RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Argentina has lost almost eight million hectares of indigenous forest over the past three decades, mainly due to the advance of the agricultural border (frontera agrícola) allowing land to be used for agriculture and cattle breeding, even in less arable dry areas. This figure places Argentina among the ten countries with the highest rates of deforestation in the world.
The four northern provinces of Santiago del Estero, Salta, Chaco, and Formosa, located in the semi-arid Chaco dry savannah, account for 80 percent of the country’s deforestation, which continues unabated despite the coronavirus quarantine. The loss of forests is mainly caused by clearing to expand soybean plantations and cattle breeding.
The environmental organization Greenpeace has now published over 300 names of corporations and entrepreneurs who have deforested the South American country in the past 30 years.
Among them are: Eduardo Elsztain (120,000 hectares cleared), Jorge Horacio Brito (50,000 hectares), Paolo Rocca, Eduardo Eurnekian, Marcelo Mindlin, Alejandro Carlos Roggio, Aldo Adriano Navilli, Benjamín Gabriel Romero, Franco and Mauricio Macri, Alejandro Braun Peña, Luis Caputo, Victorio Américo Gualtieri, Alfredo Olmedo, Roberto Urquia, David Lacroze Ayerza, Manuel Santos Uribelarrea, Enrique Urbano Duhau, Orlando Canido, Alberto Verra, César Raúl Mochón, Ángel Sanchís Perales, José Macera, Jorge Alberto Pocovi, John Dieter Kahlbetzer, and Daniel Lifsitz.
Hernán Giardini, coordinator of the Greenpeace Forest Campaign, cautions: “We call by name some of those behind one of the worst environmental crimes our country has ever suffered: deforestation. More forest destruction means more flooding, more displacement of farmers and indigenous communities, greater extinction of endangered species, and more diseases”.
According to him, it is “utterly unacceptable that deforestation continues, considering the health, climate, and biodiversity emergencies we are facing. Governments must stop the destructive ambitions of a few businessmen. The destruction of forests is a crime and we can not lose another hectare’.
The environmental organization is running a petition on its website calling on the governors of Salta, Santiago del Estero, Chaco and Formosa provinces to declare a forest emergency and stop deforestation for good.