Soybean and deforestation in Argentine Chaco: environmental market initiatives and regulation in a context of soybean export concentration to China

GASPARRI N. IGNACIO; LE POLAIN YANN; GRAU H. RICARDO

Berlin

Congreso; Global Land Project 2° Open Meeting.; 2014

The Argentine Chaco is facing profound challenges related to global demand for soybean, especially from China and Europe. In view of these challenges, new initiatives for environmental governance are emerging, among which a new national forest law, responsible soy standards, and a potential carbon market (REDD+). Since the 1990's, soybean cultivation turned into a major driver of deforestation in the Chaco. This situation was reinforced in 2002 with the irruption of China as major market for Argentinean soybean exports and the local stimulus resulting from currency devaluation. In contrast to Brazil (with adopted transgenic cultivars in recent years), Argentinean agriculture adopted transgenic cultivar of soybean in 1997. As a result, during the past two decades, Brazil oriented export to the European market with restrictions for transgenic and Argentina oriented its exports to Asia but especially to China. The Argentine exports orientation to non-European market opens questions about the potential impact of label initiatives impulse from Europe (e.g. RTRS). Additionally, two national situations create uncertainty about the impacts from soybean labeling: a) the main soybean production (80-90%) is from the Pampa region where there is no deforestation and have areas with production practices easy to satisfy label standards and b) the national soybean sector has strong links with cattle ranching; and deforestation could be driven by soybean economy but implemented to pastures expansion. Argentina recently passed a new forest law that includes forest zonation and payments for ecosystem services that could be reinforced with REDD+ initiative. REDD+ has the potential to promote conservation of the Dry Chaco with alternative approaches and co-benefits. One option is to reduce emission from deforestation, which implies payments to one of the most concentrated economy sectors of Argentina. The alternative option is to reduce emissions from forest degradation by discouraging extensive cattle ranching in forests. This second option would affect a greater number of smaller-scale producers, and could therefore bring greater social co-benefits, but it might actually only delay deforestation, since underlying market forces driving deforestation will remain unaffected.Land use change governance in the Argentine Chaco is based on zonal regulations. However, it is also necessary to incorporate aspects related with drivers of change, not captured at local level: a) the link of the Chaco agricultural frontier with the core agricultural region of the Pampas, and b) the orientation of soy exports towards the Chinese market, without significant requirements for environmental standard.