Loss of biodiversity and natural resources in the North of Argentina – a new agricultural paradigm?

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Abstract

There is a growing disparity between the publicly stated objectives of affluence for all citizensand the real consequences of certain industrial development policies.The exploitation of natural resources, the use of highly pollutant agrochemicals and large-scalemining at unprecedented levels have been increasing far more than in previous decades. This leadsto deterioration in the natural habitat and the environment as a whole, the loss of foodsovereignty and the worsening of social conditions and standards of living for those who live inthe regions affected.When one observes the large-scale activities in the mining sector, the monocultures of soya and ofagro-fuels, together with the advance of the petrol border into the Argentinean provinces of Formosa,Santiago del Estero, Chaco, Salta y Córdoba, it is clear that a model of environmentalaccumulation that is socially predatory is beginning to dominate:

• What are the fundamental causes of this preoccupant reduction in subsistence options in native villages and in the farming communities of Northern Argentina?
• How is the economic power constellation changing as a result of the increasing expansion of a neo-liberal model?
• Does the State contribute to this process? 

Biography of the Speaker 

Prof Dalmira Pensa, Master of Provincial and Municipal Public Administration, Bachelor in Information Science, is Professor of Social Sciences in the economics faculty of the National University of Cordoba (Argentina), where she is coordinator of the Department of Distance Learning. Dalmira is director, co-director and member of research teams that study the economy created by models of accumulation through dispossession. She collaborates closely with social movements and with organisations that defend the forests, the land, the culture and the life of native people and of farming communities in Argentina.