Extent and originality in the creation of national parks in relation to government and economical changes in Argentina

Abstract

Argentina has a long history of protected areas creation which allows assessing temporal, territorial and biogeographical trends in relation to macroeconomic and political changes. In this paper, we created an index to quantify the contribution of each newly created national park to the conservation of the biogeographic diversity of Argentina ecoregions. To analyze how the creation of national parks changed in relation to macroeconomic shifts, we performed superposed epoch analyses for the period 1930-2004 and for the two included subperiods with the same temporal extent, using independently two macroeconomic indicators (Gross Domestic Product and Relative Public Administration Incomes) as the independent variables, and the creation of a national park as the dependent one; and we correlated Gross Domestic Product per capita and Relative Public Administration Incomes with the extent and originality of parks. Finally, we compared extent and originality of national parks between different government periods and between groups of democratic and non-democratic periods of government. Superposed epoch analyses showed that years of creation of national parks tended to lag one year of high Gross Domestic Product growth, particularly during the last four decades, when correlation between macroeconomic variables and creation of national parks were possitive. The “Década Infame” period (1930-1945) was responsible of the major addition of national parks area, and the “Neoliberal” period (1990-2001) showed the highest originality and number of parks created. Non-democratic governments generated the largest area of national parks and democratic governments, the
highest biogeographical originality. Based on these results, the history of Argentine national parks creation can be classified into two major stages characterized by different spatial patterns and causal mechanisms. During the National Defense Stage (from 1930 to the mid 1960s) large national parks where created mostly on international boundaries and, due to the priority assigned to territorial sovereignty, their creation were relatively independent of economic variables. During the Biogeographic Diversification Stage (from the mid 1960s to 2004) many smaller parks where created on diverse ecoregions with growing land price. This stage followed international trends to protect biodiversity and their creation behaved as “luxury goods” in which government investments depended on financial surpluses.