Ten years of contested enforcement of the Forest Law in Salta, Argentina. The role of land-change science and political ecology

Abstract

In this study, we present a critical account of the enforcement of the Forest Law in the Province of Salta, Argentina. We discuss whether the objectives of this law were accomplished and we analyze the role that some technical tools, coupled with specific theoretical approaches, could play in its future enforcement. We illustrate our analysis with data from a case study in the Chaco region of this Province. We identified, mapped and analyzed land claims by indigenous communities and small-scale agricultural producers, and large-scale land acquisitions, and we discuss how these two variables could be used to improve the technical accuracy and the social legitimacy of the zoning map required by the Forest Law. We conclude that a balanced combination of land-change science methods and political ecology can be useful to improve the fairness of decision-making processes and the sustainability of social-environmental governance in agricultural frontiers.

“El cañito de la red llega, lo que no llega es el agua”. Hacia una ecología política del agua en el Chaco salteño, Argentina

“…Lo antedicho no puede desvincularse de los históricos conflictos por el uso, tenencia y propiedad de la tierra (Slutzky, 2005). En el Chaco salteño, cerca de 3 000 000 ha son habitadas y/o reclamadas por comunidades indígenas y pequeños productores (Salas Barboza et al, 2019), y se han identificado grandes transacciones de tierras en una superficie de más de 1 600 000 ha en el período 2000-2017, de las cuales casi el 50 % presenta situaciones de conflictos por desmonte, daño ambiental y/o tenencia (Agüero et al, 2019).…”

Collaborative Governance Networks: A Case Study of Argentina’s Forest Law

“…Salta is one of the country's most extensively forested provinces, and it was among the first to issue its forest law implementation regulations [17]. Since the forest law came into force, more than 30,000 hectares have been deforested in areas that were recategorized as having "low conservation value" [5].…”

“…Implementation of the forest law has been described as weak by many observers, particularly in the province of Salta, where this is evidenced by continuing deforestation [4][5][6]. However, few studies have examined in detail the contrasting beliefs of all policy actors and how these beliefs take shape in coalitions through actors' interaction in policy networks.…”

Transdisciplinary perspectives on current transformations at extractive and agrarian, frontiers in Latin America

“…A second group of articles reflects on standardized land use conceptualizations and mapping rationales in land use modelling, but also management (Arancibia et al, 2019;de la Vega-Leinert, 2020;Kelly, 2019;Salas Barboza et al, 2019). Important societal dimensions, such as asymmetrical access to land and natural resources, critical socio-environmental externalities, or profound cultural change (e.g., in values, relationship to Nature or local ways of life) that do not necessarily have clearly detectable spatial expressions need to be considered.…”