The Gran Chaco Pathways Towards a Sustainable Future 2025

–Value-added products: strengthening sustainable beef and soy value chains through regenerative practices and traceability systems improves competitiveness while mitigating environmental risks, particularly for small- scale producers. –Ecotourism and protected productive landscapes: connecting conservation areas via ecological corridors can establish ecotourism routes, diversifying income sources for producers and supporting biodiversity conservation. 4 Building resilient, multi-stakeholder governance to navigate political shifts and drive sustainable development –Ensuring continuity in sustainability efforts amid political shifts requires coordinated governance among stakeholders, supported by diversified funding and evidence-based advocacy. This approach fosters policy consistency, attracts long-term investments and strengthens resilience against political and economic disruptions. –Jurisdictional approaches: inspired by Brazil’s PCI (Produce, Conserve, Include) strategy, jurisdictional frameworks can harmonize land use across regions, ensuring measurable conservation outcomes alongside economic opportunities. –Tri-national cooperation: enhancing collaboration among Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay is essential to prevent environmental impacts from shifting across borders and to develop unified strategies for land-use planning and natural resource management. Successful transnational initiatives – such as Redes Chaco and MapBiomas Chaco – provide scalable models for coordinated governance and data-driven decision-making. Building on lessons from the Pan-Amazonian experience,3,4 establishing a unified Pan- Chaco framework is essential to respect the region’s socio-environmental diversity while leveraging shared opportunities and addressing common challenges, fostering integrated and effective cross-border approaches for sustainable development. –Multistakeholder approaches: these are essential for driving sustainability in agricultural production, as they bring together diverse actors across the supply chain – including producers, processors, retailers, civil society organizations and governments – to develop collective solutions. These platforms foster collaboration, enabling the alignment of global sustainability goals with regional realities. For example, initiatives like the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (GRSB)5 work across multiple countries to address environmental, social and economic challenges in beef production, promoting best practices that reduce the sector’s carbon footprint, improve animal welfare and ensure the livelihoods of producers.The GRSB works with 13 national roundtables, including those in Paraguay, Bolivia and Argentina, to tailor solutions to specific regional challenges while maintaining a global vision for sustainability. –Evidence-based advocacy: partnerships between academia, NGOs and producers can generate data that highlights the economic benefits of sustainable practices and the costs of inaction, driving policy alignment with global sustainability goals. The Gran Chaco: Pathways Towards a Sustainable Future 6