By Enrique Viale
published in elDiarioar
Tuesday, April 30, 2:40 in the morning, Legislature of the province of Chaco. With their backs to society, provincial deputies voted to modify the map of the Forest Law, allowing more than 1 million hectares to be cleared, razed. They hid one session inside another. The flashes in the Capital (at the same time the Base Law was being discussed in the National Congress) provided the perfect camouflage to approve a major negotiation. Thus, in an express treatment, the Chaco legislature voted a law that dramatically reduces the protection of its forests and will allow the advance of bulldozers on the native forest, territories of peasants and indigenous people, and of endangered species such as the jaguar. , among others.
And everything tailored to the large tanning companies and agribusiness. The Dismantling Mafia in action.
Since the enactment, in 2007, of the National Law for the Protection of Native Forests, each province has to make a map where the native forests are painted – red, yellow and green – for their preservation (Territorial Forest Planning Natives, OTBN). Only in the green area (of low conservation value) is clearing allowed but within the criteria established in the law. This regulation, according to the national law, must be carried out through a participatory process and respecting the environmental sustainability criteria established by the standard.
Chaco carried out its OTBN in 2009. It should have been updated every 5 years, always for more protection, never for less. He never did it, until now when he did it in the opposite sense to the spirit and letter of the Forest Law. A carte blanche to Ecocide. 1,250,000 hectares of native forest at the mercy of the business of a few.
The rule voted at dawn is manifestly illegal and unconstitutional since it provides for a regressive map, going against principles recognized by the Escazú Agreement (of which Argentina is a part), the General Environmental Law, the Native Forests Law and even the lax sustainability criteria of the Federal Environmental Council (COFEMA).
The environmental organization Greenpeace warned that Chaco’s new forest regulations “do not respect the principle of non-environmental regression since it will allow clearing in areas currently classified in Category II (yellow), by moving them to Category III (green), something prohibited by national regulations. This is an area of conservation and buffer corridors for the Copo National Park, the La Pirámide Reserve and the Loro Hablador Provincial Reserve. This puts the survival of large mammals, such as the jaguar, at risk. In this way, Criteria 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 of Environmental Sustainability established by the National Forest Law are not met.”
The new map even aims to “legalize” the property recategorizations (which allowed thousands of hectares to be illegally cleared), granted mainly during the administration of former governor Domingo Peppo, which were carried out against current environmental regulations, as denounced by the APDH organization.
On the other hand, Greenpeace highlighted the lack of participation of indigenous peoples in the development of the new zoning. “No workshops were held in their territories and in their native language, a requirement to comply with the free, prior and informed consultation established in international treaties signed by Argentina. The serious climate and biodiversity crisis in which we find ourselves forces us to put an end to clearing and promote the sustainable management and restoration of native forests, respecting the rights and territories of indigenous communities,” he noted.
As anthropologist and Conicet researcher Malena Castilla points out, and according to data from the Monitoring of Native Forests, in Chaco, from 1998 (the decade in which the use of transgenic soybeans was approved) until 2022, 859,503 hectares were deforested. of native forests. In 2023 alone, more than 57,000 hectares were cleared in that province, completely illegally.
The causes of clearing in Chaco are fundamentally due to two factors:
Firstly, the increase in the frontier of agribusiness (mainly transgenic soybeans and pastures for cattle) on forests and peasant and indigenous territory.
And, on the other hand, to the activity of extraction of tannin, a by-product of the dismantled quebrachos, by the powerful tanning companies. Tannin is used mainly for the processing and tanning of leather and also, to a lesser extent, for the lining of oil pipes. Clearly extractivist and colonial activity (remember the British La Forestal more than a century ago) that promotes an enclave economy, which is carried out in a quasi-mining manner and based on the destruction of the forest. Monopoly controlled by a handful of corporations, always linked to political power, with little local linkage and land concentration (also occurs in soybeans). The mega-company Indunor SA, from the Italian Silvateam group, and Unitan, also from transnational capital, are the two tanning companies responsible for, at least, the loss of 30,000 hectares of forest mass per year in the province.
Chaco is one of the great examples of what we have been denouncing for decades in Latin America: extractive activities only result in more poverty and exclusion. The fact is that despite the brutal decline of the Chaco mountains and the fact that agricultural and livestock production increased its cultivated areas, the poverty and indigence rates of the province not only did not change but actually worsened significantly.
But even here the debate revolves around the confrontation between “environment or development.” It is important to understand that behind the destruction of the Chaco mountain there is a concentrated, million-dollar political/corporate machinery that enriches itself and pulls the strings of the province according to its own interests. Sociology has dubbed this behavior “the Revolving Door.” Officials/Businessmen who pass from one side to the other of the counter without concealment and to promote their own businesses. This is not only outrageous and immoral but is also considered a crime by our legislation: “negotiations incompatible with the exercise of public functions”, in accordance with article 265 of the Penal Code.
With the Greenpeace organization we will go before the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation to denounce this illegality and request that, through a precautionary measure, it suspends the application of this regulatory regression. We will do it in the cause known as “Yaguareté” (because we started it in the name and representation of that animal species that is almost extinct as a result of the loss of its habitat, the forest). Initiated in 2019 before the highest Court, the defendants are the provinces of Chaco, Formosa, Santiago del Estero and Salta and the National State and National Parks in preserving native forests in one of the most cleared areas in the world (the Great Argentine Chaco).
We will also accompany the judicial actions carried out by local organizations, such as Somos Monte or Conciencia Solidaria, which historically and bravely put their efforts into protecting the forests. With an independent justice there would be no doubt about the judicial suspension of the new order that allows Ecocide, the illegality and unconstitutionality is so manifest that a major process is not required.
But it will not be enough to achieve judicial annulment of the regulatory regression that was voted in the Chaco Legislature. We must go further. It is essential to dismantle this Chaco Clearing Mafia and eliminate its co-optation over the Chaco State (in its three powers). That criminal organization that enriches itself at the expense of Ecocide, leaving exclusion, poverty and destruction. If it continues to operate, the future of one of the most important ecosystems in South America, the great Argentine Chaco (and the population, flora and fauna that live there) is destined only for its definitive disappearance.
