November

20 15 NOVEMBER 2015 profiles contents

Rector Staff Writers Carlos Ruta Vanina Lombardi Nadia Luna Director Matías Alonso Diego Hurtado Translation Executive Director Pilar Echave Eduardo Mallo Layout and Design Editor Pilar Echave Bruno Massare Management Photography Editor Secretaría de Innovación Pablo Carrera Oser y Transferencia de Tecnología UNSAM

5 • The Future of the Riachuelo River 11 • Open Science and Horizontal Innovation for Development

ISSN: 2347-0380

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The Future of the Riachuelo River Gabriela Merlinsky is a researcher from CONICET and the Institute Gino Germani of the University of . For more than 20 years, she has been analyzing the environmental situation of the Matanza-Riachuelo basin, as well as the social aspects that left a mark in its history.

The Riachuelo-Matanza river is the most polluted one in ; its course is an open wound that shows the governments’ historic indifference to protection and remediation policies for the environment. However, it is also the reflection of the lack of interest the citizenship has in facing a problem that could be the cause of different ailments for the eight million people that live by its borders.

The situation is not new: in 1871, the works to modify its course had begun; the goal was to make it navigable for overseas vessels and to clean its margins, because the floods caused by heavy rains made pollution reach the adjoining neighborhoods. During the 20th century, a lot of promises were made, but the launch of a decontamination plan was not until 2006, when a lawsuit reached the Supreme Court of Argentina, and it was decided that the administrations of the three jurisdictions that were part of the basin (the nation state, the province of Buenos Aires, and the city of Buenos Aires) had to create a comprehensive plan to clean the river up.

Gabriela Merlinsky has a PhD in Social Sciences and works as a researcher at the Gino Germani research institute of the University of Buenos Aires, as well as at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (known in Spanish as CONICET).For the last 20 years, Merlinsky has been analyzing the environ- mental situation of the Matanza-Riachuelo basin, as well as the social aspects that have made this problem invisible for over a century.

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Why did we have to wait until 2006 to see some work being done In the basin, there are countless organizations and numerous demands. The peo- to clean up the Riachuelo, if the river has been polluted for, at ple living by the margins in informal settlements has a wide range of problems: least, the last 100 years? health issues, transportation needs, and, in the last three or four years, there has been a stronger claim for access to housing. This is mainly because the lawsuit There are many historical reasons. The first one is the prevailing development involves a plan to develop the settlements and shantytowns in the Matanza-Ri- model, which has been highly productivist, centered in the intensive extraction achuelo basin, which will involve large population displacements. of natural resources. Besides, for the City of Buenos Aires, the Riachuelo has always been the border to a hostile place: the Conurbano. The river was the heart of Argentina’s first import substitution process, but before, through much of the 19th century, it was home to the industry and it was considered a sign of prog- ress. For instance, in the paintings by Quinquela Martín, as well as in poetry and literature, the dark color of the river’s water was considered something good, something that had become part of the urban landscape.

How and when did this point of view change?

By the end of the 1990s, I used to work at the Environment and Sustainable Development Secretariat, at the City of Buenos Aires. It was one of the city’s first In connection with transport, do you believe that approving the environmental areas, and it had a program to clean up the river, but it existed only navigation of the Riachuelo would raise awareness about the in paper, there were no concrete measures or actions. The big change came with recovery of the basin? the new millennium, in the light of many environmental conflicts in the coun- try (such as Esquel and Gualeguaychú), which had to do with sanitary landfills, The navigation issue is a very difficult one, because it depends on the size of access to clean water, the pollution of water streams, and, more recently, with the vessels. If we want to authorize ships with deep drafts to navigate the riv- fumigated villages. But the hinge was the intervention of the Supreme Court of er, we would need to dredge it, and that is something that experts on soil and Argentina, when it decided it had original jurisdiction in Beatriz Mendoza’s law- mud do not recommend, since the heavy metals present in the river would cause suit. By saying it was a State issue that had to do with article 41 of the National more pollution, when in contact with water and air. Today, there is navigation; Constitution, which has to do with the right to a healthy environment, and by ACUMAR has two small vessels that make trips every day to check the levees creating the institutional infrastructure (ACUMAR) to make sure this right was that contain floating litter. There are also trips organized by the City of Buenos preserved, the problem was made visible. Aires and ACUMAR, for people to get to know the river.

Was the people that lived by the margins of the Riachuelo aware of At the beginning of the 20th century, people identified themselves their right to a healthy environment or were they more concerned with the Riachuelo. Does this still happen or has people turned with their right to housing? their backs to the river?

In 2006, the lawsuit was over collective environmental damage. Over the years, People cannot be considered to belong to a homogeneous group; the river goes what is said in the judicial arena and what actually happens in the territory are through 14 different municipalities. has an interesting relationship two very different things, because the problem involves eight million inhabitants. with the river; it used to have yacht clubs and some of those spaces have been

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recovered. No doubt identifies itself with the river; La Boca is the Ria- long it will take to recover the basin’s ecosystem. The environment law (Ley Gen- chuelo river. The people in Villa Jardín, in Lanus, lives in the oldest shantytown eral del Ambiente) says it should be reverted to its original form, but that seems of Buenos Aires, which is from the 1930s. There are films that depict that time, very unlikely. Intermediate goals are not clear, neither from the lawsuit, nor from and a lot has been written. In Matanza, there is an area with a very interesting ACUMAR. For instance, what “repairing the basin” means should be defined, nature reserve. Esteban Echeverría has Laguna de Rocha; many people worked what quality of water do we want, and how do we want the basin to be used. to make it a nature reserve, and today there are guided tours every weekend. Having said this, a lot has been done: there is less superficial litter, more acces- The area is huge, larger than the City of Buenos Aires. It depends on where, on sibility to the water stream and its margins, an inventory of the industries in the which neighborhoods and organizations, but I believe there are some interesting basin, and an expansion of the water grid. These measures are very important, identifications with the Riachuelo. However, I could not speak of all of them as but in order to see significant changes, we would need to consider a period of a unified whole. ACUMAR is doing a good work on these aspects. They orga- 30 to 40 years. Hence the concern about who will be responsible for making the nize activities and there is now a science fair at schools, for students to propose changes and whether it will become a State Policy. A critical point is the coordi- innovative projects for the river. There have been photo exhibitions, and the trips nation of the different sectors. To recover the basin, there should be policies for through the river have helped as well. There is a group of people that navigate the health, housing, infrastructure, and transport, all coordinated and involving all river on Sundays on their own account. the concerned jurisdictions.

What is your evaluation of ACUMAR’s management?

ACUMAR has representatives from the three main administrations involved (the nation state, the province of Buenos Aires, and the City of Buenos Aires), and, on a second level, it involves the other town councils as well. However, there are important political tensions between the parties, and agreements are needed in the long run, to be able to move forward. At the very least, the three main par- ties have to provide funds to clean up the river. Currently, ACUMAR is the co- ordinating body held accountable by the Justice, because the lawsuit is not over. It is controlled by a collegial body coordinated by the Argentine ombudsman that involves several government environment protection organizations. Howev- er, the truth is that in the last two years the Court has participated less actively. The Supreme Court removed the judge Luis Armella, who was in charge of the implementation, and now there is a judge that deals with budgetary issues, and another one in charge of the implementation of the measures. Not long ago, one of this judges said that the environmental recovery plan had to be reviewed, be- cause the ultimate goals were missing.

You have been working in the basin for years and have seen how it has changed. What can you say about the basin’s future?

Environmental recovery is a very complex issue. Nobody has said, for sure, how

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Open Science and Horizontal Innovation for Development The search for newer forms of knowledge and for greater citizen participation may open new roads to development. Several experts are designing lines of action to solve problems that are shared by countries in Latin America.

“The region is held back by very particular ways of exploiting natural resources, which are characterized by certain technologies, products, markets, and forms of organization,” said the researcher from the National Scientific and Technical Research Council Anabel Marín, who is a member of the STEPS center in Latin America and the Center for Research for Transformation (known in Spanish as CENIT). To start discussing and transforming these ways, “we can start working on the civilian society to make it question said forms of exploitation, but it is also important to identify the alternatives that are already being implemented–which could deliver different and more sustainable results–, and make them play a key role in the transition to more sustainable systems in this and other economic activities.”

In short, this was the focus of the debate that took place in early November, during the launching of the STEPS center in Latin America, an initiative that is part of a global network of researchers and institutions interested in sustainabil- ity and inclusive development. At the meeting, local and foreign researchers de- bated on common issues regarding development, such as production and access to knowledge, power relationships involved in said production, commodification of information and resources, the role of institutions and regulatory frameworks, and who the actors involved in the production, communication, and appropria- tion of knowledge processes are.

In this context, different projects were presented, such as the Open Source Seed Initiative in the United States, which was an answer to the advancement of pat- enting and the concentration of the seed offer; the project #science4africa, which intends to promote scientific development in that continent; and the setting up of the first communal protocol in Brazil, at the Amazonian community Bailique,

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which seeks to protect the knowledge of those settlers from the commercial in- are thinking on more inclusive innovation ways, because those that have been left terests of large multinational companies, among other things. out have never made any decisions,” said Paula Peyloubet, the researcher from the University of Córdoba and the National Scientific and Technical Research Some Argentine initiatives were presented at the meeting as well, such as the Council that leads the program “Knowledge Co-construction”. Argentine Open Industrial Computer, which seeks to “promote national tech- nological development with an open initiative that involves both open hardware Inclusive Technologies and Democratization of and open software, as well as supporting national companies so that they can Knowledge modernize their products with the most modern tools, all from an open initia- tive,” said the electronic engineer Pablo Ridolfi, in charge of the hardware of the open computer since the project was launched, in 2013. Moreover, he highlight- The search for forms of knowledge different from academic knowledge–such ed that, since then, nearly 15 million pesos in person-hours have been invested as the unspoken one that arises in companies or the pragmatic one in trades–, in this development that today is available for the local industry. “The goal is to together with a greater participation of the citizenship, may be concepts that are trigger structural changes in the way knowledge is produced and used, which key to achieve more sustainable productive models that are more inclusive and does not only have to do with the added value we produce, but with how we democratic, and that respect cultural diversity and the wills of the actors involved produce it, with which tools and processes,” said Ridolfi. in each territory. “In principle, knowledge is scientific knowledge. That is the knowledge that is legitimized, that is believed to be true. In our experience, that knowledge of peo- ple without a university education, who are not academics, and are by no means researchers, but who live their lives with a lot of elements they apply constant- ly to solve problems, is no less important. We should be able to integrate that knowledge to the academic one,” said Peyloubet.

In this regard, some researchers believe that the best way to begin is making knowledge more accessible, for instance, through open science initiatives that, according to Mariano Fressoli and Valeria Arza–both researchers from the STEPS center Latin America and CENIT–, are based in open collaboration and the possibility to include actors from different disciplines and locations in the creation of knowledge. Together, they developed a study that involved sending a survey to more than 19,000 scientists from different institutions, which resulted in a response rate that was lower to 10 percent. “What is interesting is that, from the 1453 answers we received, 362 mention opening practices, both in the design of the research plan and in the gathering and discussion of the information,” says Fressoli, who believes that these practices could help us reach the goals of sus- tainable development and find a way to learn from it to start building new ways Other projects mentioned at the meeting were those promoted by researchers of knowledge that are both efficient and creative, because of being more diverse. from the National University of Córdoba for the production of sustainable hous- ing solutions and for the forestry development in areas of the Litoral and the Arza referred to the role the State can assume, as a coordinator of new knowl- Patagonia, which involved an exchange with the local settlers that were the target edges, and said that “it does not only imply making available a structure that fa- for these technologies. “The current development model excludes people, so we vors collaboration and sharing, but also modifying the incentive scheme, so that 12 13 NOVEMBER 2015 frontiers

it becomes an option for those of us that conduct research in the public system produce to fund other productive activities that are considered less problematic; of science and technology. For this, it is necessary to have an institutional and and, the most aggressive stance, abandoning activities that are based on natural cultural change, because both the requirements of the evaluation system and the resources or stopping their expansion. way our peers see us should change.” “There are more paths and alternatives than the ones that are usually acknowl- edged, and the barriers to growth are usually more political and social, than The Dilemma of Natural Resources economic and technological. Then, the most important thing to consider when speaking of sustainable development are processes: how are decisions made, with In keeping with the ideas of sustainable development and the alternatives to which institutions, and how is society as a whole included in the decision-mak- achieve this, one of the issues debated was the use and exploitation of natural re- ing process,” said Marín. sources, the basis of many of the region’s economies. One of the questions posed was whether it was possible to continue thinking these political policies as we do today, or whether it was necessary to look for a change of paradigm or to question the dominant one here as well.

“Somehow, we have reached a new growth model based in natural resources, but most of the goals that had to do with closing the gap we have with the developed world and with making the growth take place in a context of social equity and environmental sustainability have not been achieved so far,” said the Argentine economist Jorge Katz, who has worked as the director of the Division of Pro- duction, Productivity and Management of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and has published several articles about technology and industrial restructuring in Latin America. According to Katz, growing with natural resources involves “a model of dynamic interdependencies between three different areas of society: production, regulation, and the impact on the local community.” In this regard, he proposed the coordination of the three aspects, as well as between macro and microeconomic policies, taking into account local and regional differences.

“Productive practices and the way the exploitation of natural resources is orga- nized in Latin America involve many environmental and social problems, which have to do with the loss of biodiversity, the degradation of soils, the poor man- agement of chemical products, rural unemployment, and exclusion. This clearly says that any model of development we discuss that does not deal with these challenges will be ignoring one of the main problems present in the region,” said Marín. Moreover, he added that, in this situation, there are generally three stances: denying the problem exists and thinking that, ultimately, these external- ities would be solved with more technological improvements; acknowledging the problems connected to natural resources but focusing on using the income they

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