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The distance between the normative wish and the observable results in relation with environmental question suggest that the analyses on the subject of the bureaucratic capabilities of the state is an urgent matter of concern. This work suggest that need of an analysis at the national level in Argentina in order to produce public policies for the environmental sector. The work gives some conceptual and empirical elements to allow the acknowledgment of the bureaucratic capabilities of the state within the environmental field. It also describes the evolution of the subject at the national level and suggest a few propositions in order to led its discussion and future improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intergovernmental coordination is a key factor to achieve a homogeneous implementation in national policies. However, the bibliography of coordination argues that the horizontal coordination (among jurisdictions of the same level of government) does not occur. On the contrary, this paper asks: Which factors produces that the subnational jurisdictions decide to act together to enforce a national environmental policy? Based on comparative analysis of the formulation process of the adequation laws to the National Forest Law in Argentina, I argue that the provinces act together when there are a regularized and legitim institutional frame available and a structures of incentives that produce that the locals politicians decide formulate and enforce an environmental policy in theirs jurisdictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central objective of this work was to realize a survey and analysis about strengths and weaknesses of the main regulation for plant and forest health at a provincial level in Argentina, and regarding the existence of public agencies dedicated to inspection and control in said field. In this way it was analyzed, if the legal tools available are sufficient enough for all social actors involved in activity forestry, can defend their rights favourably. In the first place, we highlight the implementation of a comparative analysis of provincial jurisdictions of Argentina, except form the Autonomous city of Buenos Aires and the national level. In this context it was possible to conclude that the detection of overlapping agencies of control (many times within the same jurisdiction), and in some law cases where the stipulated deadline was not met for the dictation of a regulatory decree, which made it difficult to apply in practice. They glimpsed different levels of normative development in the jurisdictional provinces analyzed, linked with plant and forest health. Also the same ones are not uniform and vary notably according to the region of the country, and it is not always linked to the existence or not of forest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing global trend of judicializing environmental policy has been received with optimism, and in the context of democracies in transition, many have found in an active Supreme Court a potential solution to political impasses. However, as the judiciary is the least democratic of the three branches of government, what impact does judicialization have on democratic accountability? We claim that judicialization generates accountability losses in two ways. First, theoretically, when the Court takes on managerial functions that extend beyond its adjudicative role, it distorts its horizontal accountability functions. Second, empirically, when the Court becomes involved in policy formulation, effectiveness is not guaranteed yet there are no vertical accountability sanctions the polity can impose on judges. We illustrate this argument with an emblematic and instructive case of judicialization of environmental policy in Argentina. We conclude that judicialization to remedy policy failures undermines democratic accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to make an analysis of the main issues of environmental or ecosystem services regulations in Argentina, and a brief reference of a selection of Latin American countries laws (Peru and Costa Rica). We implemented the documental observation and normative comparative methods. One of the main results is that during last year many bills of laws were presented at the National Congress, which guidelines might be useful as precedents. Notwithstanding, in parallel an integral evaluation must be made in order to state if some valid environmental laws should be or not abolished, in order to avoid new contradictions. One of the main limitations for the argentine case, is that there is not a specific regulation about environmental services. We can conclude that in the case of other countries of the region which already have regulated the ecosystem services payment, there are some relevant issues which might be taken into account for future laws and/or public policies in Argentina. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research evaluates the economic and environmental impacts of land allocation to crops and extensive livestock production in the Argentine Pampas using compromise programming. Two economic indicators (gross margin, direct costs) and five environmental indicators (organic carbon input to soil, nutrient balances, agrochemicals impact and soil erosion) are considered. The tradeoff between economic and environmental objectives is assessed and the preferred land allocation schemes determined by the multicriteria model are compared to the current land use in the region of Pergamino, North of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Results indicate that it is important to consider not only the environmental-economic tradeoff in farming, but also the conflict across different environmental criteria in order to determine whether it is reasonable to stimulate activities which improve some environmental indicators at the expense of getting less desirable values in others. For instance, an increase of productivity in agriculture enhances soil organic carbon content but it may increase the risk of contamination with agrochemicals and nutrients. Results are consistent with the notion that extensive crop-livestock production systems are more balanced than continuous crop farming. According to model results, optimal land assignment is a combination of crop and livestock activities (62 and 38% of land, respectively) which is associated with lower agrochemical use, greater organic carbon input to soil, better soil protection from erosion and more efficient nutrient cycling. This land assignment presents a decrease of 20% in the economic gross margin compared to the continuous agriculture scheme that maximizes the economic result. The comparison between current land use and the optimal land assignment based on model results show that farmers assign a smaller fraction of land to extensive livestock production (2–4%), than in the most balanced compromise solution (38%). Results also suggest that it would be appropriate to encourage farmers to reduce the area of land assigned to full-season soybeans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since environmental topic was included in the international agenda, expectations were created about the role of Law as a discipline and tool to mitigate, prevent and compensate anthropogenic ecosystem damages. In this paper there will be an approach to an issue which was little addressed in social, legal and environmental sciences: legal-institutional fragmentation as an obstacle to achieve sustainable development goals, especially in water management. It was implemented as a documental-bibliographical, descriptive and diachronic design. The methodology used is qualitative, mainly legal hermeneutics. Preliminary, we concluded that regulatory chaos which was applied to the Matanza-Riachuelo basin, allowed failed institutional settlements creating an adverse scenery for the environmental paradigm application in different dimensions: to favour corrupted actions, to difficult information access and authorities petitions right, because they both represent an obstacle to achieve citizen's participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Upon the 1972 Stockholm Conference, the first Argentine environmental agency was early created with the return to democracy in 1973. Nevertheless, the creation of state environmental institutions was not incremental and only gained strength in the 1990s. Simultaneously, social environmental organizations have arisen in successive waves from the mid-60s through today. This article traces back the emergence of environmental institutions and the way in which state and social actors have interacted along the process. We argue that social environmentalism and the creation of state environmental institutions moved through separate roads and had no major contact until the beginning of the new millennium, when a new kind of social environmentalism managed to impact the government agenda due to a number of environmental conflicts. We also argue that the journey of social and state environmentalism in Argentina must be understood in the light of international influence (both ideological-normative and financial) and of the dynamics of the political regime. Regarding the latter, we show that both regime change and institutional changes within the regime have favored the development of a public environmental agenda and its connection with the government agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The media, and journalism with them, play a key role in the social construction of environmental problems. This paper aims to describe the perceptions that journalists - understood as fundamental actors in the production of news - manifest about the interest of environmental issues in their own media agenda, the public agenda and the political agenda. The paper presents the progress of an investigation with local reporters in the city of Rosario, Argentina [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike Columbian environmental philosophy, which achieves a certain degree of unity because of the influence of the writings of Augusto Angel-Maya, Argentinean environmental philosophy is more diverse and represents a panorama of views and approaches. Nevertheless, although they could not be said to be environmental philosophy as such, the writings of Rodolfo Kusch could make a significant contribution to environmental thought strongly anchored in the peculiarities of our culture. Alicia Irene Bugallo has worked on themes of ecophilosophy, and has introduced these themes to young people, educators, and the general public. Alcira Bonilla has introduced a type of eco-ethical humanism, avoiding physiocentrism or the sacralization of nature while moving away from anthropocentrism. Unlike Bugallo and Bonilla, whose positions are close to deep ecology, Maria Julia Bertomeu has emphasized the necessity of normative clarification of generalizable rules oriented toward environmental protection. The Marina Vilte School of the Confederation of Education Workers of the Argentine Republic has been an authentic catalyst by educating a new generation of educators in Argentina with a focus on environmental themes. A collaborative group of intellectuals working on critical thinking, created the journal Theomai, led by its coordinator Guido Galafassi, has elaborated a critique of our existing socio-environmental situation. With regard to the mass media, Miguel Grinberg and Antonio Brailovsky for several decades have been important in spreading concerns about environmental issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Specific legislation in Argentina followed in the wake of the 1992 Earth Summit, with increased citizen awareness and growing academic concern from various philosophical perspectives. The current lines of research of the main work groups include (a) interdisciplinary work on environmental ethics and global environmental justice focused on natural resources and ecosystems, (b) the ecologically appropriate roots of the cultural heritage of Western civilization, and (c) gestalt ontology, deep ecology, and ecosophy. The emergence of ecophilosophy has required environmental education to go beyond mere ecological training to include an understanding of the philosophical implications of managing and living with concerns for the environment. Interdisciplinary research has become a steadily growing and promising field that has brought together scholars from natural science, economics, anthropology .philosophy, and social science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This communication discusses on the usefulness of the specific approach of Political Psychology for the analysis of environmental conflicts. In this sense, it begins by outlining the debt that Argentinian Political Psychology has in the treatment of the environmental dimension. Subsequently, three main lines of approach to environmental issues that challenge the discipline are presented: the emergence of new environmental social movements, which generate new forms of political actions; the tensions surrounding the modern notion of citizenship generated from the demands of the environmental social movements and the consequent emergence of environmental citizenship, and finally, the challenges these phenomena involved in the processes of political socialization. In this framework, we discuss the implications not only cientifical but also ethical associated with political psychologist's role as an agent inevitably committed to the changes in its historical time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on past behavioural research which explicitly recognises that ‘actions’ are preceded by ‘intentions’ which are in turn determined by individual mindsets, locus of control, principles of governances and context factors. More concretely, it presents a model that investigates the extent to which environmental behavioural intentions are explained by i) managers' core values, basic assumptions, and beliefs, ii) individual and socio-cognitive frames, iii) principles of governance, and iv) context factors. Context factors include obstacles and drivers of greener behaviours, market pressures, and firm demographics. The resulting theoretical framework is tested empirically through regression analyses that use data gathered from a survey of 536 Argentinean firms in polluting industries. The model performs well, explaining approximately 50% of the variations in the (pro) environmental behaviour of firms. Policy implications are briefly discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Generalized Procrustes analysis (GPA) is a multivariate technique that involves transformations of data matrices to provide optimal comparability. We propose GPA to quantify the concordance among sets of variables that characterize natural, human and productive subsystems. When the land use fits in with the physical support of agricultural production, people''s well-being should be evident in a high concordance between the land use and the social conditions. In a situation of instability each set of variables operates in diverse directions resulting in lower resilience and sustainability. Two GPA were performed, between physical support and land use data sets (concordance=67.4%), and between land use and social conditions data sets (concordance=65.3%). The interplay between the pair of concordance values constitutes a bi-dimensional index which serves as an ecological indicator. Based on bootstrap confidence interval, the 49 counties of the Pampa Ecoregion, Argentina, were classified in medium, high or low concordance. The lack of concordance is an indicator of imbalances which may contribute to guide environmental management. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article analyzes how news management strategies coupled with journalistic conventions affect news coverage of the Asamblea Ciudadana Ambiental de Gualeguaychú in Argentina, a social movement against the establishment of two paper mill plants on the Rio Uruguay. Since 2003, the Asamblea has received wide attention in local and national news. Media advocacy has been central to the Asamblea's political goals. This case offers an opportunity to examine the role of the news media in the definition of environmental risk in a country with weak environmental policies and a weak tradition of environmental reporting. News coverage of the Asamblea confirms the media's penchant for sensational and dramatic events. Also, it suggests that the mainstream media does not necessarily portray social movements negatively. Because the media largely relies on official sources in setting news frames, shifting views about the movement among political elites on news events take attention away from structural processes and environmental policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Se discuten la evaluación y el análisis de las políticas y programas de desarrollo rural y ambiental. En particular, se enfoca en el impacto que generan en la calidad de vida y en el manejo de servicios ambientales. Se presentan seis artículos sobre las experiencias de productores y productoras en Venezuela, Costa Rica, Colombia, México y Argentina.

Focuses on the environmental movements and politics in the La Plata River basin. Information on the boomerang strategy; International norms and domestic environmental institutions in Brazil and Argentina; Details on the Hidrovia project.

El artículo discurre sobre las políticas gubernamentales relacionadas con la administración ambiental, especialmente la gestión de agua potable. Las autoras comentan sobre el caso de Argentina y las políticas públicas para el manejo del agua dulce. También se considera el acceso a agua limpia como un derecho civil.

The article reports that the latest global meeting on climate change wrapped up in Argentina this week, having made only modest steps towards cutting future greenhouse-gas emissions. Delegates from many nations said that the United States and its allies, such as Saudi Arabia, thwarted progress at the tenth meeting of the Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. During the conference, the United States strongly opposed the idea of using any seminars scheduled between now and next November to jump-start discussions about 2012 and beyond. Environmental groups attacked this position as deliberately obstructive. Saudi Arabia also caused dissent at the meeting,by asking for money from the "adaptation fund" to offset the economic losses it will suffer when petroleum exports are reduced.