The River and the Mosaic

Abstract

The Paraná River is the second longest in South America and has always been a corridor for the migration of flora and fauna across the continent. In recent decades, it became one of the most important economic axes of the continent, crossing some of its most populous areas. However, in 2019, a severe drought event in the Upper Paraná River basin (UPRB) exposed the watershed's structural vulnerabilities, with water flows steadily dropping and causing uncountable economic and ecological losses. Looking at the basin's history, the changes in land cover are the most dramatic, together with the construction of dams and their impact on the landscape. Nowadays, the UPRB corresponds to the model of the Plantation posited by Donna Haraway (Haraway et al., 2015) and explored by authors such as Malcolm Ferdinand (2021). It is a production landscape, with most of the native Atlantic Forest replaced by hectares of monoculture fields or grazing fields for meat production. Workers were brought to newly inaugurated towns, and infrastructure was planned with the goal of exporting these commodities as efficiently as possible. While lucrative, these forms of land use have minimal water retention capacity. Furthermore, there are serious sequel issues with topsoil erosion, water eutrophication, and the silting up of rivers and springs. The hydrologic cycle, originally stable, has been disrupted: all rainwater that falls during the wet season immediately runs downstream, not being retained. The Guarani Aquifer is dropping, creating serious vulnerabilities for the dry season. This project explored how Landscape Architecture as a discipline could help regenerate the water cycle in the Upper Paraná River basin, a proper production landscape. It departs from historical analysis, geographical datasets, literature review, and a field trip. A theoretical framework defines the lens through which the problem of hydrologic disruption is seen, building upon the non-equilibrium and resilience theories (Ahern, 2011); the idea of ubiquitous wetness (Da Cunha, 2018) and, consequently, multi-species approaches (Bellacasa, 2021; Escobar, 2018); and the Casco Concept (Sijmons, 1991). The resulting goal is to build a framework of performative spaces that can withstand disturbances while providing for the human and non-human living beings in the landscape. Such a framework is approached by a series of operative principles, design strategies, for each of the topographic categories in this landscape: headwaters, slopes, and flatlands. These principles are tested through application in a group of watersheds along the Paraná River, chosen due to their representative land use, topography and soil composition, and their easy accessibility for the field trip. The outcomes of this contextual application are a regional landscape plan, plus three zoom-ins in spaces along the same tributary of the Paraná River. The zoom-ins show how the framework of operative spaces is experienced by humans and local fauna, and how water retention features can coexist with economic and cultural activities. The main conclusion is that, if not approached from a purely technical point of view, water retention can be a leverage to enhance a landscape’s resilience and ecological value as a whole.