Development & Aid, Environment, Tierramerica

Environmental Law Old After a Decade

SANTIAGO, Mar 6 2004 (IPS) - Leaders of environmental NGOs in Chile are calling for reform of the environmental law enacted in March 1994. They are demanding the creation of a truly “green” environment ministry. The environmental law that has been in effect in Chile since Mar. 9, 1994 aged very quickly, say activists, and there is near unanimity that the legislation must be reformed.

The head of the environmental program at the non-governmental Liberty and Development Institute, Ana Luisa Covarrubias, was the only one of six activists consulted by Tierramérica who considered the law sufficient.

In contrast, leaders of other environmental NGOs advocate creating a Ministry of Environmental Affairs or giving ministerial status to the National Environment Commission (CONAMA), also founded a decade ago.

Deputy Alejandro Navarro, of the co-governing Socialist Party and member of the lower house's environment committee, proposed a ministry or superintendent that would have effective regulatory powers.

CONAMA, part of the ministry-ranked Secretariat General of the Presidency, is an agency of “third or fifth category”, subordinate to other ministries and lacking the capacity to develop environmental policy, said the activists interviewed by Tierramérica.

Jenia Jofré, president of the National Committee Pro-Defense of Fauna and Flora, said the biggest flaw in the current law is that it does not allow for effective citizen participation in approving investment projects or in national or local initiatives for sustainable development or resolving environmental problems.

Sara Larraín, coordinator of Chile Sustentable (Sustainable Chile), Manuel Baquedano, president of the Instituto de Ecología Política, and Marcel Claude, director of Fundación Oceana, agreed that the 10-year-old law has not proved able to promote sustainable development.

Inspired by the 1992 Earth Summit, but also approved — says Baquedano — under pressure from negotiating trade treaties, the existing law had the merit of bringing together around a thousand environmental statutes that had been dispersed throughout Chilean legislation.

The Patricio Aylwin administration (1990-1994) considered it inappropriate to create an environment ministry, as other Latin American countries were doing. The government's argument was that ecological matters were “transversal”, cutting across the mandates of all ministries.

Larraín and Baquedano explained that this approach is why CONAMA is under the presidential authority that coordinates relations between the executive and legislative branch, which ultimately turns into political negotiations.

This has been reflected in CONAMA operations in Chile's 13 regions, where government appointees and ministerial representatives make decisions on investment projects using political criteria or short-term local objectives, without taking into consideration the broader scope of sustainable development.

The law gave CONAMA the authority to approve environmental impact statements for investment projects, such as hydroelectric dams, and that has turned into its most controversial task, given the conflicts that emerge between for-profit projects and the environment or the rights of communities, such as indigenous groups.

In its 10-year history, CONAMA has had six executive secretaries. The five prior to Paulina Saball, the current head, all left the post during critical situations.

It is up to CONAMA to review projects, establish norms on emissions of contaminants and for environmental quality, but the agency lacks the appropriate tools to carry out that mandate, said Larraín.

Other pending areas are regulation of privately held conservation areas and standardizing environmental policy with sector-specific rules, such as the future Native Forest Law, “a limited instrument that is not able to ensure sustainable development,” she said.

Fundación Oceana leader Claude said there is overexploitation of natural resources in Chile because the existing regulations do not provide necessary protections.

“We need an institutional context that is able to place the environmental question on the public agenda as a priority issue, not a third-rate problem, like it is considered today,” he said.

In Baquedano's opinion, a reform of the law should favor local environmental management and must be effective in investigating and punishing crimes against the environment.

But Covarrubias stressed that the existing law unified and streamlined the procedures for productive investment as well as establishing technical and economic requirements for the private sector and the government.

She condemns the type of participation that has been possible under CONAMA, saying, “Citizens have the right to make their opinion heard, but not to veto a project.”

Often the investing companies have to negotiate with communities to achieve approval of the projects, offering to build schools or other projects in exchange, said Covarrubias.

The law does not need to be modified, she said, except in making the CONAMA ministers' council decisions binding for the other ministries, which “would make it easier to assess and demand results” in environmental policies.

 
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