Infrastructure, territory and conservation: contributions for the debate on development models and their territorial insertion from a case of road infrastructure intervention in the north of Argentina

Abstract

Due to the importance of territorial and environmental conflicts in the context of the deployment of extractive activities over ecosystems considered to be sensitive and socially vulnerable, this issue has been incorporated in global, national and provincial public agendas. The design of interventions oriented towards environmental conservation and/or “sustainable development” constitute an expression of this trend. Also, in the South American region, and in the north of Argentina for our particular case, the advance of productive frontiers has also been promoted by state investment in infrastructure. In particular, physical transport infrastructure is required for the “optimization” of the time-space relation and to reduce logistical costs. In this paper, I explore the case of Provincial Route No. 3 (Chaco Province), a development project of road infrastructure financed by the IBRD that has been promoted as an example of design and planning combining infrastructure oriented to productive development and environmental conservation.