Report Nº: 110916/02/2025
Once again, uncontrolled fire is generating serious damage and controversy. One controversial issue is the ambiguity in determining responsibilities between levels of government. Here, as in other social policy issues, the solution lies in a coordination agreement between the federal and the provincial states.
The fires spread in several provinces and generated confusion in the federal government. At this level, the area responsible for environmental policy is the Undersecretariat for the Environment of the Ministry of the Interior. The person in charge resigned, citing fatigue, probably due to the fire crisis, and the person who replaced her strongly criticized, pointing out that the issues of forests and fires are of low priority in the government’s agenda. This led the presidential spokesperson to disqualify him. At the same time, in no relation to this controversy between officials, the government transferred the National Fire Management Service to Patricia Bullrich’s Ministry of Security.
The National Fire Management Service is an agency in charge of coordinating fire prevention and mitigation with the provinces. With these changes in officials and government departments, the federal government seeks to show a more active role in fire control in the provinces. In other words, the national state intends to do what the provinces are not able to do or are not doing well.
The budget of the Undersecretariat of Environment executed in 2024 was $95 billion, representing 0.1% of national primary expenditure. The composition was as follows:
These data show that the instruments available to the national state for fire management are marginal. Within a very limited national budget for environmental issues, fire management receives a tiny portion. Furthermore, the entire budget executed by the National Fire Management Service is registered in the public accounts with a geographical location in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. This suggests that the national state does not seem to be able to do much in terms of resources and logistics to control fires in the provinces.
Fire control management is conditioned by the federal organization adopted by Argentina. Law 26.815 establishes the National Fire Management System. This system is structured in three operational levels. In the initial fire attack phase, the province is responsible for mitigating the fire. If it considers that its capacity is exceeded, it must ask for help from other neighboring provinces. When the fire exceeds the regional support, the National Fire Management Service acts by providing firemen, hydrant planes, helicopters, trucks and other vehicles. The governance of this system is complex, as prevention and mitigation actions have to be coordinated between the national government and the provinces in the Federal Environmental Council (COFEMA).
To improve fire prevention and control, it is key to organize functions between levels of government. Pressuring the federal government to allocate more resources to make up for the deficiencies of the provinces is not a good strategy. It is to fall into the same error as in the rest of the social functions (such as health, education, social assistance, housing and urban planning) where the Nation overlaps with the provinces –in theory, to help or do what the provinces do not do– so that the responsibilities of each jurisdiction end up being diluted. A more efficient scheme is for the federal level to concentrate its efforts on coordination and for each province to have sufficient resources and capacity to intervene directly to prevent and fight fires and, fundamentally, to be responsible for the results.
Improving the approach to fire management cannot be postponed. The way to do this is not by increasing the overlapping of roles between the federal and the provincial states. This only dilutes responsibilities. The way forward is an agreement on the coordination of functions between the nation and the provinces that establishes the precise responsibilities of each level of government.
