In the middle of the night, the Chaco legislature approved the rule that will aggravate the clearing situation in the province, based on a map prepared without community participation and “tailored to the tannin and agribusiness industries.”
While the approval of President Javier Milei’s Base Law was being debated and prepared in the National Congress, a vote was also taking place in the Chaco Legislature that is rejected by an important part of society and can translate into a strong violation of rights. In the middle of the night, the new law on Territorial Planning of Native Forests (OTBN) was voted on: social organizations warn that it will allow the clearing of more than one million hectares and announced that they will take the issue to court.
“We have approved with satisfaction the management of our native forests, despite supranational interests. This regulation will allow agro-industrial projects to be carried out in an orderly and controlled manner by the State, until now it was easier to dismantle and pay the fine, the mountain was left to its fate,” celebrated provincial deputy Samuel Vargas, of the Interblock of Together for Change. , according to the Diario Chaco portal.
However, criticism of this new ordinance had already been warned before the vote by local environmental organizations such as Somos Monte Chaco and by NGOs such as Vida Silvestre and Greenpeace, which will denounce “the illegality of the new OTBN in the Supreme Court.”
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The felling of native species in Entre Ríos is a scourge that threatens environmental balance.
at dawn
“They did it secretly from the public. Very few times they have held meetings at night and they just finished voting at 2:40 in the morning, when the majority of Chaco residents were already asleep,” questioned Débora Páez, from Somos Monte. “The ironic and even embarrassing thing is that it seemed like a fight between children throwing chicanery at each other while discussing the future of many of us,” she told Argentinian time.
“What was voted last night violates the principle of environmental non-regression present in the general environmental law. It is also violative in terms of procedures, since the participatory and technical processes established by the law and the Federal Environment Council were not carried out. It violates the content of the standard, since it does not comply with the requirement of environmental non-regressivity. It violates international laws,” listed the environmentalist.
In the same sense, Greenpeace announced that it will denounce before the highest court the “illegality” of the new law on Territorial Planning of Native Forests. “At 2:40 in the morning, and with its back to the people, the Chaco legislature voted a law that reduces the protection of its forests and will allow the advance of bulldozers on the territories of peasants and indigenous people, and of endangered species such as the jaguar We will take the complaint to the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation,” warned Hernán Giardini, coordinator of the Greenpeace Forests campaign.
“Tailored by tannin companies and agribusiness. We are going to accompany the judicial actions,” anticipated environmental lawyer Enrique Viale.
According to official data, since the enactment of the National Forest Law until the end of 2022 in Chaco, 485,162 hectares were cleared. Greenpeace satellite monitoring detected the deforestation of 57,343 hectares in 2023 alone. “It is important to highlight the illegality of all the hectares cleared during 2021, 2022, 2023 and so far in 2024, since the clearings are suspended by the provincial justice, since October 16, 2020, due to the lack of updating of its Territorial Planning of Native Forests,” said that entity.
The organization warned that the new Territorial Planning of Native Forests of Chaco “was carried out without indigenous participation and will allow the legal clearing of more than one million hectares.”
Regressivity
Wildlife also spoke out against the new OTBN, because it implies “serious setbacks and non-compliance with national and international regulations.”
“The norm provides for a regressive and non-progressive map, going against principles recognized by the Escazú Agreement, the General Environmental Law, the Native Forests Law and the specific regulations of the Federal Environmental Council (COFEMA). For example, it is alarming that it is proposed to move polygons bordering the Copo National Park and the La Pirámide Provincial Reserve to Category III-Green, and close to the Loro Hablador Provincial Natural Park, areas that in the previous OTBN are in Category II-Amarillo, a most restrictive category. This implies regressivity and not progressivity because these areas, with this new law, begin to have less protection, a situation that is aggravated considering that these polygons surround protected areas and constitute part of the buffer zone of these areas, negatively impacting their integrity, connectivity and permanence.”
They also questioned the creation of an OTBN Review and Update Table to review this regulation annually, “violating Law 26,331 and its regulatory decree 91/2009 which establishes that the update must be carried out every 5 years. If the policy ratified with the sanction of this law is continued, this would mean subjecting the forests to an annual review of their level of protection, also removing the possibility of medium-term planning that forest management needs.
“It is extremely serious to approve a map that was not validated within the framework of a participatory process as appropriate, while the technical inputs that generated the approved map are unknown. Likewise, we are concerned about the irregular and express treatment given to the issue by the Chaco legislature,” said Fernando Miñarro, Conservation Director of the Argentine Wildlife Foundation.
Wildlife anticipated that it will ask the National Enforcement Authority that the update of the Territorial Planning of Native Forests does not receive the corresponding accreditation, “for not complying with the Minimum Budgets, established by the Forest Law (26,331). On the other hand, the request is added to the governor of the province of Chaco Leandro Zdero to veto said law, which, if enacted, will make it possible to face claims before the courts in the corresponding jurisdiction.
