Country Comments

With its enormous renewable and non-renewable natural resource base and its current consumption and population level, Argentina is currently sustainable. Its population growth rate of just under 1% adds approximately 400,000 new citizens to the country each year. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), some 16 million hectares, almost 40 million acres of Argentina's forest cover have been lost between 1980 and 2000. Deforestation due to agricultural expansion of soybean is threatening the Yungas "cloud forest", and the Chaco ecoregion, one of the largest forested biomes (a major regional group of distinctive plant and animal communities) in South America. There are aggressive targets to expand the agricultural area to increase soybean production for export. (1)

Even though Argentina has a high literacy rate among its citizens and has many highly-educated women, cultural norms still subject women and girls to second-class status, and threaten their opportunity to obtain jobs in the field of their choice. (2) According to the World Bank, as of the year 2016, men over the age of 15 had a 73 percent participation rate in the labor force, compared to 47 percent of women. Argentina had its first female president, Cristina Fernandez De Kirchner, from 2007 to 2015. She was seen as a female role model who empowered young girls and women to strive for higher-up positions and value getting an education.

(1) Study commissioned by WWF to IIED, with the collaboration of IEE. 180 pp.

(2) Borgen Project