CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Argentina is a country rich in biological diversity and contains six wetland regions. Many of them have great cultural value associated with religious, historical and archaeological aspects. The Plata Basin, for example, is shared with 4 countries (Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) and more than 80% of the Argentine population is settled there. In its extension there are World Heritage sites, and also elements of living heritage that are interconnected with the territory of the wetland.Although Argentina has legal norms for environmental protection such as the National Constitution of 1994 and the so-called General Law of the Environment of 2002, and ratified the Convention Relative to Wetlands of International Importance, especially as Habitat for Aquatic Birds in 1991, there are no specific provisions for the protection of wetlands at the internal level. However, for some years, a group of mobilized organizations and citizens have been promoting the need for the approval of a national law on minimum standards for the Wetlands Protection that determines a common floor of preservation that can be supplemented by the provinces. In 2020, 15 draft proposals were presented and, in most of them, the interrelation between wetlands and society is considered. The Covid-19 pandemic, the strong impact of a series of uncontrolled fires of great magnitude in the Paraná Delta, that is part of the Plata Basin, and the lower water levels of the Paraná river whose causes are debated between natural ones and those enforced to human infrastructure works (such as hydroelectric dams).In this poster we try to show the lines of continuity in the draft proposals presented between climate change, protection of the environment and protection of cultural heritage around a particular ecosystem such as wetlands.