Pizarro Protected Area : A Political Ecology Perspective on Land Use, Soybeans and Argentina’s Nature Conservation Policy

Pizarro Protected Area (Province of Salta, north-west Argentina) can be considered as a marker for the consequences of global change. Over 60% of this protected area was declassified in 2004 by Salta’s provincial authorities and sold as plots for cultivation of soybeans. This triggered a conflict that lasted a year and a half, involving the provincial government, NGOs, academics, indigenous people and the federal government. Pizarro became a textbook case of two conflicting worldviews: Argentina’s predominant, traditional agro-industrial model, currently based on the production and export of genetically modified (GMO) soybeans – a crop that is expanding rapidly at the expense of the Chaco and Yungas forests – and the advocates of land use planning, indigenous rights and the conservation of what remains of Argentina’s biological diversity. The conflict was settled by means of a complex arrangement that has still to be fully implemented. The protected area was saved and entrusted to the National Parks Administration. The present article discusses this case and what it reveals about nature protection and its social implications in Argentina