Public environmental expenditure in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina (1997-2012)

Abstract

The article contributes to the discussion on public environmental issues in the province of Buenos Aires; in particular, it focuses on the analysis of public environmental expenditure during 1997-2012. It considers the estimation of expenditure, identifying the actors who execute and implement programs that allow you to have a reference to the relevance of the issue tacked by the provincial agenda.

The work was done from the budgetary information produced by the General accounting of BAP, which is dependant of the Ministry of Finance, through classifiers used by the province. Firstly it presents the estimation and evolution of environmental expense according to the provincial classification, then it widens with the Classification of Environmental Protection Activities (CEPA 2000). Secondly it characterizes state actors that implement environmental expense and the financed program types. Finally it is presented some preliminary conclusions.

The central input refers that environmental public expenses, later in one decade of increase after politic, social and economic crisis in 2001, does not achieve the convertibility participation levels. Also it emphasizes in the water and sanitation engineering; it has a strong component of participation of centralized agencies in detriment of those that agglutinates the main environmental functions; it is not observed instances of civil society participation in execution; and it adjudge a low relevance to the promotion and education activities in environmental matters.