Recovering life in the desert: successful experience with indigenous communities in Mendoza, Argentina

ABRAHAM, ELENA; TORRES, LAURA; SORIA, DARIO; RUBIO, MARÍA CLARA; RUBIO, MARIA CECILIA

Living Land

Tudor Rose

Año: 2015; p. 155 - 158

In contrast to the widespread image of Argentina as the?the world?s breadbasket?, reality shows a vast territory(around 70 per cent) of dry, arid, semi-arid and drysub-humid lands affected by different degrees of desertification.The Monte Phytogeographic Province makes up anarid diagonal that crosses the country with all gradationsof aridity. This ecoregion, devoted to raising cattle and livestock,is the driest of cattle lands in Argentina. Agricultureis confined to areas under intensive irrigation, the winemaking?oases?. Both types of land use are responsiblefor a great part of the degradation, evidenced not only bybiodiversity loss and deforestation of native woodland, butfundamentally by the poverty of the people, most of themsubsistence goat herders who still remain in non-irrigateddrylands in extremely critical survival conditions.The initiative is an integrated one and involves environmental,social and economic dimensions, so duringthese years the results have increased impact in andoutside the community. The case was a Land DegradationAssessment in Drylands pilot site and is currently a pilotsite of the National Observatory of Land Degradation andDesertification, which ensures high visibility and potentialfor replication in areas with similar problems.Current results indicate that dialogue and joint workamong populations, local governments, research institutesand international financing agencies are of great importancefor the coherence, depth and continuity of actions tocombat desertification. It is necessary to work in interdisciplinaryteams, which go beyond the fragmentary visionsof scientific specialities. Experience indicates this as thebest way to work on mitigating the adverse consequencesof desertification and reach its invisible causes, transcendingisolated cases to tackle complex and dynamic problemsat territory scale. Dialogues with local populations mustexceed consultation levels, generating active processes ofempowerment and equality in terms of decision-making.Systematic work with populations affected in their rightsdenotes the importance of attending, in the short term,to the possibilities of social reproduction of the groups,solving their unmet basic needs. Only thus will environmental,social and economic balance be possible