ARGENTINA: Auctioned Nature Reserve – Unwelcome New Challenge for Environmentalists

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Sep 6 2004 (IPS) - Environmentalists in Argentina are used to fighting pollution, loss of biodiversity and the risk of extinction of species of fauna and flora. But they are now facing a challenge without any local precedent: the sale of a nature reserve to agribusiness interests.

Environmental organisations, shocked by the move by a provincial government, are actively fighting the measure in court, while central government officials, academics and lawmakers are demanding that the decision be overturned.

But none of the efforts have so far been successful in getting the courts to block the decision by authorities in the northwestern province of Salta to strip a nature reserve of its protected status (known here as ‘desafectar’).

In May, the Salta provincial government decided to auction off most of the land in the Pizarro Reserve, a 25,000-hectare area that is home to a number of endangered species, as well as around 3,000 subsistence farmers and members of the Wichí indigenous community, to agribusiness interests involved in Argentina’s current boom in transgenic soy.

Although environmentalists have not lost hope that the lawsuit filed by several organisations could successfully block the implementation of the decision, the bulldozers continue to tear up trees belonging to native species along the edges of the former reserve while the legal action is pending.

Greenpeace, the international watchdog, is carrying out a campaign to curb deforestation in northern Argentina, and has taken direct action in Pizarro, like chaining up bulldozers to block their approach to the reserve.

The decision to strip the reserve of its protected status “sets an appalling precedent by reversing a protective measure that the provincial government itself adopted (in 1995) because it saw it as necessary,” constitutional lawyer Daniel Sabsay, the director of the Foundation for the Environment and Natural Resources, told IPS.

The Pizarro Reserve is one of the last remaining vestiges of a “disappearing forest system, an ecosystem that serves as a transition between the (semi-arid) Chaco serrano woodlands and the jungle in the foothills of the Andes mountains. If it is destroyed, there are no replicates,” warned Sabsay, whose organisation is also involved in the legal challenge aimed at blocking the sale of the reserve.

In a conversation with IPS, the president of the National Park Administration, Enrique Espina, admitted that the decision to ‘desafectar’ the reserve “is not wonderful news,” even if the Salta provincial government’s argument that the forest there was already severely degraded is accepted, along with its offer to protect another area as compensation.

The former reserve “is an essential corridor” linking different ecosystems, and is also home to an indigenous community – another reason it should be preserved, said Espina.

The Natural Resources Commission in the lower house of Congress has tried to block the provincial government’s decision to ‘desafectar’ the reserve by asking the national government to intervene.

Last month, the Commission also demanded that the country’s forests be declared in a state of emergency and that the logging of native forests be banned.

Environmentalists warn that the soy boom is leading to the destruction of forests and other natural ecosystems, as the agricultural frontier expands.

Espina, however, argued that the centre-left government of President Néstor Kirchner cannot intervene “out of respect for the provincial government’s jurisdiction,” nor does it have the “legal authority to overrule the ‘desafectación’,” said Espina, who is responsible for the country’s parks, reserves and national natural monuments.

The only way to preserve the Pizarro Reserve would be for the central government to purchase it and declare it a national protected area, but there are no funds to do that, he argued.

Sabsay, an adviser to the government on national parks, rejects that argument. “The provinces are not sovereign states, and if there is an ecosystem that is unique in the country, the state must take steps to preserve it,” he said.

The National University in Salta also issued a statement opposing the decision to sell off the reserve. The academics said the measure not only runs counter to the preservation of a unique ecosystem and the survival of an indigenous community, but also sets a very bad precedent.

“The sale of a protected natural area constitutes a legal and political precedent that paves the way for a new turn of the screw in the process of the alienation and hand-over of our national patrimony and natural resources, which began with the fraudulent privatisations,” they argued.

Under the government of president Carlos Menem (1989-1999), most of Argentina’s public enterprises and utilities were privatised through contracts with transnational corporations that have come under fire.

Biologist Sandra Caziani, a professor at the National University in Salta, harshly criticised the sale of the reserve.

“These forests, even if they are not pristine, provide a habitat for a large number of species, ranging from mushrooms to animals like the tapir (a large noctural ungulate), the crab-eating raccoon, the blue-fronted Amazon parrot, and three species of peccary (wild pig),” she told IPS.

Furthermore, “the decision could be replicated elsewhere. For example, in the Copo National Park in the northern province of Santiago del Estero (which borders Salta), the word ‘desafectación’ is already beginning to be mentioned for a specific area where people are living, where eviction would otherwise be very costly,” she said.

Espina denied that any such thing was being discussed in Santiago del Estero.

Three months after the environmental organisations filed their legal challenge, there appears to be “little chance” that it will prosper, at least in the local courts in Salta, according to lawyer Martín Duarte, who represents the local residents of Pizarro, the small town located in the centre of the former reserve.

“From the start, the aim was to reach the Supreme Court,” he told IPS.

Duarte described the ‘desafectación’ and auctioning of the lands, which was carried out with the stated aim of using the funds to build and repair roads in the province, as “absurd”.

The bill that the provincial legislature passed to approve the governor’s decision was aimed at bringing in 21 million pesos (around seven million dollars) for that purpose, while the land was auctioned off for only nine million pesos (three million dollars), he pointed out.