Deal Narrative 7: Between fortress conservation and participatory development – Lessons from a forest carbon offset project in Salta, Argentina

Ongoing expansion of the agricultural frontier in South America’s native forests continues to drive deforestation and land degradation and jeopardise the livelihoods of forest-dwelling Indigenous and peasant communities. In response, many countries in the region have sought to strengthen forest conservation by implementing more stringent regulatory frameworks, such as those that govern offset projects within the voluntary carbon market. Unfortunately, mounting evidence suggests that the highly land-intensive projects that dominate the landscape of carbon offsetting may in fact further sideline local communities, promote fortress conservation approaches, and exacerbate existing social marginalisation.

In Argentina, the province of Salta has become a pivotal testing ground for land-based carbon offset projects using the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) framework, considering the area’s significant potential for developing large-scale conservation initiatives involving native forests. Salta is also a prominent testing ground to assess how these projects could affect the configuration of territories, institutions, and power relations.

To better understand how global climate change mitigation initiatives like these are being operationalised in contexts of high land-use pressure, this deal narrative focuses on the Selva de Urundel REDD+ project, with this case offering an opportunity to analyse offsetting initiatives from the perspective of land governance and inclusiveness with respect to local communities. The project’s primary objective is to protect native forests and biodiversity by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, but it also seeks to improve the wellbeing of rural populations by increasing their incomes and promoting community-based governance and monitoring. 

While these goals align with the dual environmental and social objectives typical of many offset initiatives, a critical question remains: is the project achieving them in practice? To answer this, we examined how the socio-environmental co-benefits recorded in official reports relate to the accounts of those living in the project’s area of influence.

Authors: Ariela Griselda Salas Barboza, Carlos Ortega Insaurralde, Lucía Cuellar, and Lucas Seghezzo

WHAT ARE DEAL NARRATIVES?

Deal narratives are investigations of specific LSLAs by the Land Matrix regional and global partners that provide an in-depth and detailed analysis of single deals in addition to its global database. This deal narrative focuses on Land Matrix deal #11145. By making this information available, the Land Matrix aims to support broad engagement and information exchange, facilitating the continuous improvement of the data. The information on the deals is based on both secondary research and in-depth field research in the region involving the relevant stakeholders.

Acknowledgements and limitations

The authors thank project representatives, local stakeholders, and community leaders, for their valuable time and insights during fieldwork. This research was conducted within the framework of the Land Matrix Initiative, with institutional support from the National Research Council of Argentina (CONICET) and the National University of Salta (UNSa), and funding from the Land Matrix Initiative. The authors declare no financial interest in the project or in the carbon market. The analysis draws on 10 semi-structured interviews conducted in Spanish between April and December 2025 under informed consent: two with project representatives, two with leaders of two Indigenous communities, four with municipal staff, and two with residents of Urundel. Quotations are the authors’ translations. Participants were reached through snowball sampling entered through the municipality. Municipal networks reach residents and recognised community authorities in the town, but not the dispersed households holding informal livestock posts inside the project area. We did not interview members of any of the five livestock owners who signed grazing agreements with the company and our account of that process relies on project documentation alone. Because fieldwork took place three to four years after the project’s initial consultation and workshop activities, accounts of that period may be incomplete. We were not able to independently verify the project’s own figures, which are therefore reported here as claims rather than established facts. Our findings should not be read as representative of carbon offset initiatives across the region. However, they do offer a documented account of some land rights issues and other potential conflicts that may arise in practice around carbon offset projects. Making such issues visible requires independent, careful, and sustained fieldwork since some of them are not totally covered by certification standards.