Opinion Sur Joven

Argentina suffered a tragedy last month. Intense rains and a river bursting its banks caused a landslide and floods, devastating Tartagal (Salta), a city in the north region of the country, close to the border with Bolivia. Several people died and many were injured, and it also caused enormous financial losses. In a structurally poor region, the landslide destroyed the few things many people owned. And now they have nothing.

Natural disasters are frequent. And they’re even more frequent in these times of violent changes in the environment, subject to an enraged weather that insists on reminding us that nature’s the boss, not humans. But when we discover these tragedies could have been -partially, at least- caused by human negligence, the situation changes.

Greenpeace and other non-governmental organizations, along with many Tartagal residents and some experts who talked in the media, assured uncontrolled deforestation in that subtropical rainforest region was an essential factor to cause this natural and human disaster.

Although the Argentine government denied this chain of events, president Cristina Kirchner -surprisingly- enacted the Forest Law, an action she had delayed for more than a year and through which deforestation is limited and controlled to suit the environmental situation of each region.

The reconstruction on the city has just begun and it’s too early to state constructive and concrete judgments. Argentina is going through a year of elections, so every issue tends to be politicized. There are still no significant technical reports to assure deforestation had to do with the disaster.

But Argentina’s erratic environmental policies and local residents’ accounts of the facts make us wonder whether both factors are related. This situation forces us once again to stop letting economic activities interfere with sustainable development. If the relation between both factors is proven, Tartagal may become a good example of the idea that there’ll be no sustainable future for societies unless the ecosystem surrounding them is respected.