Ecosystem Services and Social-Environmental Conflicts in Central Argentina

CÁCERES D

Manchester

Seminario; IDPM Reading Group; 2013

Institute for Development Policy and Management

Drawing upon the concept of accumulation by dispossession, this article analyzes the expansion of agrarian capital in Argentina. A case study illustrates the social and environmental impacts caused by the expansion of agribusiness in Central Argentina and the social struggles ?both rural and urban? that have arisen to resist this process. Although governmental policies after the 2001 crisis differ in many ways from those carried out during the 1990?, current agrarian policies are not significantly distinct from those followed during the pre-crisis neoliberal period. Rather than post-neoliberal, the new model could thus be better described as neo-extractivist. With the connivance of the state, agribusiness is producing the largest ever transformation of natural capital into economic capital in the history of the region. In addition, the latest policy developments suggest that Argentina is at the doorstep of a new and deeper stage of agrarian capital expansion and wealth concentration, this time operating at a much larger scale.