The sky dawned red this Saturday morning (15) in the Argentine capital. The reason for the changed color and the strong smoke that the porteños felt came from Canning, a town in the province of Buenos Aires that houses vacation homes. Firefighters fought the blaze for five days to contain the blaze, which left no injuries.
Other episodes related to the hottest week that Argentina has lived since 1906, the beginning of official measurements, occurred in different provinces. The World Meteorological Organization, linked to the United Nations, said that the situation in Argentina will be critical this summer and warned the authorities that “the heat wave does not affect health, the distribution of water and energy, in addition to agriculture”.
In Cordoba, where there have been major fires in recent years, the authorities evacuated the tourist town of San Marcos Sierras. Firefighters say they had difficulties controlling the fire due to the temperature above 40°C and the strong winds, which extended the amplitude of the region affected by the flames.
In Mar del Plata, a tourist region on the Argentine coast, 27 fires led to hospitalizations of patients with respiratory problems due to smoke ingestion. Of these outbreaks, six were still active. Fire points were also recorded in the region of Bariloche, Entre Ríos and Corrientes.
In Buenos Aires, temperatures remained high throughout the week, with lows of 26°C and highs of 46°C. The heat caused several problems, such as the lack of water in the capital region and in the “conurbano” (populated outskirts of the city) and power cuts that lasted from 10 hours to several days.
On Tuesday (11), 700,000 people were left without energy and water in the metropolitan region. This Saturday, 35,000 were still in the dark. Smoke from the fires also hampered the visibility of the Aeroparque Jorge Newbery, which is located in the city of Buenos Aires, and caused delays in landings and take-offs.
“The heat waves we are experiencing in Argentina are getting more recurrent and stronger, accompanied by droughts and floods. All these phenomena tend to be more intense. They are caused by climate change and human action. In the Argentine case, due to of the advance of the agricultural frontier over the green area that originally existed in the country”, he tells leaf Enrique Viale, founder of the Argentine Association of Environmental Lawyers.
The systematic deforestation of Argentine natural forests began in the 1970s, accelerating in recent decades, due to the good prices of soy in the international market. “The race for deforestation to plant soybeans took off in the 1990s, when the government authorized the production of transgenic soybeans. To give you an idea, the province of Córdoba now has only 3% of the green cover it originally had”, says Viale.
As soy is a product that needs little labor, desertification in several provinces has also been human. Thousands of people have left these regions to join the poverty line of big cities. “This is not sustainable. Any regional government plan has to take into account the need to maintain the diversity of local productions, the dynamics of the economy of small and medium-sized cities”, says Viale.
Desertification in Argentina has been more intense in two regions. In Patagonia, deforestation dates back to the mid-20th century, with the plan to increase the area for sheep farming, soon after, also for agricultural production. In the north, in the region known as Gran Chaco, which also spreads across Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay, but has 60% of its territory in Argentina, there was also great investment in soy production and deforestation of forests, causing major climate changes.
In both cases, an important part of the rural population that had to leave their crops and leave for large cities is made up of native peoples, the Mapuche in Patagonia and the Wichis in the north, who lost their land for the production of soy on an industrial scale.
“Our biggest problem is in the Gran Chaco region. Without forests, there is no rain. Without crops other than soy, the land is exposed to strong sun and erosion for months. Degradation is very rapid. Everything is interconnected.” , says to leaf the biologist Matías Mastrangelo, from Conicet (National Council for Scientific and Technical Investigations).
“If it rains little in the Amazon, there will be few cloud currents from the north and there will be even less precipitation to the south. And in the cities, as much as the drought in the interior seems distant, it is not, because the great droughts, heat waves, floods are related to the system as a whole.”
“The urban population will have to realize, if not for these dramatic weather events, for the influx of people fleeing tragedies in other parts of the country, of products that are now lacking in supermarkets. to all this is the lack of snowfall in the mountain range, which causes the rivers that are born there to dry up. So cities and entire plantations don’t have water, they can’t be irrigated, and therefore it doesn’t rain, and the temperature rises. There are several villages uninhabited because the rivers dried up and people left”, says Mastrangelo.
Since 2009, Argentina has had legislation that classifies green lands that may or may not be deforested by color, according to their strategic position. The red ones are untouchable, the yellow ones are for mixed use, and the green ones can be deforested. The case is that inspection and implementation are carried out not by the federal government, but by the regional ones. Environmentalists are pushing for greater control.
“Social pressure against politicians is the only way I see to make things more balanced with law enforcement. But for now, apart from some groups of young people, more aware of the environment, I don’t see the concerned society as a whole”, says Mastrangelo.
“Then you turn on the television on a week like this and see the experts’ tips for dealing with the heat, drinking lots of water, not doing physical exertion, keeping the places ventilated, but no one talks about the underlying problem, which is to change the system of production and relationship with nature. It’s like in the movie ‘Don’t Look Up’. The meteor is coming, it’s already coming”, concludes Viale.
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