Talking about trees: The territorial classification of native forests in the Argentinian Chaco

Deforestation represents an important contributor to climate change. For this reason, identifying conditions that enable the adoption of policies halting or reversing this process is crucial to avoid catastrophic climate change. The Argentinian Gran Chaco is a hotspot of deforestation, mainly due to the expansion of capital-intensive agriculture. In Argentina, the introduction of the national forest law (NFL) represents an important step to protect the remaining forests. However, in the Chaco ecoregion, the implementation of the NFL by the different provinces is extremely heterogeneous. Previous research has provided rich descriptions of the dynamics behind the implementation of the NFL. Yet this research, mainly based on qualitative approaches, does not allow for a systematic analysis of the conditions leading to more or less stringent implementations of the NFL. To address this gap, we first combine the socio-ecological systems framework with historical materialism to generate a plausible hypothesis for the heterogeneous implementation of the NFL across the 12 different provinces of the Argentinian Chaco. Specifically, we hypothesise that it is the differences in contextual factors (i.e. differences in forest cover), material/economic conditions (i.e. presence and extent of capital-intensive agriculture) and the strength of pro- and anti-deforestation coalitions, which lead to a heterogeneous territorial classification of native forests across the various provinces. Subsequently, we test the hypothesis by developing thorough case studies via qualitative comparative analysis. This approach allows us to study in a more systematic way the reasons for the observed institutional heterogeneity. The results show that the proportion of native forests characterised as of low conservation value reflects both the environmental context (i.e. the extent of native forests) as well as the material/economic conditions (i.e. the extent of capital-intensive agriculture) and the presence of strong pro-deforestation cultures, expressed via pro-deforestation coalitions.