Landscapes of Loss: Mapping the Affective Experience of Deforestation Among Diverse Social Groups in the South American Chaco

Project Information

lanloss

Grant agreement ID: 846550

DOI

10.3030/846550

Project closed

EC signature date 15 April 2019

Start date 14 April 2020

End date 13 July 2024

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 171 473,28

EU contribution

€ 171 473,28

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - lanloss (Landscapes of Loss: Mapping the Affective Experience of Deforestation Among Diverse Social Groups in the South American Chaco)

Reporting period: 2020-04-14 to 2022-04-13

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

LANLOSS is an anthropological and multidisciplinary project - drawing on ethnography, satellite data, ethnobiology, and local artworks - with an aim to trace the lived social and affective experience of deforestation and its attendant losses in the South American Gran Chaco. Rates of deforestation in the understudied Chaco region are among the highest in the world, and are rapidly impacting the landscapes and livelihoods of Indigenous, peasant, and white settler groups in both shared and unequal ways, whilst heightening historic antagonisms over resources. Yet researchers still know little about the affective drivers and impacts of this problem among local populations. Given that Latin America is home to 50% of the world’s remaining biodiversity, it is critical to uncover the affective and social impacts, as well as the affective drivers, of an expanding deforestation frontier the increasingly rapid loss of dry forest in the Chaco region (Latin America’s second biome after the Amazon) is an urgent matter, largely driven by agribusiness expansion. Therefore the project proposes to deploy ethnographic and multi-disciplinary methods to trace the diverse lived experiences of Chaco deforestation by recording and comparing the distinct memories and feelings of women and men from different social groups that have been affected in shared and divergent ways by the loss of particular landscapes, taking into account the histories of racialized and settler-colonial hierarchies (e.g in the twentieth century cotton plantations) as well as the agribusiness models that have shaped these differences among the distinct groups.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

International Symposium: I organized an end of project symposium about LANLOSS entitled “Plantation Afterlives and Ecologies of Loss” with speakers from different countries and institutions, held at the NICHE Center of Environmental Humanities at Ca’ Foscari (May 2024)

PhD Seminar taught:
Free University of Berlin, Graduate School of Muslim Societies and Cultures (May 2020)

Media appearances:
Radio: “Chaco Deforestation.” Silot Wo Indigenous-run radio show hosted by Wichi poet and journalist Leckott
Zamora, Radio del Centro Cultural Alternativo, Instituto de Cultura del Chaco, Argentina. December 16, 2023.
Podcast: “The Colonial Affects of Environmental Racism.” Hosted by Jonas Bens, in the Affect and Colonialism
Web Lab Podcast. March 1, 2022.
Magazine: “Deforestation cuts through community as well as biodiversity.” Interviewed by S. Ceurstemont in
Horizon Magazine. May 30, 2022.
Newsletters: My research was also publicized to the local community of students and researchers through the
Newsletters of my department at Ca’ Foscari and the THE NEW INSTITUTE Center of Environmental Humanities.

Outreach Ambassador of MSCA to North American Graduate Students:
Gave an invited workshop to graduate students and postdocs at Columbia University about the Marie Curie Actions
and about LANLOSS.

Invited talks:
o “Ecologies of Loss and Multispecies Witnessing at Napa’alpi: the Paintings of Fiorella Anahí Gómez (Qompi).”
Department of Anthropology, University of Bremen, Germany, June 25, 2024. (Online)
o “Ecologies of Loss: Affective Entanglements with Deforestation in the Agribusiness Frontiers of the Argentine
Chaco (Notes from the Field).” Department of Humanities, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, June 24, 2024.
o “El Racismo Ambiental.” Followed by public conversation with Indigenous Wichí scholar Tibisay Zamora. Foro
Hacia una Formación Antirracista en la Educación Superior, Universidad Nacional del Nordeste, Argentina.
November 13, 2023.
o “Landscapes of Loss: The Affective Experience of Deforestation and Agribusiness Expansion in the Argentine
Chaco.” Biogeography Lab Research Seminar, Humboldt University Berlin, Jan 13, 2023.
o “Affect and Racism.” Affect, Politics & Religion Workshop, Museum of Jón Sigurðsson, Iceland. July 29, 2022.
(Online).
o “Settler World-Making Narratives in the Argentine Chaco.” Symposium with Tyrone Palmer, Department of
Philosophy, Freie Universität - Berlin, June 17, 2021 (Online).
o “Affects of Racialization: History, Theory and Environmental Injustice.” Mobility Affects Lecture Series,
Berliner Institut für empirische Integrations und Migrationsforschung (BIM) Humboldt Universität - Berlin,
Feb 10, 2021. (Online)

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

LANLOSS has pushed beyond the state of the art by exploring some of the little known affective stakes of deforestation in in one of the world’s fastest growing deforestation hotspots. Among the various publications produced, my sole authored article in the Journal of Ethnobiology uses an innovative interdisciplinary set of methods and theoretical framings to understanding why certain populations of poor farmers who grieve Chaco deforestation, nevertheless continue to support the agribusiness model that causes it, with grave consequences to their health and wellbeing as well as to biodiversity and carbon footprint.
LANLOSS has also been impactful with regard to the two-way transfer of knowledge, especially in Indigenous-led spaces, including through visual and oral storytelling and through sattelite data. The diffusion of results were transmitted to an Indigenous-run radio show in Chaco at the Instituto de Cultura del Chaco, through my public
dialogue at a forum on environmental racism with an Indigneous Chaco feminist at the local public university (UNNE), and through the transmission of my research as well as sattelite data and articles to the Somos Monte collective of indigenous and non-indigenous forest protectors. I have also transmitted the story of deforestation to European publics through the visual storytelling of paintings by an Indigenous feminist artist Anahi Fiorella Gomez, at various
academic events in Europe.
The importance of these impacts may be liable to grow in the coming years given the growing pressures on Chaco deforestation under the governance of the new presidency who has repealed a number of important environmental protections. LANLOSS has established important contacts on the ground that position me to be able to learn first hand from local sources about the intensification and increased frequency of forest fires, agribusiness expansion, and other threats to biodiversity. This knowledge may also be impactful for better implementing the EU 2023/1115 Regulation on limiting or eliminating the importation of deforestation-related commodities, and the export of products contributing to illegal deforestation. Implementing this measure meaningfully requires intimate in situ knowledge and
analysis of the actors invovled, rather than just bird’s eye level sattelite images, numbers, and legislations that may or may not get applied.

First PPT page of the presentation done in Bremen, June 2024

First PPT page of the presentation done in Ca' Foscari, June 2024

Poster of the workshop held in May 2024