Capturing the multidimensionality of land-use agents in a deforestation hotspot

• Autores: Faingerch, Melina; Kuemmerle, Tobias; Baumann, Matthias; Texeira González, Marcos Alexis; Mastrangelo, Matias Enrique
• Año de publicación: 2025
• Idioma: inglés
• Tipo de recurso: artículo
• Materia: Commodity frontiers; Deforestation; Land-use actors; tropical dry woodlands and savannas
• Institución: Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas

Given increasing recognition that strategies to transition to sustainable land use should be context specific, structuringthe diversity of land-use agents is important. This is particularly so for the world’s tropical deforestation frontiers, where rapid landusechange, driven by diverse agents, leads to stark social-ecological trade-offs. Focusing on the Argentinean Dry Chaco, a globaldeforestation hotspot, we employed archetyping to identify key types of land-use agents using data from a questionnaire survey coveringthree main dimensions: agents’ capital assets (what they have), agents’ activities and management (what they do), and agents’ personalcharacteristics (who they are). We identified five well-differentiated types of land-use agents: forest-dependent smallholders, semisubsistenceranchers, crop–livestock farmers, agribusiness farmers, and commercial ranchers. Characterizing these major agent typesyielded three main conceptual and methodological insights. First, we reveal considerable heterogeneity of land-use agents in theArgentine Dry Chaco, allowing us to move beyond the common yet oversimplified and dichotomic view of agribusinesses vs.smallholders. Second, the agent typology based on all three dimensions captured the diversity of agents much better than any onedimensionaltypology alone, demonstrating the value of richer descriptions of land-use agents. Third, all our agent types sharecharacteristics in some dimensions yet differ in others (e.g., forest-dependent smallholders and crop–livestock farmers were similar inwho they are, yet different in what they do), explaining how more simplistic agent descriptions arrive at oversimplified agent types.Overall, our work highlights how archetyping can structure complex human–environment phenomena, diverse land-use agents in ourcase, for guiding tailored, actor-specific policy interventions.
Fil: Faingerch, Melina. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias. Laboratorio de Agroecología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mar del Plata; Argentina
Fil: Kuemmerle, Tobias. Humboldt-universitat Zu Berlin. Geography Department.; Alemania
Fil: Baumann, Matthias. Humboldt-universitat Zu Berlin. Geography Department.; Alemania
Fil: Texeira González, Marcos Alexis. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Agronomía. Departamento de Métodos Cuantitativos y Sistemas de Información; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisiológicas y Ecológicas Vinculadas a la Agricultura. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Agronomía. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisiológicas y Ecológicas Vinculadas a la Agricultura; Argentina
Fil: Mastrangelo, Matias Enrique. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias. Laboratorio de Agroecología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mar del Plata; Argentina