Paraguayan Cowboys and Deforestation
Can the Chaco region survive

Paraguayan gaucho, northern Chaco ©Richard Bailey

I love Paraguay and I love its people, but it has a problem.

We tend to look at Brazil and the terrible decimation of the Amazon rainforest, especially under the current President Jair Bolsonaro, but its neighbour Paraguay can also lay claim to one of the highest rates of forest loss in the world.

The Gran Chaco is a semi-arid region in the North West of the country, which was once dry forest and savanna, but since 1985 satellite imagery shows that roughly 55 thousand square miles of forest has been converted into farmland and grazing by the cattle ranches. That is an area about the size of New York state.

Paraguay ranks among the top ten beef exporting countries in the world, so cattle farming is very important to the countries economy and its politics…….which means that cattle expansion in the Chaco, with government approval, shows no sign of slowing.

Paraguay also has the highest inequality of land ownership in the world –about 85% of agricultural land is held by just 2.5% of owners.

The Chaco region is home to more than two dozen indigenous peoples as well as over 3,400 plant and 900 animal species, and at the current rate of expansion into the Chaco, the forest and other native vegetation is likely to disappear within decades.

Paraguayan gaucho, northern Chaco ©Richard Bailey

Something needs to be done and of course with the right political and corporate will, something could be done.

A new report by the Supply Change Initiative (SCI) has set out a way for the Paraguayan government and private industry to reduce land degradation in the chaco through better deforestation monitoring.

Paraguayan gaucho, northern Chaco ©Richard Bailey

And yet, I fear the ever growing demand for beef around the world will continue to be the largest cause of forest loss worldwide, adversely impacting the climate, biodiversity and people. So although Paraguay has every opportunity to shift toward large scale sustainable cattle production, which would greatly reduce deforestation….whether or not the government and the farmers can see the benefits of implementing these changes we will have to see…..

Paraguayan gaucho, northern Chaco ©Richard Bailey

Paraguayan gaucho, northern Chaco ©Richard Bailey

I spent a few months travelling around Paraguay in 1994. including on a ranch in the northern most part of the Chaco by the Bolivian border. It was a harsh area to work in, but the Gauchos who worked on the ranches were hardworking and incredibly skilled horsemen.

The portraits we made of the men who worked there could have been taken at anytime during the twentieth century and hark back to a time of the ‘wild west’ and last frontiers, whilst also showing their stoicism, true grit and coolness
['Richard Bailey']
['Environmental Issues', 'Paraguay', 'Climate Change', 'Environment', 'Photography']