Biodiversity, Environment, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

CHILE: Pulp Mill Affair -an Environmental Watershed

Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Jan 11 2006 (IPS) - The destruction of the Rio Cruces wildlife sanctuary was the most important environmental event in Chile in 2005, leaving behind a number of lessons and precedents that will influence the next government’s policies on investment in and protection of biodiversity, according to environmentalists.

Michelle Bachelet, a socialist, and rightwing businessman Sebastián Piñera, who will be facing off Jan. 15 in the second and final round of the presidential elections, both say they will give high priority to environmental issues, considered to be one of the greatest failures of the outgoing government of Ricardo Lagos.

Manuel Baquedano, president of the Institute of Political Ecology (IEP), told IPS that he agrees that the conflict at the Rio Cruces sanctuary was “a watershed” for views on the environment, in the community as well as among business and the authorities.

“It’s no coincidence that both presidential candidates have a strong commitment to the environment, especially Bachelet, who together with a large group of civil society leaders has committed herself to a plan for real environmental reforms, and has also announced that one of her first measures will be to create a Ministry of the Environment,” said the activist.

“This means that Celco has brought things to a head, like a festering wound that has finally been burst,” Baquedano remarked.

Celco (Celulosa Arauco y Constitución), a company belonging to the Anacleto Angelini group, the second-largest Chilean business consortium, opened its Valdivia pulp mill on the Cruces River in February 2004. It is located 32 kilometres southwest of a wetland that harboured the biggest colony of black-necked swans (Cygnus melancoryphus) in Latin America.

The Rio Cruces sanctuary was home to 4,000-6,000 of these migratory birds, until they began to die off in October 2004. About 500 swans died and the rest migrated. A report by the Universidad Austral in the city of Valdivia indicated that the effluent from the mill destroyed a water weed known locally as “luchecillo” (Egeria densa), which was the swan’s main food.

Last year the company was fined and subjected to temporary closures by the National Environmental Commission and its regional office. According to environmentalists, the Commission was originally pressured by the government of Eduardo Frei (1994-2000) into approving the plans for the mill.

An Action for the Swans group was formed in Valdivia (population 320,000), which joined Village Communications, an independent alternative journalism project, other grassroots organisations and several legislators to run an ongoing campaign calling for the closure of the Celco cellulose factory.

However, the centre-left Lagos administration allowed the company to re-open the mill in late August. Celco reduced its production capacity and promised to carry out a six-month environmental clean-up plan, and then to build a pipeline to discharge its waste in the sea, near Mehuín, a fishing cove.

The Angelini group said it had lost millions because of the fines and closures. In the midst of the crisis the consortium carried out a campaign to clean up its image. It fired its team of lawyers, who were accused of falsifying court documents; and replaced top-level executives at Celco.

A major step was the appointment of Alberto Etchegaray, former minister of Housing and Town Planning in the Patricio Aylwin government (1990-1994) and a Christian Democratic Party (PDC) militant, as chairman of the board at Celco. The PDC is part of the centre-left coalition that has governed the country since its return to democracy nearly 16 years ago, and which is now fielding Bachelet as its candidate.

Etchegaray promised in June that in future Celco would make decisions in consultation with the whole community, including authorities, business people, environmentalists and ordinary citizens. He remarked that the company “had messed up a little,” and promised to work “for sustainable development in Chile.”

In August, the company board made a public statement saying it had learned lessons from the crisis, and “apologising to the Valdivia community for the trouble and anxiety it had faced.” It offered dialogue “to overcome past differences and to create a relationship based on trust and cooperation.”

The “Celco affair” caused more attention to be focussed in Chile on corporate social responsibility, a concept that emerged in industrialised countries in the 1970s and has been gradually spread worldwide in the last 10 years by private foundations and United Nations agencies.

In the European Union, corporate social responsibility (CSR) is understood to mean “voluntary incorporation by companies of social and environmental concerns in their business operations and in their relations with stakeholders,” Karina Toledo told IPS. Toledo is a journalist for Vincular, an organisation that specialises in CSR.

Stakeholders are persons, groups or entities who are affected by the company’s business, for instance customers, the community, employees and their families, shareholders, suppliers and the government, Toledo explained.

Baquedano believes that the environmental disaster at Rio Cruces served as a wakeup call for the business community in Chile. “Now we are hoping for a change in behaviour, for companies to take the environment seriously, not seeing it as an obstacle to growth but as one of the conditions for any kind of development,” he said.

Baquedano also highlighted the community response to the crisis. Action for the Swans illustrates a new form of social expression in which groups of people are expressing and defending themselves on their own initiative, and not just relying on non-governmental organisations to be “the only voices of protest.”

Marcel Claude, vice-president for South America of the international environmental organisation Oceana, told IPS that the “only significance” of the Rio Cruces conflict was that “it created connections among civil society,” which have “given environmental issues a higher political profile than they had before.”

Claude disagreed with Baquedano and said the Celco case would not cause significant changes in how government or corporations treat environmental matters.

“In the final analysis, the government has allowed (the pulp mill) to continue operating, and hasn’t made it curb pollution, hasn’t imposed stricter regulations, hasn’t closed the factory, nor has it enforced the country’s laws,” said the activist.

“Environmental policy in Chile today is worse than it was five years ago, because of pollution, environmental degradation, and irresponsibility,” said Claude, who sees Bachelet as representing “more of the same” with respect to the governments of Frei and Lagos. “They are mainly to blame for the environmental deterioration and damage,” he stated.

José Araya and Claudia Sepúlveda, the leaders of Action for the Swans, said on Jan. 3 that the Rio Cruces disaster demonstrated the “enormous incompetence” of the environmental authorities, who “were slow to act, and when they did they were thinking more about the company than the interests of the community.”

Sepúlveda accused the Lagos administration of “shielding” Celco and the Angelini group, although “in private, (the authorities) agree with ordinary citizens.”

“The active citizens of Valdivia were important in sparking a debate which is going to change official environmental structures, and which has strengthened other socially aware groups,” Araya added.

“The community in Valdivia still faces challenges. It must demand and support the restoration of the wildlife sanctuary, and ensure that there are no harmful effects on human health,” he said. He also reiterated the demand for the mill to be closed, and rejected the plan for a pipeline to the sea.