Civil Society, Environment, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

ENVIRONMENT-ARGENTINA: Still Felling Forests, Despite Law

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Nov 20 2008 (IPS) - One year after a law was passed to preserve native forests in Argentina, environmentalists say that deforestation has continued, although at a slower pace. They blame the situation on the government’s delay in creating a compensation fund for provinces that take action against the clearing of forests.

The law aimed at protecting native forests, approved in November 2007, declared a one-year ban on deforestation and required each province to draw up land use plans that defined which forest areas must remain protected and untouched, which could be used sustainably, and which could be converted to other uses.

The law took 18 months to make its way through Congress and was fiercely resisted by provinces that had authorised deforestation to increase land areas for agriculture and livestock farming. The creation of a National Fund for the Enrichment and Conservation of Native Forests was, therefore, a key component to achieve passage of the law.

But the regulations for the law, and above all the creation of the fund, are stalled in the Economy Ministry, sources from the Argentine chapter of the global environmental watchdog Greenpeace and from the Secretariat on the Environment and Sustainable Development told IPS. Meanwhile, deforestation has continued in some provinces.

Greenpeace, whose activists have been blocking bulldozers since 2002, was the visible leader of a campaign by some 30 Argentine environmental organisations to preserve the forests. As well as lobbying lawmakers, they collected one-and-a-half million signatures from the general public in support of the law.

“If the regulations and the incentive fund are not created, enforcement of the law will be lax,” Hernán Giardini, forest campaign coordinator for Greenpeace Argentina, told IPS.

The provinces need the funds to reinforce government units that deal with forests and to strengthen their capacity to curb deforestation, he said.

Giardini said that the provincial administrations are drawing up their forestry and land use plans and will present their reports this year, according to the deadline they were given. But “the national government has fallen behind,” he said, because it has delayed approval of the regulations, which the Secretariat of the Environment presented four months ago.

The fund will be established with 0.3 percent of the national budget and two percent of all taxes on agricultural, livestock and forestry exports, totalling some 300 million dollars a year. Seventy percent will be used to compensate the owners of protected forests, and the remainder will go to the provinces to reinforce forestry control.

Argentina’s native forests have shrunk from 127 million hectares to 31 million hectares over the past century. However, in the last decade, because of the expansion of farming, forest destruction has accelerated to over 300,000 hectares a year. Just before the forestry law was passed, deforestation increased five-fold in the province of Salta.

The new law, which also stipulates that environmental impact studies must be submitted before tree felling in sustainable development zones is approved, recognises the environmental services that forests provide, such as preservation of biodiversity and soil and water quality, river flow regulation and fixation of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.

In an interview with IPS, forestry engineer Carlos Merenson, the national head of land use planning and conservation of biodiversity at the Secretariat of the Environment, said that the executive branch’s delay in approving the regulations is no excuse for continued deforestation.

“The fund is to assist in achieving the goals of the law, but the law is in force, and the provinces should respect it, even though the fund does not exist yet,” he said.

But he admitted that his records show that the ban on deforestation until land use plans are submitted was not being fully observed. “According to our monitoring, the pace of deforestation has slowed, but we are concerned that it has not stopped altogether,” he said.

The provinces have made “good progress” on the land use plans, and are expected to meet the one-year deadline for their submission, he said. But he added that approval of the regulations and fund would lead to better implementation of the law.

Giardini, although he said the law is “a very valuable instrument,” was more critical of the results so far. “Some provinces, like Chaco (in the northeast), have put forward an area of one million hectares, equivalent to 50 times the size of the Argentine capital, as a forestry zone to be exploited,” he said with obvious concern.

Provincial authorities in Chaco are also studying an investment proposal by a Brazilian steelworks company, to produce large quantities of cast iron using charcoal for fuel. The project has met with strong resistance from local residents, environmentalists and opposition leaders in the region.

The foundry would consume 180,000 tonnes of charcoal a year, equivalent to 400,000 native trees, said the Fundación Proteger, which works in Chaco province. Its planned location is at Puerto Vilelas, on the Paraná river, within the Chaco Wetlands Ramsar Site. The Ramsar Convention was adopted in 1971 to conserve biodiversity and promote the rational use of wetland ecosystems.

In spite of these cases, “we are receiving fewer reports of deforestation,” Giardini said. “Before the law, we got three a week, and now they are down to one call every two or three weeks, so deforestation has fallen, but it has not ceased completely as specified by the new legislation.”