Synthesis of the facts which took place in the General Pizarro Reserve (lots 32 and 33)
The recent official decision of changing a provincial natural reserve into an agricultural soy field in the northern province of Salta (Argentina), together with the reaction of the federal government, the people, and some NGOs to rescue the area, ignited the debate in conservation biology. During the World Parks Congress in Durban, it was said -among other things- that protected areas take out lands suitable for food production, worsening the scenario of world hunger. The debate also involves the utopia of sustainable development.
This topic used to have great attention from the press, but unfortunately the arguments focused on narrow-minded points of view. The press treatment sheds lateral lights on the case, shadowing other fields of useful knowledge and consequently manipulating the reality.
This news article aims to contribute with a more holistic view of this case. I will first review the facts; second, I will analyze the case from different approaches (agricultural, economical, social, legal, ecological); and finally, I will provide some concluding remarks stating ParksWatch’s position on the subject.
Characteristics of the reserve- The location of the reserve in the province of Salta, as seen on the satellite image LANDSAT TM, shows the agricultural areas that are encroaching the lands that belonged to the natural reserve (predominantly lilac squares), including part of its core area (registered as lots 32 and 33 and created in 1995 by Provincial Decree 3397).
The 22,500 ha reserve includes a fragment of the transitional habitat between the Yungas (1,500 ha) and the Chaco (13,000 ha), contributing to the preservation of the last third such native woodlands remaining in Argentina. It has arboreal species from both ecoregions, such as the cebil, lapacho, cedar, the red and white quebracho, the carob tree, and the jujube tree.
In reference to fauna, toucans, deer, peccaries, monkeys and armadillos, are among the most conspicuous species. This area possibly serves as native wintering habitat for the Blue-Fronted Amazon Parrot (Amazona aestiva). It also represents the only natural means of subsistence for a native group of people, the “wichí”, and for other native communities in these lands. It is a category VI area within the IUCN listings (protected area with managing resources).
The decision taken by the Government- Approximately a year ago, the Governor of the province of Salta, Juan Carlos Romero, converted the protected areas to agriculture. He divided them into lots and put them up for sale, encouraging farmers to buy them for soy cultivation, after displacing the original native inhabitants. The natural reserve was divided into seven lots, which were auctioned and transferred to farmers(1).
Reaction from NGOs and reserve inhabitants- The reaction from the surrounding towns in General Pizarro and the NGOs was immediate. Members of Greenpeace, FARN (Environmental and Natural Resources Foundation), and the local Foundation Pro Yungas took part in a very important media and political lobby, using legal actions –first provincial and then federal– to prevent the sale, the clearing of trees and the relocation of the people.
Arguments from the Government- The provincial Government said –justifying the measures(2)– that it all had to do with woods with a certain level of degradation being located in lands that were appropriate for soy cultivation. It added that “the main natural resource, to which we would like to take care of, is the people, and with this sale, the lands will turn into crop lands and will provide work for many people.” Ecological Organizations were charged with “defending foreign interests and going against the Province’s economic development and growth”. The Government said that the investments in the area “will generate new jobs(3).”
The rescue- Recently (May 2005) the National Parks Administration, together with Red Solidaria, Fundación Vida Silvestre Argentina, and Greenpeace, embarked on a fundraising campaign to buy the Pizarro reserve. Their goal is to gather seven million pesos from individuals in order to buy the reserve back.
The plan includes the creation of a multiple-use national reserve, which will contain an area of strict protection with an adjacent zone destined for sustainable use of the forest by the local people. The initiative –conducted mainly by Greenpeace and Fundación Vida Silvestre Argentina– has received public support from the President of the Commission of Natural Resources and Human Environment of the National Chamber of Deputies and from the National Institute of Indigenous Affairs.
Declaration of forestry emergency- On May 6, the Chamber of Deputies asked the Executive to stop the forest clearing until a land management law was approved that would set the basic criteria for the exploitation of native forests. The Chamber said that it ”would be pleased if the Executive, by means of the Department of the Interior, would take measures to declare a national forestry emergency, and consequently issue, together with the provinces, the absolute prohibition of natural forests clearing in the whole of the Argentinean territory, until a law of Minimum Budget for Protection is approved.” Some provinces, such as Cordoba, Santa Fe(4), Santiago del Estero and Entre Rios, have established –in different ways– legal measures for the clearing of trees and the preservation of natural resources.
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PERSPECTIVES
The socio-economic perspective
Does Argentina need agricultural growth at the expense of protected areas?
About 200,000 ha of natural habitat are lost in Argentina due to the advance of the agriculture frontier(3), particularly lands for soy cultivation. Is this loss necessary or could productivity of existing agricultural areas be increased instead? The answer involves the future of protected areas and other natural environments.
With almost 40 million ha destined for agricultural production, Argentina is among the top 10 countries in the world with highest land area for cultivation and contains 15% of the irrigated areas worldwide. With respect to population density, Argentina has 1.2 cultivated hectares per capita, the third largest in the world. It is a country that, in spite of its productivity inefficiency per hectare(6), produces food for over 10 times its population.
From the point of view of the area assigned to conservation, Argentina is among the countries having less percentage of protected land (0.013% in national protected areas –3,666,230 ha–, plus 0.046% in provincial(5) protected areas –12,824,412 ha) (7). This gets worse if we consider that the vast territory of Argentina (2,779,772 km²) has a great ecological diversity and an agricultural frontier expanding strongly towards the last wild lands.
In the context of the Pizarro natural reserve conflict, the Asociación Argentina de Agronegocios (Argentinean Association of Agrobusiness) pointed out that the growth of agriculture does not need to encroach the protected areas.
Now, let’s analyze the “big benefits“ attributed to the soy expansion, a great enemy of the protected areas.
The alleged “big business” of the soy expansion. Is harvest volume a real indicator of success?
The surplus of the Argentinean foreign trade surplus is supported by the country’s status as a raw-material exporter (wheat, corn, sunflower, sorghum, and mainly soy). The last technological trend brought in the soy package as a system of two crops a year in the same lot: short-cycle wheat in the winter, and soy or corn in the summer. In the last years, the soy has become the main crop exported from Argentina. Many provinces undertook a mass production of this legume for the foreign trade. Due to the currency devaluation of 2002, the monetary benefits have multiplied.
Nevertheless, only point indicators of the country’s prosperity are made public, without taking into account the trend indicators of the currency exchange values, international fluctuations of the soy price, who truly benefits(8). And in the socio-environmental scenario, they are overlooking the loss of food diversity implicit in the market specialization, the loss of natural nutrients, the land degradation, and the rate of forest clearing. All this without taking into account the loss of biodiversity caused by the sum of the afore-mentioned disturbances. Is this called sustainable development? Could these natural resources politics in the hands of economy experts be called “successful”?
Let us analyze the indicators that have not been considered:
1. Trend indicators of the exchange value
An investigation carried out by CESPA(9) points out the structural limitations of the so called “soy boom”, within the international context of commercial restrictions and subsidies from the central countries. In the long term and in USA dollars, there is a verified damage in terms of exchanges, i.e., the decreasing price of the agriculture export. The soy oil, pride of the Argentinean exports, has fallen from US $850 per ton in 1984 to US $160 in 2001(10).
2. International fluctuations of the soy price
The work of Mr. Schvartzer, CESPA Director, highlights the soy as an example of great short-term fluctuations. In the last two decades, the price varied between US $150 to US $350 per ton, having peaks of variation (ups and downs) of up to 70% in less than a year. An example of this is the one that took place in the years 2003-2004, parallel to the General Pizarro conflict (in 2004).
3. Who are the real beneficiaries? Does the quality of life of rural people really improve?(11)
Data from the INDEC(12) show a strong fall in the quantity of agricultural yields in the years 1998-2002, confirming the trend of agriculture concentration by big corporations, in spite of the efforts to hide it by setting fictitious land ownership boundaries.
The increase in agriculture production with oleaginous specialization, opted for new technologies (transgenic seeds, direct planting) and big companies with a high level of production, with the consequent vanishing of many small producers (up to 200 ha) that could not adopt the soy model(13).
The economical actors that are part of this transformation (Monsanto, Siderca, Novaris, DHL, and Cargill, among others) enjoy high affordability, due to the extremely high natural fertility of Argentinean soils. There are contractors, third party sources, agrochemical industries, machinery producers, banks, and insurance companies. The disappearance of a group of producers including a high percentage of the rural population, has caused significant impoverishment of the socio-economic scenario for of villages and near by cities.
4. Loss of food diversity
The soy rise has caused a very significant deterioration of products diversity. Specialization in a single product of doubtful nutritional quality, the transgenic soy, damages the food sovereignty. When milk production and other essential products diminish, the price of these goods increases. When the price rises, the food corporations do better business importing those goods than buying them from the local producer, spoiling the economy, the income level of the people and, consequently, diminishing the possibility to satisfy the demand for a healthy nutrition. As a result, a country whose main export is food, can no longer feed half of its population.
The land area used for oleaginous (mainly soy) crops has increased by 138%, 86% y 60% in the Northwest, Northeast, and the Pampas regions of the country, respectively . On the other hand, there has been a significant decrease in the production of grains and the industrial crops (such as sugar cane, “yerba mate”, tea, tobacco, and grapes) (14). The industrial crops form the axis of the regional development of rural economies. The new productive scheme has adopted an enormous de-industrialization, and has led to a monoculture type of agriculture(15). The harvests are increasing year by year, but the results is not a general improvement of the quality of life of the people, but the opposite (rural migration, unemployment, malnutrition).
5. The cost of nutrient loss(16)
The so called productive efficiency is based on the elimination of subsidies. Only with the soy, Argentina surpasses 34 millions tons per year, but the economic calculations do not take into account that along with the grains go the main soil nutrients. Every year, Argentina exports almost 3,500,000 tons of nutrients that are not recovered in a sustainable manner. Walter Pengue has calculated the value of nutrient reposition lost every year if we had to replace them with fertilizers. Only in nitrogen and phosphorus the cost is of US $909,340,000 per year. It is not difficult to estimate when natural resources will come to an end. In order for Argentina to maintain its productive level, it will have to become strongly dependent on the purchase of fertilizers from the same corporations that today rule this model of unsustainable production. And all this for the sale of raw material with fluctuating and decreasing prices.
6. Soil degradation
The uncontrolled advance of the new productive scheme not only demands new land, but has also an environmental devastating effect on these lands, because the type of harvest it requires degrades the soil fertility, which is the main source of economic development of Argentina. The unsustainable use of water for irrigation causes high salinity, and consequently, loss of fertility.
Argentinean producers have a high operative capacity. They handle complex machinery, use singular germ plasma and agrochemicals for plagues control. Nevertheless, in contrast to all other highly productive agricultural spaces of the World, Argentina’s soils do not require complementarily irrigation or fertilization with either manure or agrochemicals(17). Traditional agriculture consisted of a 12-year fertilization rotation system, in which the first four years the land was used for cattle raising, followed by six years of agriculture. Both cattle manure and the digging of the soil and mixing of rastrojo with soil helped restore the fertility, at least partially. The reduction of land cultivation units, the establishment of two harvests a year, the lack of investment on fertilizers, and the opportunist agriculture politics lead to an unavoidable detriment of soil fertility. INTA, the National Institute of Agricultural Technology, noticed that in the last 15 years the content of organic material in soil has diminished by half (in the lots with agriculture and cattle rotation, it has decreased by a third); the nitrogen diminished from 0.27% to 0.17% in land with agriculture/cattle rotation and by 0,12% in land cultivated for more than 15 years; in the case of assimilated phosphorous, the decrease is very significant, both with agriculture/cattle rotation as well with continuous agriculture (more than 70% in both cases). In comparison to other countries exporting grains (USA, South Africa, Canada, Australia), the use of fertilizers in Argentina is the lowest (4.49 kg/ha in Argentina versus 28 and 90 kg/ha in other countries).
The agricultural expansion of Argentina is not supported by allocating considerable technological resources to raise the production by hectare, nor by investing in fertilizers or other measures to maintain productivity. It is relies irresponsibly on the extraordinary natural fertility of the soils (particularly brunizem), which is clearly deteriorating. If the loss of nitrogen, phosphorous and organic material persists, the levels of fertility will not allow for harvest volumes compatible with the yield requirements of an international, highly competitive market.
7. Rate of forest clearing
In Cordoba, the central province of Argentina, rural prosperity contrasts with a desolating environmental landscape: the district has the highest rate of deforestation in the country and there are many towns without water due to climate alterations caused by the loss of forests. According to Mr. Araujo, more than 2,500,000 hectares of semi-arid Chaco forests were destroyed in the last century in Santiago del Estero. Another 450 thousand hectares of forest have disappeared in the last 10 years; from these, 300,000 (60% of the total) were destroyed in the last 3 years. The amount of land cover destroyed in the last years is consistent with the intensive soy development.
The legal perspective
The NGOs consortium asked the national Government to intercede in the case of General Pizarro natural reserve. At the beginning the Government answered that it did not have the intention to intercede because of lack of jurisdiction (saying that it was a Provincial Government).
The environmental organizations proposed the government to enact a preventive measure declaring the process unconstitutional. Under such measure, the provincial government had infringed constitutional principles of environmental preservation, and had not performed other important steps, such as environmental impact assessments. The illegal seizing of protected lands was also stated: “it sets an ominous judicial record” allowing the eventual auction of other areas.
What does the law say?
In Argentina there are different jurisdictions between the Federal and the Provincial governments in terms of what is (or should be) a common basis for protecting the natural heritage. At the International level, Argentina has signed the Biological Diversity Agreement, which has to be implemented jointly by the provinces, the districts, the public institutions and the private sector(18).
The National Constitution, in its article 14, establishes that “all citizens have the right to a healthy environment”… “The authorities should grant the protection… of the biological diversity”… ”it corresponds to the Nation to set the rules that determine minimum budgets for protection and to the Provinces to set the necessary rules to implement them”.
On the other hand, article 124 says that “natural resources within a Province’s territory are in the domain of such Province”. This article confirms the right of the provinces to decide about their natural resources and be responsible for their conservation.
ParksWatch’s perspective
The analysis of these sets of data prompts us to wonder why in Argentina, with its enormous capacity to produce food, there is a sector of the population (almost half!) with nutrition problems. The data suggest that this unbelievable reality can not be attributed –as in the case of Africa- to the belief that protected areas are taking up areas for food production. Rather, the answer should be looked for, not in the last remaining bastions of the natural world, but in the foolish politics governing the unsustainable management of natural resources, and in the concentrated allocation of the benefits from agriculture.
If by every positive fluctuation in the price of a given primary product (as the case of the soy in 2003-2004) we are going to illegally seize protected lands, degrade soils, and destroy the industrial basis of economic development, there is little hope that Argentina will pair up with the modern societies, and yet less hope to achieve a well understood sustainable development. That is, a socially fair economic system, which satisfies the need for a good quality of life for the population in an environmentally responsible way in the long term.
Given that the governing class takes decisions in response to voting pressures (and that biodiversity appears in the ballots), it is highly improbable that a provincial Government will support long-term conservation measures and short-term unpopular measures (although in the case of Pizarro reserve, the government took a surprise). As the law grants full power of decision to the provinces in terms of their natural resources, the provincial system of protected areas is very vulnerable to the menace of demagogic decisions, such as those taken by Romero, governor of the province of Salta.
The history of the illegal appropriation of lands and subsequent rescue that took place in the General Pizarro Reserve seems to have a happy ending for conservation, since the area will return to be protected. Let us say that between the past and the present nothing has changed. As all good stories, it has good and bad characters, but -as in the movies- the evil forces are defeated by the will of the people and all comes to a happy end.
What is evident here is that the decision took by Mr. Romero has generated a land market of about two or three US million dollars, which, had it not been for that “decision mistake” it would have never existed. A movie-like drama like this is enough to create demand in the new conservation real-estate market (while time is running out(19)), featuring the defenseless against the powerful. The business is buying first and cheap (at auction price) and then selling to anonymous donors at a fixed price, in a “gesture of redemption,” taking advantage of well intentioned individuals and NGOs. A natural reserve with a skeleton in the closet.
No matter how clean the auction (and sale) maneuvering may have been, we can imagine titling, measuring, commissions, trip expenses, bank transactions, lawyers, NGOs and thousands of people at work, journalists, photographers, auditors, policemen, fuel… A rising of entropy, energy consumed in keeping the system and everything that can generate a similar flux of money and its collaterals. No matter how clean it all has appears to be in this story, it sets a precedent as hazardous as the auction itself, because instead of promoting the genuine conservation of our natural resources, it promotes the speculation that fills and empties always the same pockets.
The true happy ending, instead, is what the NGOs ask to the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation: the judicial annulment of the auction and the re-declaration of lands as provincial reserve. Thus, the one responsible for the decision mistake should be the one who collects back the money and pays for costs and compensations; and let this serve as punishment and precedent to the re-establishment of judicial security disrupted by the province of Salta with regards to provincial protected areas. This way everything returns to what it used to be and the seven million pesos that are being collected from the public –and the praiseworthy efforts of the national park administration and the NGOs- can be re-directed to enforce the federal system of protected areas, instead of desperately creating a remedy that in this Phoenician market can start an immediate “addiction for the rescue”.
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Notes:
1) We found out that the agrobusiness industries Curel, Ragone and MSU SA, Everest e Initium Aferro are among the buyers. We could not obtain reliable information on sale prices.
2) Manuel Brizuela, Minister of Production and Employment of Salta, stated that the sale process of those lots was \”very clear\”, with the \”participation of real-estate companies and without the intervention of the governor or other officials\”.
3) The people from General Pizarro assured that the area is surrounded by soy fields “and nevertheless the great majority of the inhabitants live from subsistence economy, because the profit doesn’t stay in the state”.
4) Some specialists have conected the indiscrimiate deforestation in the provinces of Santiago del Estero and Santa Fe with the 2004 flooding in Santa Fe. If this conection were to be demonstrated, it would constitute an example of the importance of preserving native forests.
5) In less than a century, Argentina went from having 106 million ha of native forests, to 33 million ha.
6) Argentina doesn’t reach the 3000 kg/ha of cereal production, and is way below the leading group (Holland, Japan, and South Korea) which surpasses 5000 kg/ha, and below the world average.
7) Data from 303 protected areas in different protection categories. In the National Park System, only 200,865 ha (0.0007% of the national territory) belong to category I, and 2,584,391 ha (0.0093%) in category II. Within the federal system with provincial jurisdiction, 637,391 ha (0,002%) are in category I and 562,687 ha (0,014%) in category II. In sum, only 0.014% of the national territory is under a strict-protection regime.
8) This within the context of the \”parks & people\” controversy, given that the main argument is that protected areas take away fertile lands for aleviating hunger among surrounding farm villages (World Park Congress, 2001).
9) Center of Studies for the Situation and Perspectives of Argentina (Centro de Estudios de la Situación y Perspectivas de la Argentina), at the Universidad de Buenos Aires.
10) Data from Susana Diaz, Agro 29/05/2005.
11) Extracted from Norma Carriaga’s Le Monde Diplomatique, May 2003.
12) National Institute of Statistics and Census of Argentina www.indec.mecon.ar.
13) The previous rotation model required 50 to 100 ha to amply satisfy the needs of the rural farmer.
14) Agriculture and Farming National Census.
15) Jorge Schvarzer’s “Los desafios de la política industrial” (Challenges of the Industrial Policies) in Eliseo Giai & Juan Carlos Amigo. As opposed to the model: Ideas for a national development strategy, IMFC-IADE, Buenos Aires, 2001.
16) Walter Pengue 2000 \”Transgénicos, Agricultura y Ambiente\” Gerencia Ambiental Nro. 90, Buenos Aires; Walter Pengue 2003 \”El vaciamiento de las pampas\” Le Monde Diplomatique.
17) J. Morello et al. (1991) ¿Granero del mundo hasta cuándo? Agricultura continua y degradación ambiental en el núcleo maicero de la Pampa Argentina (The world’s silo, until when? Continuous agriculture and environmental degradation in the corn nucleus of the Argentinean Pampas). Report Series Num. 3, Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, Centro de Estudios Avanzados.
18) Andelman, M. Y J. García Fernandez. 2000. Una agenda para conservar el patrimonio natural de la Argentina. Resumen Ejecutivo para la propuesta de la Estrategia Nacional de la Biodiversidad. Fundación C&M-FUCEMA-Grupo Nacional de Biodiversidad de la IUCN. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 80 pp.
19) \”In fact, before the option to expropriate the lands that were sold –a drastic solution offered by law, but politically complex and slow– and before the urgency of the situation after the Secretary of the Environment from Salta announced that, within weeks, the entry of chainsaws would be authorized to eliminate the transitional forest between the Yungas and el Chaco –which protected the reserve–, the National Park Administration has requested help from the public, through non-profit organizations, to acquire the higher possible number of land lots on sale and add others, in order to ensure an area equivalent to that sold, able to protect biodiversity, and that at the same time would allow the original wichis and criollo inhabitants to live with dignity…\” (extracted from Editorial La Nacion, May 14, 2005).
ParksWatch – Cono Sur
Author: Adrian Monjeau