Environmental Sham in Chile’s New Draft Constitution
By Andres Kogan Valderrama
HAVANA TIMES – Less than a month away from the referendum on the new draft Constitution, on December 17th, and while you can sense the general tedium on this subject, I think it’s still important to go over some of the more important points included in the new document.
One of these subjects is linked to the environment, which has a special chapter dedicated to it, but as you will see the view is completely subordinate to a neoliberal development and extractivism model in Chile, thereby worsening and legitimizing environmental injustice.
I’m saying this after reading Chapter XVI with the title “Protection of the environment, sustainability, and development” (1), where the environment is conditioned on national economic development, and as a result, is a way to produce that has absolutely nothing to do with the population’s general wellbeing or promoting a different lifestyle.
The chapter in question conditions any environmental policy in the future to strictly economic guidelines, casting aside the opportunity to discuss the forestry, mining, agricultural exports and energy system that exists in Chile, leaving so-called sacrifice zones unprotected, as well as any territory that is still seen as merely a source of natural resources.
As if that wasn’t enough, this new draft Constitution stipulates that environmental crimes and restrictions, as they appear in Chapter II about fundamental rights and freedoms (pg. 23), are only those that appear in the Law, leaving out more specific regulations and other legal documents, that allow us to pinpoint violations and abuse in certain extraction projects.
That said, people encouraging others to vote in favor of this draft Constitution could say that this new text includes environmental content unlike the current Constitution, which says very little or nothing about it – that’s true -, but the underlying problem is that it only contemplates Nature as a means for unlimited economic growth.
In other words, talking about the environment in this new draft Constitution means nothing, because it still conceives Nature as just a source of raw materials and a business opportunity, without caring in the slightest about sustainability and the consequences of the climate emergency in our own country.
Similarly, celebrating the fact that climate change is mentioned in the new draft Constitution, as some people have pointed out, is just decorative because it doesn’t force the State to do anything about it. It’s just recognizing it but isn’t giving a solution, nor is it creating concrete actions to benefit ecosystems and communities that are affected by it.
In terms of water, the new draft Constitution doesn’t contemplate the right to water for humans, only access to it, as stipulated in Chapter II about basic rights and freedoms (pg. 29), which ends up strengthening a unique water institutionality, which was able to privatize management, as well as water sources, creating an unsustainable water market for society and in environmental terms.
As a result, in contemplating only access to water, the document is condemning thousands of Chileans to get their water via water tankers, denying other rights, benefitting large companies, like they have with the deregulated avocado business in the Petorca province and in other territories in Chile in the north, center and south.
On the other hand, given the fact the first draft of a new highly progressive constitution was rejected in 2022, nobody thought that this second attempt would grant Nature rights or overcome the colonial idea of development. However, people did think that it would at least make some progress when it comes to the current climate emergency, which proves the extreme fanaticism of those who want to pass something that will ultimately legitimize environmental plunder.
In summary, passing this new draft Constitution would be a danger for Nature and it won’t answer the countless number of socio-environmental conflicts that exist in the country, which need a present State with real power to sanction those who violate the lives of communities affected by extractivism.