The Living and Producing in the Chaqueño Forest project incorporates innovative practices such as diversification of forest use and integrated livestock management, benefiting producers in all three countries.
Argentina, 28 January. The Gran Chaco Americano is the largest dry tropical forest region in the world, with an area of more than 1,100,000 square kilometres, distributed among four countries: Argentina (62.19%), Paraguay (25.43%), Bolivia (11.61%) and Brazil (0.77%). This ecoregion is home to great biodiversity and is currently one of the areas of the planet with the highest incidence of deforestation due to the conversion of land to agricultural activities. WWF's report “Deforestation Fronts; Drivers and Responses in a Changing World” indicates that the Gran Chaco Americano has one of the highest levels of deforestation in the world, driven mainly by soybean production and large-scale cattle ranching.
In this context, the EUROCLIMA+ project “Living and Producing in the Chaqueño Forest”, led by the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA), has been developing actions since 2019 to strengthen the socio-ecological resilience of local populations in Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia, through technical and organisational support for the implementation of sustainable production systems, directly benefiting 675 families in the three countries of the Chaco.
Find out where the project was located in Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia.
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“In addition to the growing degradation of ecosystem services in the Gran Chaco, the increasing fragility of the population's livelihood strategies, and the difficulties they face in adapting to reduce the impacts of climate change, there are also conditions of poverty and marginalisation, infrastructure deficits, scarce institutional development and environmental fragility; issues and problems that have been addressed by the project," explains Gonzalo Bravo, researcher at INTA Salta and project director until December 2020.
The Gran Chaco Americano is, in turn, the scene of productive agricultural and livestock enterprises. As these activities are developed in fragile ecosystems and they emit Greenhouse Gases (GHG), the project addresses them through the promotion of collective governance models that allow the implementation of sustainable systems, with the aim of reducing emissions and thus contributing to the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) targets of the three countries.
“The Living and Producing in the Chaqueño Forest project provides evidence on the ground and at different scales on sustainable management models that seek an authentic articulation between production and conservation. Sustainable management of the native forest allows for harmonising and inclusive production, which is clearly taken into account in the NDCs. These alternatives are a priority for achieving the proposed goals of GHG mitigation, carbon sequestration, increased production and their applicability to different contexts thanks to their versatility," says Pablo Peri, the current project director.
Peri also argues that the novelty of the proposal is the integration of four approach components at different scales.
(1) The farm component, which diversifies forest use and proposes the incorporation of integrated livestock management to improve producer practices.
(2) Landscape approaches, which provide a new vision of the scale of management of socio-productive spaces, through the development of sustainable landscapes.
(3) The regional scale that integrates the institutionality and interaction of four countries in the administration of a common space, and the opportunities of a transnational vision on the care of forests incorporating new production and conservation strategies.
(4) And transversally, an approach to governance that considers the inhabitants themselves, different institutions present in the territories, local governments and others that generate spaces for collective management and decision-making.
Sustainable management to improve farm productivity
Having set the challenges, the project will start its activities in March 2019, developing actions to improve the socio-ecological resilience of local populations through the strengthening of forest governance and management mechanisms, which take the guidelines of Integrated Forest Management with Livestock (MBGI), a policy agreed between the portfolios of Environment and Agriculture in Argentina, which is presented as an alternative to traditional silvopastoral models.
The project joined the actions being developed in five pilot areas in the Gran Chaco Americano region: Santa Victoria Este and Anta (Salta, Argentina), San Alberto and San Javier (Córdoba, Argentina), Figueroa and Rio Hondo (Santiago del Estero, Argentina), Villa Montes (Tarija, Bolivia) and Irala Fernández (Presidente Hayes, Paraguay). Assuming an approach based on a concept of shared lands, instead of the traditional "separate lands", it seeks to scale up the criteria and indicators of environmental sustainability, based on a view of productive landscapes, which are productive and environmental units that improve the individual logic that traditionally prevails on the farms. This new approach aims to demonstrate that collective actions aimed at reducing forest degradation can offer better results in terms of sustainable productive management.
The project represented a valuable opportunity to implement these pilot experiences, which seek to corroborate in the territories that through the MBGI and other related methodologies, multiple forest use management policies that include an integral vision of the environment and seek a balance between productive capacity, its integrality and its services to promote sustainable production in sensitive areas from the socio-environmental point of view. This is in contrast to traditional silvopastoral systems, which have not proven to be equally beneficial, both ecologically and economically.
Diego Maldonado, a farmer in the pilot area of the Traslasierra region (Córdoba, Argentina), says that together with the project's technicians, he gained more knowledge for the management of his farm, which improved the productivity of his cattle by increasing the number of cows that became pregnant; he also reduced the loss of calves and worked hand in hand with his neighbours.
“The lands were all open before and today, thanks to the project, which facilitated the construction of pastures, it allows us to have grass that didn't exist before. We have reserve pasture for the cows that are about to start calving. We have managed to get more cows pregnant, which we couldn't do before because they were too dispersed," says Maldonado.
Read the testimony of Diego Maldonado, beneficiary and producer in the Córdoba pilot area
The project also coordinated a series of infrastructure works in the three countries that addressed very specific problems associated with producers' open fields: the loss of livestock and the degradation of forests and soils.
The results achieved on the farms can be organised into 4 areas:
(1) Access to water services for consumption and production through collection and storage systems in community-built cisterns or dams that allow the production of vegetable gardens and animal production (cows, pigs, goats, chickens), taking into account the characteristics of each pilot area.
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| Water storage cistern for productive consumption in San Francisco, Santiago del Estero. |
In the case of the Córdoba pilot area, conduction and storage systems were built and improved in strategic locations for attacking fires early on.
These activities were carried out together with the Champaquí Fire Fighting Consortium.
(2) Restoration and sustainable use of the forest with livestock (based on the MBGI). In Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay, livestock use of the forest was adapted through:
- Management of grazing through the implementation of fences and cattle corrals, which allow the rotation and optimisation of pasture production and consumption.
- Low-impact interventions in the undergrowth, where, without removing the forest mass, the integration of livestock and the implementation of undergrowth pastures are enabled.
- Health and reproductive management of herds (groups of animals of the same species).
- Production and use of fodder reserves (pasture to feed animals such as cows, goats, and sheep).
(3) Added value and access to the market for non-timber forest products:
- The exploitation of non-timber forest products for the production, by producer families, of foods derived from the sustainable use of the forest: arropes (prickly pear, chañar, carob, and others), honeys from the forest, as well as other products such as cheeses and sweets made from goat's milk.
- Marketing of foodstuffs, tinctures and ointments through distribution networks and sales via conventional and virtual means such as trade fairs.
(4) Infrastructure
- Construction of buildings for: beekeeping rooms, establishment equipped for food processing, sales room, storage and marketing of bush products.
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| Sales room of Cchancani, Córdoba (Argentina) |
Lorena Ance, producer of the group from the town of Santo Domingo (Santiago del Estero, Argentina) emphasises that in addition to the infrastructure works, the training they received to improve forest management was also important.
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The technical contribution has been very important because we had open woodland but we didn't know how to work it and how to care for it.
With the training we learned the techniques to know and take care of our plants," says Ance.
Lorena Ance shares the contributions of the project at the pilot site in Santiago del Estero.
New capacities and tools to cope with climate change in the Gran Chaco landscapes
Project actions also focused on the development of technological tools such as landscape and regional maps. In the process, a team of experts in the management of geographic information systems of the three countries defined a set of indicators and a methodological guide for the definition of landscapes (using computerised zoning tools) that served as the basis for the analysis with the relevant actors of each territory involved. The result was the creation of inputs for territorial dialogue, in order to reach agreements on landscapes and their cultural, ecological and productive axes, among others.
The process also improved the capacities of the technical teams to identify, diagnose and plan adaptation strategies that improve the scale of the property and that involve local territorial spaces such as landscapes where the effects of climate change produce negative consequences for their inhabitants, such as water shortages, forest fires or floods.
José Volante, INTA researcher and coordinator of the teams working on the landscape and regional components explains:
"Landscapes are territorial units where conflicts and tensions over the use of natural resources are managed, and we believe that it is a scale of approach that allows us to solve "invisible" problems at the farm (or estate) scale."
José Volante talks about the importance of landscapes in this video
Strengthening governance to improve forest management capacities
In the last two years, an articulation with the INTA project "Socio-environmental alternatives: prospects, observatories and territorial planning for agri-food sustainability" has taken place. As a result of this synergy, in which the aforementioned project provided expert trainers on the subjects and developed ad hoc didactic materials, a series of seminars on future scenarios and strategic prospects were held, providing a public policy perspective on the sustainable development of the Chaco region. These studies show the importance of building a sustainable future for prosperity with equality, which challenges public authorities by promoting a dialogue on three pillars - economic, social and environmental - and which provides an opportunity to guide land-use planning policies with a long-term vision.
“One of the main challenges faced by governments is to govern in a complex, dynamic and uncertain context. In this regard, territorial foresight is a systematic and participatory process that gathers knowledge for the future and builds medium and long-term visions, with the aim of guiding decisions to be taken in the present and mobilising joint actions to build the desired future," says Javier Vitale, coordinator of INTA's project "Socio-environmental alternatives: prospects, observatories and territorial planning for agri-food sustainability".
Given the cross-cutting nature of the governance component, these actions are combined with the activities of the regional component, where, based on the application of a specific methodology and computer tools, a series of possible future scenarios for the Gran Chaco towards 2050 were drawn up. This dialogue of knowledge about the future is a new starting point so that, in the future, the actions carried out in the territories involved will deepen the socialisation of these tools and knowledge that the COVID- 19 pandemic has prevented from crystallising.
In order to ascertain the social perceptions of the relevant actors in the territories, a survey was carried out in conjunction with the Socio-Environmental Studies and Research Group using the Q methodology, a tool that shows different opinions with a scientific basis. It also identifies consensus and disagreement between actors and detects points of low conflict for eventual negotiations.
One of the relevant results of this work was the design and implementation of a computer platform where the software for the entire survey process is hosted. This tool is a contribution of the project to the scientific-university environment, given that the platform will be available in the future for new research that requires the use of the methodology.
With a view towards influencing public policy in the countries involved, work was carried out to analyse policies in the region. The intention was to identify the predominant state policy on forests in each country and to analyse it in relation to other state regulations that modify or complement it. This survey of current laws is followed by an interpretation of the body of state interventions in each country to show how "effectively" conservation, use and land-use change are being regulated in the native forests of the Chaco region.
Rachel Prado, researcher for EMBRAPA, comments on the experience
For his part, Walter Mioni, researcher at INTA and coordinator of the Governance and Social Awareness of the Forests component, explained that one of the most important aspects of the project was the search to make modes of being, producing, and living in the Chaqueño forests, coincide with innovative production models.
“One of the project's objectives is to strengthen collective governance capacities and to move away from the farm logic towards management that is as close as possible to the logic of productive landscapes, because we understand that this is where the productive sustainability of integrated models is most at stake," concludes Mioni.
Learn more about the results of the Governance component in this video of Walter Mioni
Articles published about the project
[June 2021] Free online course: Future land use scenarios with EGO-Dynamics. Link
[September 2020] In Salta, they promote the recovery of wisdom among rural women. Link
[June 2020] Cordoba starts the forest restoration process. Link
[October 2019] ConnectionCOP: Forests are fundamental to sustainable development. Link
[May 2019] Four countries unite to improve resilience in the Gran Chaco. Link
DATA:
- The project Living and Producing in the Chaqueño Forest is part of the "Forests, Biodiversity and Ecosystems" sector of the EUROCLIMA+ programme, implemented by the agencies Expertise France (EF) and the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) GmbH. Find out more here.
- The project has been developed together with partners in four countries: Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA), Argentina. Instituto Paraguayo de Tecnología Agraria (IPTA), Paraguay. Fundación Naturaleza Tierra y Vida (NATIVA), Bolivia. Empresa Brasileira de Pesquiza Agropecuaria (EMBRAPA), Brazil. It has the Cooperative Programme for the Technological Development of Agri-food and Agro-Industry in the Southern Cone (PROCISUR) as an affiliated entity.
About EUROCLIMA+
EUROCLIMA+ is a programme funded by the European Union and co-financed by the German Federal Government through the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), as well as by the governments of France and Spain. Its objective is to reduce the impact of climate change and its effects in 18 Latin American and Caribbean countries by promoting climate change mitigation and adaptation, resilience and investment. The Programme is implemented under the synergistic work of seven agencies: the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), the French Development Agency (AFD), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Expertise France (EF), the International and Ibero-America Foundation for Administration and Public Policy (FIIAPP), the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) GmbH, and the UN Environment Programme.
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