Approaches and Responses to Climate Change: Challenges for the Pantanal and the Upper Paraguay River Basin

Abstract

Anthropogenic climate change is expected to have serious socioecological consequences around the globe, in particular for wetland areas. That is the case of the Pantanal, a large tropical wetland located in the Upper Paraguay RiverBasin (UPRB), in the centre of South America, where a range of responses are being devised to cope with the negative impacts of climate change. After a review of the most common approaches discussed in the literature, the results of an empirical study conducted in Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay are presented. The research attested that most responses have so far evolved around the principles of systematic adaptation (e.g. technology amelioration) and climate scepticism (e.g. postponement of responses) and, more recently, under the influence of marketisation measures (e.g. carbon trading). However, there is also growing enthusiasm, particularly in Bolivia, for the inclusion of initiatives associated with the architecture of entitlements (e.g. improved access to resources) and climate justice (e.g. compensation for the negative impacts of conventional development). Two important factors that seem to undermine the efficacy of the responses to climate change in the region: the hegemonicinfluence of the agribusiness sector and the relatively low importance of the UPRB for national and trilateral environmental policy-making.