Navigating a Trojan Horse in the Last of the Wild: Pine Trees, Agroforestry, and Land Zoning Assemble the Landscape Resilience Dilemma in Patagonia

The resilience of landscapes is increasingly compromised, even in regions with minimal human influence, such as cool-temperate forests. Deforestation, climate change, and natural hazards are threatening these last wild areas, endangering biodiversity, carbon-storing soils, and rural livelihoods. Empirical case studies provide critical insights as an “early warning system,” to help anticipate land use risks and identify strategies to enhance landscape resilience in the face of these challenges. For example, in the Chilean Patagonian region of Aysén, forest plantations with exotic tree species and spatial planning with land zoning are intended to ensure landscape resilience. With the help of planning evaluation, using a combination of conformance and performance approaches, we analyze whether this set of instruments can address the risks of biodiversity and soil loss, land-use-related natural hazards and disregard for (indigenous) risk perceptions. Analyzing the land zoning critically, we argue that eventhough regional spatial planning in Aysén is dedicated to sustainable land use, land zoning is not in conformity with its environmental objectives of eradicating invasive species, is expected to performe low in mitigating erosion and natural hazards, and is not adressing local risk perception. This is particularly evident in the fact that the resilience potentials that agroforestry practices could offer cannot unfold. The agroforestry concept is used as a land use category in land zoning to promote the expansion of further forest plantations with exotic tree species, conflicting with local risk perception and traditional rural livelihoods. Thus, agroforestry becomes a trojan horse, with limited or even counterproductive effects on landscape resilience. Inspired by the polycentric governance paradigm, we propose three alternative strategies: promotion of traditional agroforestry under exclusion of exotic tree species, land zoning categories for disaster risk mitigation co-created by local communities, and promoting community forest management.