Climate Change Impacts On The Northwestern Andean (NOA) and Western (Cuyo) Andean Regions of Argentina - Impact of Global Changes on Mountains: Responses and Adaptation - page 476

1. Raising awareness (current action). Raising and promoting awareness
of the risks of climate change among the civil society and policymakers
is a well-tested approach to adaptation. In this direction the federal
agency overseeing the country's wine production and trade has been
promoting meetings among stakeholders to inform and discuss the
future implications of climate change on the quality of grapes and
wines produced in the country, and the present and future relevance of
the wine industry carbon footprint for international trade (PwC 2009).
In the near future countries could implement diverse trade restrictions
and/or duties on high-carbon goods, i.e., goods that even if they had
a low carbon signature in the production chains, they could have a
large carbon signature due to transport. As Argentina is far away from
many wine markets, it should be ready to reduce the carbon footprint
of its wines.
2. Knowledge building (current action). In the NOA region the Regional
Climate Change Network is a binational project between the provincial
governments and the universities of Salta and Jujuy (Argentina) and
Tarija (P. S. of Bolivia). This network promotes studies on the principles
underlying the valuation of environmental services, devise policies of
regional adaptation and mitigation to climate change, and building
databases for monitoring climate change. 10
3. Alternative energies (current action). There are initiatives in the
Puna for heating and cooking with solar energy, and implementation
of alternative energies and production of ethanol in agroindustries in
Salta and Jujuy (http://www.asades.org.ar/). In the province of San
Juan a wind-farm has recently been opened.
4. Water management and governance (future action). A fair water
pricing system should be established in order to induce farmers to take
water as a production cost that might produce negative returns if water
were wastefully used. The fair pricing of water should be concomitant
with a complete and deep overhaul of both the infrastructure, e.g.,
run-down and obsolescence of the control, distribution, and drainage
infrastructure—and the governance, e.g., lack of coordination among
provincial and federal agencies—of the public irrigation systems.
In line with the reasons mentioned above, the future expansion of the
irrigated area should be based on the adoption of localized irrigation
instead of surface irrigation, because the former is more effi cient than
the latter (Howell 2003).
The need for a program for capacity building aimed at extension service
personnel. These personnel should closely collaborate with farmers to
raise their awareness on the consequences of climate change to their
production systems, and advise them on technical, managerial and