While the Óminubs Law was being debated in the National Congress, more than a thousand kilometers away, the Chamber of Deputies of the province of Chaco carried out its own version of the delivery of resources to large businessmen. As a corollary of a scandalous session that began at ten at night, around 2:40 in the morning last Tuesday, between roosters and midnight, a Territorial Planning of Native Forests (OTBN) was approved that enables more clearings and comes into contradiction with the national law that protects them.
The CONICET scientist Matías Mastrángelo; the head of the Greenpeace Forests Campaign, Hernan Giardiniand the lawyer of the Conciencia Solidaria association, Pablo Fernandez Barriosthey agreed that the new OTBN allows more clearings, and denounce that there were deficiencies in guaranteeing the participation of peasant and indigenous communities.
Likewise, they warned that the clearings carried out illegal will go unpunished if the provincial Executive, headed by Leandro Zdero (Together for Change), finally enacts the law approved by the Legislature of Chaco, province with unicameral system.
“There are sectors that were previously in yellow and were changed to green”said Mastrángelo. That is Areas that should have been conserved are now cleared for clearing.
The scientist added that the information they have about the approved bill, the new regulation enables 1,250,000 hectares in green, which can be disassembled. “They cheat somewhat with the percentages given to each category (green, yellow and red), so that they are similar to those given in the OTBN of 2009, and the environmental regressivity is not noticeable,” said Mastrángelo.
He said that researchers from CONICET spoke in the Legislature about the consequences of the clearings. “The ecosystem’s ability to maintain soil fertility, regulate water processes, provide habitat for biodiversity and sequester carbon to mitigate climate change is lost.”he recalled. The loss of this capacity is 40 percent at the time of clearing, and 80 percent three years after deforestation.
The legal trap
The clearings in the Chaco are seen as illegal for at least three reasons: the first is that the old OTBN expired in 2014; The second is that during the management of Domingo Peppo (PJ) allowed himself a “recategorization” that made it possible to convert red and yellow zones (total and partial protection) into green, where they can be dismantled. The third is that in 2020, due to a presentation of Solidarity Conscience, The Contentious Administrative Court of Chaco prohibited the authorization of any clearing, precisely due to the lack of updating of the OTBN.
Despite this, according to Greenpeace data, in 2023 satellite images detected the deforestation of 57,303 hectares. Another piece of information indicates that since 2008, when the National Native Forest Law came into force, 485 thousand hectares were cleared in that province until 2022.
“There were illegal clearings that put Chaco among the first provinces with the most illegal clearings. And what they began to say is that there were many clearings because they were suspended,” said Giardini, giving details of the most current history of clearings in Chaco.
Among other initiatives, an update of the OTBN dDuring the government of Jorge Capitanich (PJ), who through decree 2157/22 proposed a new planning map and submitted it to the provincial Legislature. But he lost the elections to Zdero and the decree did not come into force as law.
To reach this decree there were instances that for critics of the law denoted legal and regulatory compliance with the participatory process to establish a new OTBN. However, “There was a participatory deficit and more participation of sectors with productive interests in the land, said Fernández Barrios.
Although he did not specifically point it out, different organizations target the agroforestry and tannin sector (with interest in the extraction of the red quebracho that is used above all for the leather industry).
That decree “was challenged administratively, politically and judicially on the basis that it had the same deficits in terms of its construction but also in terms of violation of the principle of environmental progressivity and non-regression,” said the lawyer.
He added that those areas dismantled after the recategorization were white within the new OTBN. This would leave them unpunished in the event of a possible environmental crime. “According to the Deputies of Chaco page, (in the new OTBN law) decree 2157 is ratified,” said Fernández Barrios, but clarified that so far they do not have the definitive text of the law, “nor the necessary certainty of that other maps were presented.”
The lawyer added that if the new order actually ratifies the previous decree, “the objections remain valid.” He even detailed that 53 recategorizations were authorized that allowed the destruction of mountains that for his association “must be recomposed.”
“We seek balance”
Of all the deputies consulted for this note, only the Peronist legislator responded Juan Carlos Ayala, who maintained thatThe criticism comes from “former officials who in 10 years did nothing and only did business with the Chaco forest.” He stated that with the previous decree “they invented a new orange color to favor friends and relatives.”
Ayala assured that The new OTBN emerged from the consensus of the blocks and aims to leave “the bulldozers outside”, especially to prevent them from “destroying everything.” “Now the fines will be more expensive and what we are looking for is to strike a balance” between conservation and production, he said. He added that “30 thousand families” live off the logging industry.
