Disputes over common goods and its impact on the appropriation of ecosystem services. The Law for Protection of Native Forests, in the Province of Córdoba, Argentina

Abstract

Drawing upon the four categories that regulate property, access and appropriation of economic goods (i.e., private, public, open access, and common), this paper aims to analyze how the approval of a law that fosters the conservation of native forests a) promotes the enclosure of common goods, and b) causes different impacts among social actors. By using both quantitative and qualitative methodologies and combining different information sources (interviews to different social actors, mass media, and government documents), we analyzed the socioeconomic impacts of the Law for the Protection of Native Forests, in the Province of Córdoba (Argentina). The results suggest that the new law prioritize the concept of private property over customary norms, local arrangements, and flexible access to ecosystem services which are major features of the social and productive approach followed by subsistence farmers. Capitalized farmers, holding higher economic and political power, have access to different mechanisms allowing them to lessen the new-laws restrictive effects, and have better chances to receive monetary compensations from the Estate for payments for ecosystem services. Thus, new social conditions emerge, which translate into economic asymmetries and processes of social exclusion among different kinds of farmers settled in the same territory. Those who hold lower political and economic power are the most vulnerable ones (i.e., subsistence farmers) and therefore are the most negatively impacted by the new scenario. In a globalized world dominated by an economy market that prioritizes short-term profits, native ecosystems face growing extractivist pressures, which is generating high social and environmental consequences. The State has the responsibility to protect these threatened ecosystems and to guarantee social wellbeing. But all new environmental legislation must also consider its possible socioeconomic impacts.