Recursos naturales y económicos en disputa. Bosques nativos y fondo compensatorio en la provincia de Salta, Argentina

In November 2007 in Argentina, National Law No. 26,331 (“Forests Act”) was passed, urging each province to carry out a Territorial Planning of Native Forests. Salta was one of the firsts provinces to comply by enacting law No. 7,543 in December 2008. In this article, through an analysis of documental, legal and newspaper material, as well as interviews carried out in the framework of our doctoral research, we make use of the contributions made by political ecology and the project modernity/coloniality to shed light on the processes of commodification and colonization of nature, so as to then propose an analysis of the case of Salta. In particular, we track down the characteristics of the National Fund for the
Enrichment and Conservation of Native Forests established to economically reward those who preserve areas of native forests for the environmental services they provide. This lets us put into tension the different ways of appraising nature in the framework of the dramatic advance of the agricultural frontier that has been taking place in the North of Argentina since the late 20th century, and at the same time, make progress in the analysis of the first steps in the effective implementation of forests conservation policies at a national level.