Argentina

The Pampas of Argentina and Uruguay is one of the largest uncultivated grasslands in the world. Grasses have dominated the Pampas for at least three thousand years. Starting in the 19th Century eucalyptus trees were planted on small areas, for shade on cattle ranches and for construction materials. Today, the pulp and paper industry and the carbon offsets industry are expanding their operations in South America. Increasingly, they are targeting grasslands for conversion to large-scale industrial tree plantations.

During the first fortnight of July, a wave of very cold weather crossed Argentina. In the warm lands of the Chaco Province, where the mean annual temperature is around 20ºC, temperatures fell below freezing. This abrupt drop highlighted by deaths the full dimension of the health and food emergency affecting Toba, Mocovi and Wichi indigenous peoples in that north-eastern district of the country, where health is undermined by malnutrition, tuberculosis and Chagas’ disease. In a matter of days 10 people had died, by 2 October the toll went up to 16, mainly from the Toba people.

On 6 December, 23-year-old Pascual Pichun Collanao, a member of the Antonio Nirripil community from the Temulemu sector in the southern Chilean commune of Traiguen, formally requested political asylum in Argentina. The young man had been on the run since November 2003 when, with his brother Rafael they decided not to give themselves up to justice after being refused the right to freedom under surveillance because they were unable to pay a court fine. The brothers had been given a 5-year jail sentence for setting fire to a truck belonging to Forestal Minico in March 2002.

Exuberant and majestic forests span the province of Misiones on a plateau with altitudes of up to 800 metres. Its soil is reddish organic matter forming humus up to 30 cm thick that acts like a sponge, retaining water and minerals. Once the cradle of stories and myths, the forest of Misiones is now disappearing. One of the factors causing its destruction is the large scale plantation of alien pine trees, most of which are intended for making pulp, while the others go to timber industrialization.

Uruguay is in the sights of the pulp industry. The Finnish multinational company, Metsa Botnia and the Spanish company Ence are proposing to install two pulp mills to produce bleached eucalyptus pulp (using ECF process with chlorine dioxide) for export, with Botnia producing a maximum volume of 1 million tons per year and Ence 500,000 tons. The pulp mills would be installed on the banks of the Uruguay River, which Uruguay shares with Argentina, in the locality of Fray Bentos.

Uruguay, a territory blessed by a profuse hydrological network, with soils extending over part of the Guaraní aquifer – one of the largest aquifers in the world – bears the “natural country” logo. This could well be so, with its vast prairies and rich productive soils, with an abundance of water, scant industrial development and low population density.

In the Province of Misiones, located in the northeast of Argentina, the authorities of the ancient Mbya Guarani people (see WRM Bulletin Nº 87), who inhabit what is today the Yaboti Reserve, have resorted to criminal justice to denounce the governor of the Province, Carlos Rovira, for genocide.

By the time the international negotiations on climate change in Buenos Aires ended on Saturday 18 December 2004, workers had already started dismantling the conference facilities. Yet after two weeks of negotiations, the best that the more than 6,000 participants could achieve was an agreement to hold another meeting.

The hydropower industry has long relied on subsidies to build large dams. Hydropower proponents are now promoting dams as "climate friendly" in a desperate attempt to gain carbon financing for dams. The International Hydropower Association (IHA), together with the World Wind Energy Association and the International Solar Energy Society, has formed the International Renewable Energy Alliance (IREA). IREA held a side event during the international climate change meeting in Buenos Aires in December 2004.

“To prevent the climate change, we have to change” [COP 10 motto] The possibility of observer status to the 10th Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Climate Change held in Buenos Aires this past December immediately created conflicting expectations in me.

  On 26 November 2004, the Province of Santa Fe legislature adopted an emergency environmental law placing an absolute moratorium on land clearing, logging, deforestation, burning or destruction of woodland and native forests for a period of 180 days, which can be extended a further 180 days by the executive.

The Conference of the Parties of the UN Convention on Climate Change will be meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina this month. Through the media, the public will receive the good news that the Kyoto Protocol has been approved in spite of the refusal of the world's main polluter -- the US -- to ratify it. Most people will thus feel relieved, thinking that the climate crisis will now be averted.