Search

The unplanned and rapid expansion of metropolitan areas reduces accessibility to existing and often outdated centralized water and wastewater systems. In this context, sanitation policies that focus exclusively on centralized systems become expensive and unfeasible. Using Q methodology, we identified three different social perspectives on onsite wastewater treatment systems (OWTS) in the metropolitan area of the Lerma Valley in northern Argentina. We focused our analysis on the legal, environmental, and technical aspects of onsite sanitation. The perspectives found were: ‘OWTS have advantages’, ‘Hard path for sewerage’, and ‘Process before technology’. We describe the perspectives identified and we provide an analysis of their differences and similarities to discuss their possible policy implications for our study area and comparable regions in the country and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stakeholder engagement is critical to bridge gaps between academic knowledge production and application for environmental resources. Q Methodology, a qualitative and quantitative protocol, is well suited to address environmental planning and management issues through rigorous analysis of stakeholder perspectives. We review several methodological applications that have been used with or within Q Methodology aiming to improve environmental management, inform decision-making and policy, and build consensus. We review their deployment across six domains: (1) Q-set: discourse identification and concourse creation; (2) P-set: strategies to select participants and promote stakeholder engagement; (3) Q-sorts: interaction with respondents during data production; (4) Comparisons: geographic and temporal comparisons; (5) Graphics: visualization techniques to improve interpretation and dissemination; and (6) Methods: the use of complementary and mixed methods. We discuss their utility for environmental planning and management and provide recommendations for integrating these procedures into future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A national “Forest Law” passed in Argentina in 2007 mandated provincial governments to set up and implement land use planning processes in order to protect their native forests and regulate the expansion of large-scale agriculture. A recent study postulates that observed reductions in deforestation in three provinces of the Argentinian “Dry Chaco” ecoregion (namely Salta, Santiago del Estero, and Chaco) can be attributed to the effective enforcement of this law by provincial governments. Yet a more contextualized analysis of the local situation raises a number of objections to the methods used and the conclusions drawn in that study. Our analysis (and first-hand experience) shows that provincial governments were unable to enforce the Forest Law, since deforestation in protected areas continued or even increased after its approval and implementation. Our criticism can be categorized into five major challenges: (1) declining deforestation trends started before the Forest Law; (2) a province with a substantial increase in deforestation was omitted; (3) only part of one ecoregion was taken into account in the analysis; (4) deforestation percentage by conservation categories is better than hectares by province as an indicator of law enforcement; and (5) assigning zones to land units prior to land use planning processes is questionable. These challenges, and the lack of a more complete and nuanced political analysis of the situation on the ground, calls into question both the reliability of the results and the usefulness of the conclusions in the study. Ambiguous or misleading messages from the academic community can have negative political consequences and hinder local conservation efforts in the short term. We should not be so caught up in our desire to see improvements on the ground that we can't see the forest for the trees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite much deforestation in the past, the northwestern Argentinean province of Salta still has more than 6 million hectares of native forests. Land use conversion for agriculture is threatening these forests and the survival of indigenous populations and small-scale farmers. In November 2007, Argentina’s National Congress passed a law to regulate the management and conservation of native forests. This “Forest Law” required provincial governments to implement comprehensive and participatory Land Use Planning Processes (LUPPs). In this article, we describe and analyze, within a political ecology framework, the LUPP carried out in Salta. We focus on the conflicts derived from the different visions of development held by the interest groups involved, and we highlight some contradictions between their discourses and practices. We argue that “development” or “progress,” understood as a process of wealth and power accumulation linked to the possession of land and the production of agricultural commodities, was the leading ideology of political and economic elites in Salta during the LUPP. This ideology, and the established institutional power system behind it, was challenged when the National Supreme Court of Justice decided to suspend logging and deforestation activities on land claimed by marginalized ethnic and socioeconomic groups. We assess the implications of this ruling for the conservation of native forests and local livelihoods. As the final outcome of this case is still uncertain, a number of possible scenarios are presented and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sustainability is usually seen as a guide for economic and social policymaking in equilibrium with ecological conditions. More than two decades after the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) defined 'sustainable development' and put the concept of sustainability on the global agenda, the concrete meaning of these terms and their suitability for specific cases remains disputed. A new conceptual framework to address sustainability issues is needed. The limitations of the WCED definition could be mitigated if sustainability is seen as the conceptual framework within which the territorial, temporal, and personal aspects of development can be openly discussed. Sustainability could be better understood in terms of 'Place', 'Permanence', and 'Persons'. Place contains the three dimensions of space, Permanence is the fourth dimension of time, and the Persons category represents a fifth, human dimension. The five-dimensional sustainability framework is arguably more inclusive, plural, and useful to outline specific policies towards sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate disruptions threaten water systems and undermine economic growth in urban areas. Stakeholder perspectives for desalination and water reuse are not well known in Texas (USA) although utilities are implementing these water augmentation technologies for municipal and industrial purposes. We use a water portfolio-informed deployment of Q-methodology to identify three social perspectives: Diversification is Key, Conservation Before Desalination, and Private Sector Can Do It. We expected to find strongly supportive and opposed social perspectives, but found nuanced and contingent support for desalination and water reuse. Social perspectives were aware of the financial and political costs of desalination and reuse and did not want desalination and water reuse to reduce the importance of protecting currently sources of potable water in Texas. Cross-cutting themes include the predominance of desalination as the policy-relevant water supply alternative and concerns for human capital at levels ranging from desalination plant operators to legal experts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land-use change (LUC) driven by commodity agriculture over the last 20 years has been particularly extensive in the Dry Chaco region of Argentina, which surpassed the Amazon during that time to become one of the top three global deforestation hotspots. Large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) have been cited as a key catalyst of deforestation and related LUC in commodity frontier expansion. However, it is unclear whether contemporary LSLAs that affected the Dry Chaco and other agricultural commodity frontiers globally differed in their mechanisms of LUC from conventional agricultural expansion processes. The diversity of domestic and foreign investors, commodity crops, and LUC dynamics observable in contemporary LSLAs in Argentina's Dry Chaco provide a focused lens, or "case set," through which to consider commodity frontier dynamics in the Salta Province since 2000. We integrated remote sensing analysis and classification of the timing and location of LUC within the boundaries of LSLA and non-LSLA agricultural parcels with survival analysis to draw conclusions about the dynamics of LSLA establishment (i.e., purchase/transfer of ownership/ title change) and LUC associated with production operations. Regionally, spatio-temporal patterns of agricultural expansion into increasingly marginal land were consistent between LSLA and non-LSLA parcels. However, parcel-based analysis revealed differing responsiveness to commodity prices and land-use constraints imposed by the National Forest Law, which translated into diverging LUC trajectories among LSLA and non-LSLA parcels. In particular, LUC on LSLA parcels was significantly slowed by Forest Law constraints, but continued on non-LSLA parcels and a small number of "recategorized" and/or illegally deforested LSLA parcels. Our findings demonstrate the importance of moving beyond large-scale, aggregate spatial assessments of LSLA outcomes that aim to inform policy yet 'black box" actors. Actor heterogeneity must be explicitly accounted for as part of the causal mechanisms that influence land acquisition and lead to differing LUC trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a complex environmental, productive and socioeconomic scenario, on November 28th, 2007, the National Act N°26.331 of "Minimum Standards for the Environmental Protection of Native Forests" (known as the "Forest Law") was sanctioned in Argentina with the purpose of protecting native forests at the national scale. In this article, we aim to critically synthesize the available information about this law ten years after its sanction from an approach that takes into account environmental, economic and social aspects. In particular, we characterize the performance of this law in the Chaco Region in different dimensions, identify its main challenges and describe a series of proposals that from the science and technology sector can contribute to its (re)design and implementation in the context of the revisions of the Provincial Native Forest Land Use Planning Programs. In order to accomplish these objectives, we integrated information available from different sources, such as laws and regulations (national and provincial), scientific literature, reports from government agencies and NGOs and newspaper articles. The Forest Law installed in the public opinion of our country the problems related to the loss of native forests and has positioned itself as the main national instrument for forest conservation. Although deforestation rates lowered in the Chaco Region, there is no clear evidence that this reduction was due to its application. The Forest Law in the Chaco Region presents a series of challenges to improve its performance in terms of its effectiveness, equity and social legitimacy. In this paper, we present ten observations that emerge from the review carried out. On the other hand, linked to these observations, we outline a series of research and action proposals for enhancing the performance of the law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Argentina is a developing Latin American nation that has an aim of achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals for potable water supplies. Their current regulations however, limit the continued development of improved potable water quality and infrastructure from a microbiological viewpoint. This is since the current regulations are focused solely to pathogenic Eschericia coli ( E. coli ), Pseudomonas aeruginosa ( P. aeruginosa ) and fecal indicators. Regions of lower socioeconomic status such as peri-urban areas are particularly at risk due to lessened financial and political ability to influence their environmental quality and infrastructure needs. Therefore, a combined microbiological sampling, analysis and quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) modeling effort were engaged for a peri-urban area of Salta Argentina. Drinking water samples from home taps were analyzed and a QMRA model was developed, results of which were compared against a general 1:10,000 risk level for lack of a current Argentinian standard. This QMRA model was able to demonstrate that the current regulations were being achieved for E. coli but were less than acceptable for P. aeruginosa in some instances. Appropriate health protections are far from acceptable for Giardia for almost all water sources. Untreated water sources were sampled and analyzed then QMRA modeled as well, since a significant number of the community (∼9%) still use them for potable water supplies. For untreated water E. coli risks were near 1:10,000, however, P. aeruginosa and Giardia risks failed to be acceptable in almost all instances. The QMRA model and microbiological analyses demonstrate the need for improved regulatory efforts for the peri-urban area along with improved investment in their water infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Carbon stocks were assessed in three archetypal forest ecosystems in the province of Salta, Argentina, namely Yungas, Chaco, and shrublands located around Chaco. Over a total area of about 7000 m2, detailed measurements of woody biomass were conducted using structural information such as diameter at breast height (dbh), total height, and stem height. At the same time, the wet weight of herbaceous, shrubs, and litter was registered within that area. Soil samples were also collected to determine parameters such as bulk density and organic carbon. The above-ground tree biomass (AGB) was quantified by two non-destructive methods. This biomass was expressed from each reservoir studied in t.ha−1 and the carbon content was then calculated using a factor of 0.5. Carbon stocks in the ecosystems studied were 162, 92, and 48tC.ha−1 for Yungas, Chaco, and shrublands, respectively. Our results show that carbon is concentrated in the soil or as AGB. The latter is the most important reservoir in Yungas, while the soil plays this role in the other two, drier environments. In the province of Salta, native forests play a significant role in the mitigation of greenhouse gases. Our results reveal the magnitude of carbon stocks in some characteristic regional native forests, and estimate their carbon sequestration potential. These results could be useful to inform policy makers in charge of negotiations related to conservation and sustainable management of native forests, and be a relevant input for the formulation of more comprehensive land use planning processes in the region. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Q-methodology is a mixed qualitative-quantitative method used to measure social perspectives on issues relating to sustainability and environmental governance in a systematic, replicable manner. Although its use grown over the past two decades, to date there has not been a comprehensive review of the environmental sustainability Q-methodology literature. Using bibliometric analysis and systematic review, this paper examines the rapid growth in published Q-methodology research on sustainable natural resource management and environmental governance. We analysed and iteratively coded 277 empirical Q-studies published between 2000-2018 to establish research trends, shared gaps, and best practices among environmental social science Q-researchers. We also conducted co-authorship and co-citation analyses to identify research clusters using Q-methodology. We find that, while Q-methodology uses a relatively standardized protocol, considerable heterogeneity persists across such domains as study design, p-set identification, concourse and Q-set development, analysis and interpretation. Further, we identify major reporting gaps among Q-methodology publications where researchers do not fully describe or justify subjective decision-making throughout the research process. The paper ends with recommendations for improving research reporting and increasing the circulation and uptake of up-to-date Q-methodology practices and innovations. • This paper is a systematic review of Q-method socio-environmental research. • Bibliometric analysis shows little collaboration between research groups. • The studies have highly variable application, analysis, and reporting practices. • Results show numerous reporting gaps for researcher decision-making. • Better reporting and collaboration practices will improve Q-method studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea that agricultural production and environmental conservation are almost incompatible has divided nature protectionists, advocates for indigenous peoples, and agricultural producers. Discourses seem to cluster along strong, usually dichotomous alternatives such as "production versus conservation". This apparently hegemonic "common sense" is generally promoted by enviromental non-governmental organizations and groups of large-scale agricultural producers, and it is constantly reproduced and exacerbated by the media, despite its negative consequences for social consensus and policy making. We present here results of a study in an expanding agricultural frontier in northern Argentina in which we identified and described social perspectives on deforestation, land use change, and economic development. Following an empirically based, quali-quantitative approach (Q methodology), we found that actual social perspectives did not conform to a simplistic production versus conservation dichotomy. Our case study suggests that some environmental governance processes may consolidate dichotomous debates that favor the interests of powerful groups of stakeholders. Knowledge on social perspectives could help understand complex social-environmental issues and help policy makers take decisions in the direction of more sustainable and inclusive land use practices. • Four social perspectives on deforestation were identified in Salta, Argentina. • We followed an empirically based, quali-quantitative approach (Q methodology). • Social perspectives did not conform to a production-versus-conservation dichotomy. • Some environmental governance processes may consolidate simplistic debates. • Knowledge on social perspectives could help understand social-environmental issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]