Effects of globalisation and land management on the access of common pool resources in the Argentine Chaco

KRAPOVICKAS, JULIETA; LAURA, SACCHI; ROBERT, HAFNER

Cracovia

Conferencia; International Geographical Union, Regional Conference. Changes, challenges, responsibility; 2014

International Geographical Union

Over the last decades, the Gran Chaco (partially located in Argentina, Paraguay, and Bolivia) ex-perienced intense processes of deforestation, leading to the loss millions of hectares of native forests, even outnumbering those in the Brazilian Amazon. One of the principal motors of this territorial change is considered the process of ?soyization? of the national economies, tied together by incorporation of agriculture as a globalised capitalist business. In this paper we analyse the modes of which the change of local towards global supply of services has affected locals? access of common pool resources (CPR). Taking land use plans, developed by argentine provinces in 2009 as the basis of analysis, we analyse 17 departments of the western region of the Argentine Chaco by using census data and explicit geo-spatial information. The analysis is focused on the study of change over the last two decades in relation to: 1) provision of CPR (forest per capita as proxy); 2) demand of CPR (particularly lumber for cooking); and 3) socio-economic conditions (analysed via the indicator of childhood mortality). Through this type of analysis it is possible to detect where and how many persons under condi-tions of poverty and dependence on CPR are affected by aforementioned processes of territorial change.