Quimilero Project: Integrating scientific research with communities and participatory conservation in the Argentine Chaco

Protected areas are essential for biodiversity conservation. However, the creation of protected areas often excludes Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLC), who are seen as a threat to biodiversity, and therefore their access to natural resources becomes restricted. This approach is known as fortress conservation and it is a colonialist approach towards conservation because IPLCs are excluded from decision making and often from their own lands and banned from using natural resources in the areas to be conserved, while only governments and professionals have agency to decide the future of these lands. Approaches to decolonize conservation that attempt to integrate IPLCs´ worldviews, local ecological knowledge (LEK) and practices may be highly efficient in biodiversity conservation as well as local development. In the Argentine Dry Chaco region, Quimilero Project frames its conservation efforts in this inclusive framework, aiming to conserve cultural and biological diversity and seeing both as interconnected. This project involves multiple approaches, based on the principles of horizontality, IPLCs´ empowerment and the co-creation of knowledge and conservation initiatives based both on scientific and on LEK. In this paper we explain our work approach in the Argentine Chaco from a decolonizing perspective. We describe two of our programs, community-based wildlife and hunting monitoring and environmental education, to demonstrate what a decolonial approach to conservation can look like in practice.