El Ciudadano
Original article: «Es peligroso para Chile»: Greenpeace advierte que proyecto de «reconstrucción» de Kast debilita severamente la protección ambiental del país
The international organization Greenpeace has raised concerns regarding the «reconstruction» bill proposed by Kast’s government, which they warn may severely undermine environmental protections in the country, describing the initiative as «regressive.»
Matías Asun, director of the NGO in Chile, expressed that «the Executive’s approach to environmental matters is deeply concerning. In its early days, it gave alarming signals by retracting 43 environmental decrees, of which 38 have shown no progress a month after their withdrawal, despite Minister Toledo reiterating that all would be reintroduced shortly.»
Asun added, «This trend is further deepened with the introduction of a regressive law that directly impacts nature, ecosystems, and biodiversity.»
Greenpeace emphasized that it is particularly serious for this proposal to weaken and/or eliminate key tools for environmental protection, limiting the ability to prevent damage, undermining ecosystem protection, and reducing fundamental rights such as access to environmental justice and citizen participation.
The environmental organization reiterated, «In practice, this leaves communities with fewer tools to defend their environment and jeopardizes the responsible use of public resources.»
«Goodbye to Environmental Guidelines»
“First and foremost, the project severely weakens technical evaluation,” questioned Matías Asun.
In practice, he added, this would allow projects and modifications to be approved without adequate assessment of their impacts, which could lead not only to lower quality projects but also to poorer permits and increased risk to the environment and human health.
“It effectively establishes the promise of ‘goodbye to environmental guidelines’ made by candidate Kast, which could mean that criteria previously evaluated by specialists in public health, glaciology, water resources, forests, or other areas could be overlooked,” Asun stated.
According to Greenpeace’s representative in Chile, this threatens the core of environmental legislation, «whose purpose is to prevent often irreversible damage before it occurs, and it opens the door to more severe environmental emergencies.»
Another troubling aspect for the international NGO is that Kast’s project «sacrifices the Patagonian fjords and biodiversity,» as it explicitly reduces «environmental monitoring and also allows the relocation of salmon farming operations that have already severely degraded the fjords of Patagonia to new locations.»
“All of this could happen without environmental evaluation, through discretionary decisions of the current authority and without citizen participation. This is compounded by years of delays and a lack of reasonable justification for regulations aimed at protecting the country’s environmental heritage and biodiversity,” Matías Asun added.
Additionally, the government’s initiative significantly weakens the capacity to prevent environmental damage by removing tools from Environmental Courts to halt projects when there is a risk to the surroundings.
“This disrupts the balance between protecting the environment and allowing development, leaving communities more exposed to potentially severe and irreversible damage. Furthermore, it eliminates tools for contesting an Environmental Qualification Resolution (RCA) and makes access to justice more difficult by reducing timelines for filing actions in a context where there are already significant technical and economic barriers,” the director of Greenpeace in Chile warned.
Lastly, Asun explained that all these deficiencies in the project could increase costs for the state, effectively for all Chileans: «Public resources could be used to reimburse projects evaluated under weaker standards when problems in their processing are discovered, creating a justification that’s difficult to rationalize, except for those who might benefit from poor projects.»
“Greenpeace declares a state of alert concerning the processing of a project deemed dangerous for the country, which, under the pretext of favoring investment and correcting processes, generates even more uncertainty, limits acquired rights, and—most seriously—sacrifices the environment and people’s health,” concluded Matías Asun.
We will continue to provide updates.
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