By Matías Cena Trebucq.-
In Argentina a known story is repeated. The Government resorted to external indebtedness in dollars this year with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and, now, in the face of the vulnerability of its economic plan – the impossibility of accumulating reservations while the exchange rate is triggered – seeks an agreement of 20 billion dollars with the United States Treasury.
The goal is to reach the elections with an intervened exchange rate to contain inflation in the previous mid -term national elections, which will be held on October 26. These credits are presented as a armor of the economic plan and have been held even by Kristalina Georgieva, former director of the World Bank and current director of the IMF. In reality, its main interest is to ensure that Argentina has the necessary resources to fulfill its payment commitments to the body itself.
What is presented as armor is, in fact, A new trap: financial debt limits economic sovereignty and inevitably leads to greater ecological debt in its attempt to generate currencies as quickly as possible to cover with financial obligations.
Argentina cannot issue dollars. To face the commitments with the creditors, the options are limited: to borrow again – as happens this time – or increase exports. But the margin of indebtedness is not infinite, when this option is exhausted the alternative that remains and has historically used in Argentina is to promote the export sector.
As the increase in productivity does not occur in the short term, which has historically been promoted in Argentina is the weight devaluation to stimulate export sectors. But this mechanism has regressive effects: It makes the cost of living of the population more expensive while favoring the income of a reduced sector, even when they concentrate tax, exchange and customs incentives in primary sectors such as those granted through the Incentive regime for large investments (Rigi).
In practice, this means deepening a reprimand model, oriented to extractive activities, based mainly on three sectors that in 2024 contributed 77.4% of currencies: Agro, Mining and Hydrocarbons. These sectors share a central characteristic: They generate few jobs compared to other sectors such as industry, provide low added value and produce serious socio -environmental impacts which translate into human rights violations and an increase in ecological debt.
In the sector Agriculturalsoy export implies a huge consumption of virtual and nutrient water, expansion of the agricultural border with deforestation and displacement of communities, and the massive use of agrochemicals that pollute and affect rural health. The miningeither lithium or gold, demands a lot of water and energy in arid areas, compromises access to water, contaminates rivers with metals and chemicals, and displaces traditional activities under the discourse of the energy transition. The exploitation Hydrocarbon It uses millions of liters of water per well with a risk of contamination, generates waste, earthquakes and emissions that deepen the climatic crisis, violating basic human rights such as access to water, health already a healthy environment.
On the emission of greenhouse gases both in the agricultural sector and in the fossil sector it is necessary to alert the methane emissions. A much more powerful gas in terms of impact on climate change, but is also a precursor to the tropospheric ozone, generator of respiratory diseases and different cancer variants. Even in its reaction with solar radiation, the performance of several crops decreases.
External indebtedness operates as a structural conditionality that forces to expand the extractive border: More soy, more lithium, more gas and more oil. In this dynamic, the financial debt feeds the ecological debt, and both fall on the same sectors: the territories and communities that see their rights violated to obtain dollars destined to the payment of the creditors.
It is important to understand that these damages that are generated are not “Negative externalities”, but the core of a model that Mercantilizes nature. The ecological debt is not liquidated with maturities: it is transmitted from generation to generation, and leaves ecosystems and rights violated irreparably. The ecological debt does not prescribe or cancel: it remains inscribed in eroded soils, contaminated waters, stripped territories and sick bodies.
Talking about economic armor is a hoax. What is shielded are the interests of creditors, while fundamental human rights are unprotected and ecosystems are destroyed in our country. There will be no possible financial stability by mortgaging water, soils, forests, climate and health.
FARN research area economist
Source: Ambito
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