Nature protection as an eco-governmental response to drought in Mendoza, Argentina

Abstract

Drought treatment in Mendoza has been focused on its study as a natural phenomenon and, to a lesser extent, on its socio-political dimension, putting an emphasis on the responses linked to water use in irrigated oases. Nevertheless, looking into this environmental issue from the eco-governmentality perspective, other types of answers can be found regarding the water shortage.

This work revolves around the analysis of the environmental management of the Ñacunan reserve, which is focused on the conservation and restoration of the unirrigated native forest, located in the Eastern side of the province and affected by desertification and soil degradation processes.

From a qualitative point of view, the research implements bibliography and file studies, semi-structured interviews to field informants and Natural Language Processing Tools (NLP).

It is observed that, for the Government, the drought has been a central environmental problem on the agenda and has been operated as a backdrop for other issues of the environmental question (crop irrigation or soil degradation, for example). It is proposed that eco-governmentality answers in Mendoza against the drought are organized in two “linked-blocks”, apparently antagonic, but closely related. On one hand, the drought–use block and, on the other hand, nature’s drought–protection block.