment, but warns that it will be difficult to make progress in the political sphere. “From our stand, at the national level, we are raising the need for the Wetlands Act. But what is proposed in the laws, such as [the 2007 forestry law] or the proposals of civil organizations, is complicated to put into force because it means opposing the advertising sectors linked to the existing political force,” he says.
Among the shortcomings of the 2007 law known at the Wildlife Foundation and FARN are gaps in the territorial regulation processes of indigenous forests (known by its Spanish acronym OTBN) and the lack of systematic funding of law enforcement.
According to the rule, provinces are guilty of dividing forest spaces into red, yellow or green spaces based on the permitted use of land. Through technical studies and public hearings, both a jurisdiction will have low-conservation spaces that can be cleared for economic activity (green), those that can be used sustainably (yellow) and those that cannot be affected (red). Given the transformative truth of the ecosystem, the law states that these regulations are updated for both one and five years. However, that has not happened in all provinces.
Chaco has not updated its regulations on local forests for 10 years. Tiddi says the decline of the forest canopy in this decade deserves to be taken into account before categorizing a territory. “Due to the advancement of deforestation, fields that were not so important before, are now and deserve not to be cut down.”
Tiddi and other environmentalists have requested that spaces already declared in red or yellow be exempt from dismantling. “Thanks to lobbying and legal tricks, manufacturers have been able to recover their properties,” Tiddi says. “Throughout the Chaco forestry domain between 2013 and 2018, 53 permits were changed from yellow to green spaces.”
The Wildlife Foundation and FARN also point out that some jurisdictions allow reclassification, adding online bureaucracy without further needs or boxes.
This point was addressed through the Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, Juan Cabandié, in an interview with the Portal Network / Action in May. He said he intended to replace the standard, as the existing figure of “green” areas suggests “that forestry law supports deforestation.”
On 25 July he reiterated his intention. Cabandié noted that The province of Salta has initiated 36 administrative procedures for illegal land-use adjustments and stated that “we want to amend forest law and advance a federal policy for its protection, control and conservation.” To this end, the Ministry of the Environment plans to send Congress an invoice amending the Indigenous Forests Act 2007.
MeP Natalia Morales says these statements by Cabandié will have to become actions. “They are intentions, but there is still nothing guaranteed. The ministry has the duty of the thousands of hectares cleared in quarantine,” he says.
Gladis Cristaldo, a member of the Chaco Congress, says he is also following Cabandié’s statements and calling for changes. He hopes that the Chaco Congress can begin talking about reforms that shift the purposes and control of the productive sector to the environmental sector. “The generally important thing is important. Clearing inspection responsibilities will have to be part of a forest conservation perspective. Right now they’re in the production sector and they don’t have that angle,” he says.
Mongabay contacted the Ministry of the Environment to ask questions about the revisions to the Forestry Law, but did not get any reaction at the time of publication of this article.
The Chaco Forestry Department said the Ministry of Production and the Ministry of the Environment were working in forest progression spaces to get a quick update on the land use control plan, a resolution that has been postponed for many years. “They are running a new participatory process, which will come out in the future,” Carrocino says. “Due to the existing conditions, I don’t know if this year, but in early 2021, we expect the plan to be approved.”
He added that the adjustments proposed through Cabandié to the forest law were not considered urgent and said that they were more involved in securing greater monetary resources. “Forest law is a tool that has made many advances in the fight against deforestation. Of course, deforestation has continued, but I don’t think it wants to change, we want basic facets like the National Enrichment Fund. and Indigenous Forest Conservation,” Carrocino says.
The report through the Wildlife Foundation and FARN notes that the lack of investment has been an impediment to the implementation of forest law. It is intended to obtain 0.3% of the national budget each year, but that has never happened in the thirteen years since the law was passed. In fact, the investment has never exceeded 10% of the prescribed amount, according to the report. By 2020, the implementation budget of the law will constitute less than 5% of the amount that deserves to have been received.
The cash goes to the owners of indigenous forests, to compensate them for agriculture, and to the provincial government to combat deforestation. “Currently in Chaco and other provinces of the region, the budget is enough to cover these tasks,” says Carrocino, Chaco’s provincial forest manager.
The report also shows that forestry law has gradually reduced Argentina’s annual rate of deforestation, degrees of control and sanctions through the competent government have been insufficient. In 2018, 50% of deforestation occurred in red or yellow areas, apparently a significant portion of the loss of indigenous forests is due to illegal practices.
The COVID-19 pandemic has replaced the dynamics and portrays the plans of environmental organizations that have signed the Gran Chaco 2030 Commitment. With few opportunities for action on the floor (box visits, box portraits and education) and stagnant bureaucracy, activists portray a complex long-term path to conservation. “The productive matrix that affects the forest and slows down due to quarantine will need to have more losses,” explains Schneider de Codebona. “Intensify your activities.”
Daniela Gomel of the Wildlife Foundation says that “the symptoms of higher production are there,” highlighting “ads related to commodity exports, ranging from soybeans to livestock.”
Concerns about economic recovery dominate Argentina’s existing public discourse. As the government meets with industry companies and unions, it moves forward with the creation of an economic and social council. For Chaco observers, the important thing is how to integrate an environmental technique into post-pandemic planning. “We have informed the [environment] minister of the desire to integrate environmental technique,” says Gomel, “an angle that includes forest conservation and control for a sustainable life.”
“Without integrating this dimension, we will have a very short-term solution. We will lend our future.”
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