Argentina

In 2019, with the Macri government declaring a national climate emergency, the Argentinian Congress approved a new law on climate change setting out national institutional activities and responsibilities, establishing minimum financial budgets, and specifying requirements for the design and implementation of mitigation and adaptation policies. Subsequently, the country published its first National Climate Change Plan with the commitment "not to exceed the net emission of 483 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) in the year 2030". However, the change in government in early 2020 brings uncertaintly around implementation, with links to these documents no longer live on government websites.

The Alberto Ferndez government has since prioritised addressing the economic crisis that pre-dates the pandemic but has been exacerbated by it, including protecting the oil and gas industry from collapsing prices and demand, while green recovery measures remain largely absent. More recently, with support from the Partnership For Action on Green Economy, the government published a Green Productive Development Plan which attempts to re-align productive industry with the climate agenda in order to improve access to dynamic markets. Narrow in focus, the plan reads as a series of initiatives to support business productivity and competitiveness, and lacks broader consideration of a green economy transition, including longer term national planning or targets.

Argentina has a public consultation mechanism in place, however, consultations are not implemented in a systematic way and generally involve a limited number of participants. Nevertheless there have been some attempts by the government to ensure inclusion, with a gender lense applied to Argentinas 2018 and 2019 budgets and included in its Open Government Plan. The country has several quota laws in place supporting inclusion and equal representation, and in 2019 (under Decree 7/2019) established a Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity. However, across the private sector no evidence was found for government support with employee engagement in corporate governance.

While the government has carried out some very limited activities with the private sector to promote and raise awareness of the SDGs, it has not established any intiatives for businesses themselves to engage with the agenda.

No development of wealth accounts or natural capital sub-accounts at this stage, with Argentina only recently beginning to explore and discuss the concept of natural capital accounting.

The Argentinian government has thus far not engaged with proposals for reforming the financial sector, though financial institutions themselves have begun to take some initial steps. A group of 18 Argentine banks put together and signed a Sustainable Finance Protocol, committing themselves to introducing new financial products and services with positive environmental and social impacts, as well as the optimisation of current risk analysis systems with an environmental and social focus. In 2021, the National Securities Commission of Argentina, one of the few market regulators with sustainability in its mandate, published three guidance documents on Socially Responsible Investment in the Argentinean Capital Market and the Issuance of Social, Green and Sustainable Bonds.

The National Contracting Office, in cooperation with governmental and non-governmental entities, began to work on Sustainable Public Procurement in 2010. Since then there has been no indication of any interest in developing processes for reviewing environmental sustainability of fiscal or monetary policies. However, Argentina did introduce a national carbon tax in 2018, estimated to cover approximately 20% of GHG emissions. The Green Central Banking Scorecard finds that the Central Bank of Argentina has not adopted any green policies or initiatives to date, ranking it bottom among the G20 countries assessed.

During 2018 the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic published a document to guide the development of stress tests in the financial system. Stress testing remains a voluntary exercise, with frequency of testing and the methodology applied left to the financial institutions themselves to determine.

Argentina has had a national carbon tax in place since 2018, covering most liquid fuels at a price of USD$5/tCO2. In 2019 the tax was expanded to cover fuel oil, mineral coal and petroleum coke, but at only 10% of the full tax rate (incrementally increasing to 100% by 2028). The tax is estimated to cover 20% of the countrys GHG emissions, with natural gas, aviation and shipping fuels and exports exempted. While the tax is a step in the right direction, the rate was reduced from an originally planned USD$10/tCO2 and falls well below the minimum for Paris compatibility (at least USD$4080/tCO2 by 2020 and USD$50100/tCO2 by 2030) providing little to no incentive for polluters to change their behaviour.

In 2019, Argentina approved Resolution 447/2019, publishing a National Plan for Adaptation and Mitigation to Climate Change which set out the countrys Paris-aligned objectives and actions, alongside National Sectoral Action Plans spanning the energy, transport, agriculture, industry, health, infrastructure and forestry sectors. The sectoral plans contain the climate change commitments of respective government departments and their roadmaps for mitigation and adaptation. However, the plans are oriented towards climate commitments rather than considering green economy policy more broadly, and the recent change in government brings considerable uncertainty around their implementation.

Argentina has allocated USD$3.6 billion to its newly launched Green SME Program (a component of the national Green Productive Development Plan) which aims to promote sustainable production among SMEs. The program aims to offer over 3,300 companies a variety of free awareness and training workshops, technical assistance, financing and promotion to help them adapt to greener business models and incorporate circular economy principles.

As part of the program, the Secretariat for Small and Medium Enterprises and Banco Naci set up a line of financing with credits of up to $50 million and a subsidised rate for environmental adaptation projects for SMEs. Similarly, non-reimbursable contributions from the Competitiveness Support Program (PAC) are available for up to $1.5 million to accompany 80% of each project on environmental improvement presented by a SME. Another of the lines under the program allocates NRAs of between $3-40 million to finance up to 70% of productive transformation projects, prioritising proposals for sustainable development and eco-innovation.

Argentina also has a National Institute of Associativism and Social Economy (INAES) (which sits within its Ministry of Productive Development) whose mission is to train and advise cooperatives, mutuals and small businesses. While there is some targeted financial support available for social enterprises, the country has only just begun engaging in discussions on establishing a social enterprise legal form.

In December 2020, Argentina presented the countrys second NDC, setting an enhanced, unconditional and absolute emissions reduction target of not exceeding the net emission of 359 MtCO2e by 2030. Climate Action Tracker rates this domestic target as insufficient and inconsistent with meeting the Paris Agreements 2C target. Beyond the countrys NDC there are no indications of any plans to develop formal carbon budgets.

In 2015, Argentina established a renewable energy law (Law 27.191) which aims to incentivise the development of renewable energy generation. The law sets targets for reaching a 8% share of renewables in electricity consumption by 2017 and a 20% share by 2025. More recently, Congress approved a biofuels law, establishing mandatory minimum percentages of biofuels in gasoline, diesel and sugar cane until 2030, and a distributed energy law establishing the regulatory framework for supporting citizen-led energy generation.

An auctioning scheme RenovAr is in place to support Argentinas renewables targets, with four rounds having been completed to date and contracting approximately 4.7 GW of renewable electricity. Resolution 281-E/2017 also established a long term market for renewables (MATER), which supports bilateral agreements between energy producers and large-scale consumers. However, on coming into power in early 2020, President Fernandez has shifted the countrys focus away from renewables, dismanting the sub-secretariat of renewable energy and announcing new deals on nuclear (commencing construction of a 1.2GW power plant financed by the Chinese), the expansion of gas (approving the Vaca Muerta pipeline and ramping up domestic production of gas to 30,000Mm3 over the next four years) and new oil explorations off the coast of Buenos Aires. Meanwhile, the fifth renewables auction which was announced by the previous government back in April 2019 has been left standing, with no plan or current timeline for this to go ahead.

During 2021 Argentina launched a Green Employment Program which aims to finance productive initiatives adapted to sustainable and environmentally friendly practices, which generate decent, safe and lasting working conditions. The initiative forms part of the Ministry of Social Developments Empower Work Program, and seeks to generate new jobs and training opportunities in green sectors. However, the program was launched in the municipality of Ushuaia and plans to expand it nationwide are unclear.

Elsewhere, the Ministry of Labour of Argentina (after an intensive two-year program with PAGE) has added a set of assessments and instruments developed for green jobs promotion and social dialogue on just transition to its dedicated platform Portal Empleo for employment promotion. As part of the partnership, the ministry has also published a Roadmap towards National Green Jobs Promotion.

While Argentina implements a number of programmes to support the poorest and reduce inequality, these are rarely integrated with environmental factors. One isolated example, is the ProHuerta progamme - a policy developed by the Ministry of Social Development and the National Institute of Agricultural Technology which seeks to improve the quality of life and resilience of families in vulnerable situations through growing and agroecological education. The programme promotes food security and sovereignty, through support for agroecological production and access to healthy products for adequate nutrition. Over the past 27 years, ProHeurta has coordinated actions within 6,000 organisations and institutions and worked with more than 542,000 orchards throughout the country.

Through the Civil Society Consultative Council (CCCS), Argentine civil society has an institutional framework for participation based within the Foreign Ministry. CCCS is comprised of a number of different committees, made up of volunteer representatives of community organisations, NGOs, non-profits and social and academic leaders. The Council also supports the Open Government Committee (which aims to foster public engagement on issues such as access to information, the fight against corruption and the monitoring of obligations undertaken by national government), as well as the Committee for Youth Affairs and the Gender Equity Committee.

Argentina has a digital Public Consultation Platform created by the Ministry of Modernisation, which provides a means for citizens to comment on and assess national policy proposals. While more than 30 consultations were carried out on the platform between 2016-2020, with approximately 1,000 citizen collaborations, these were published by just a couple of government agencies (the Modernisation Secretariat, Ministry of Transport and Anti-Corruption Office), limiting the breadth of issues available for engagement.

During the pandemic Argentina launched several social protection initiatives including the Emergency Family Income program which provided direct payments to informal workers and the Emergency Assistance to Work program which reinforced the income of registered workers, while expanding existing social policies such as the Universal Child Allocation. The government, with financial assistance from the Latin American Development Bank, also issues a Tarjeta Alimentar food card program, with the aim of ensuring the most vulnerable have access to basic food.

Within government, a faction of the ruling party has proposed talks on implementing a Universal Basic Salary. However, the project presented in the Senate seeks first to reinforce the income of the poorest post-pandemic and ensure they have basic access to food.

Argentina has a number of long-standing laws in place governing the conservation and protection of the natural environment, including a National Parks Law (protecting 40 National Parks, 7 reserves and a Marine Protected Area covering 4% of Argentine territory), the Law for Environmental Protection of Native Forests, the Natural Fire Management Law and the Glacier Protection Law. During 2020 Argentinas Voluntary National Review set out the country's strategy to achieving SDG 14 and 15 - albeit establishing an incomplete set of targets and plan for implementation. Similarly, a government website containing information on conservation strategies lacks details of any specific targets. The National Biodiversity Strategy expired in 2020 and a new strategy has so far not been released leaving the country with a weak/out-of-date national plan on ocean and land conservation.

Some initial, exploratory discussion around the concept of natural capital accounting but nothing which indicates that Argentina intends to develop a program in this regard over the coming years.

Argentina has only recently begun to engage in discussions on the concept of natural capital accounting, and there is no evidence of intent to create a natural capital committee or similar advisory body at this stage. However, Argentina does have a Federal Council for the Environment (COFEMA) which aims to support the generation of integrated environmental policy between federal and provincial levels of government by engaging representatives from various jurisdictions in assemblies to agree environmental policies.

Limited indication of intent to reform existing fiscal and monetary policies which damage nature. Since 1999 the government has had an investment law in place for cultivated forests, ests, providing economic and tax benefits for planting activities, native forest enrichment, and forestry tasks (pruning, thinning, regrowth management). Since the law came into effect, the National State has invested over USD$250 million in payments benefiting 18,500 foresters planting over 1.4 million hectares of trees. During 2018 Argentina introduced a national carbon tax, estimated to cover approximately 20% of GHG emissions.

In terms of ring-fenced funds for nature, Argentina's environment secretary recently successfully negotiated a 'Debt-for-Nature' swap with the United States, addressing USD$3.1 million or 8% of the debt owed in exchange for environmental protection initiatives which included forest conservation, development of a national seedbank, a moratorium on deforestation permits and the recognition of Indigenous Peoples territories.