Friday, 30 Nov 2001
COIHAIQUE, Chile
< p>Coihaique is the most important town in the Aysen region of southern Chile, and is home to nearly half of the region’s 100,000 inhabitants. It is the largest city between Puerto Montt and Punta Arenas, a distance of more than 900 miles. The southern end of the Americas is distinct from the northern end. Instead of the landmass getting larger as it nears the polar region, it gets smaller. Nevertheless, Patagonia has few inhabitants, and there are expanses of land still uninhabited by human beings. Almost directly in the middle is Coihaique, an administrative, education, business, and cultural center for the region.
Today, for what feels like the first time in a long time, I am wearing dry clothes and clean socks. While watching the cold rain squalls blow across the valley in which Coihaique rests, I listen intently to Peter Hartmann as he tells me stories about Aysen, its wildness, and the development of the region.
Peter is an architect who came to Aysen with an interest in working in his field — urban and regional planning. After living in Aysen, he began to get more involved with national and local environmental organizations. Peter is on the national board of directors of the Committee in Defense of the Flora and Fauna of Chile (CODEFF), and was instrumental in the campaign to declare Aysen a Reserva de la Vida, a reserve of life. Looking at mega-projects such as NORANDA’s Alumysa proposal, Peter says the challenge is to turn the slogan into practice.
“One of the most valuable aspects of the reserva de vida designation has been a ‘green seal’ for organic cattle and agriculture because of the clean air and water of the region,” Peter tells me. Bringing in an aluminum smelter may endanger this green seal. “Why manufacture aluminum for export when we could bottle water for export? If we are going to export products to the global markets they shouldn’t be from processes that damage the pristine nature of the region.”
His comments make a great deal of sense. It was Lucas Chiappe of Proyecto Lemu who put me in contact with Peter, and like Lucas, Peter is a true maestro. Peter thinks the Gondwana Forests Sanctuary is a nice idea, but in places like Aysen, protecting more wild land cannot be the only goal. Managing and actually protecting the places already designated as parks and reserves must take first priority if they are to be more than just parks on paper. The next priority, and Peter really emphasizes this, must be restoring the millions of acres of damaged and eroded land. This is where the Gondwana umbrella becomes a project about regional planning. If a sanctuary means people can’t touch a tree, that model won’t work in all of Aysen. In protected areas this is certainly important; it is how we maintain ecological viability. But there must be investment in managed and sustainable use of many productive elements of the landscape.
Peters’s comments fit with what I have been pondering: If we cannot make lands that are already in use economically productive, our protected areas will almost certainly end up isolated and worn away by attrition. Buffer zones, biological corridors, zones of sustainable management, and responsible investment are all essential aspects of regional planning.
But an aluminum smelter in Aysen, constructed by a trans-national corporation with a shady environmental and labor history? This does not seem like responsible investment. Having lived my whole life in the Pacific Northwest, I am familiar with the aluminum industry. I can’t think of aluminum without thinking about the demise of the salmon due to the damming of the Columbia River. I cannot think of aluminum without thinking of the plight of steelworkers, abandoned by an industry that is unwilling to pay the wages that such dangerous work merits, and abandoned by a government that pursues trade agreements that make it illegal to protect local ecology and economy. I think about the dead forest above Columbia Falls, Mt., and how the aluminum plant there makes money selling deregulated electricity back to the grid instead of employing people to make aluminum. Closing plants in North America and building new plants in Patagonia? Something is extremely wrong here.
Two years ago, on Nov. 30, 1999, in a cold pre-dawn rain, I had the great honor of being in the streets of Seattle with many thousands of other people from all over the world who shared my feeling that “something is extremely wrong here.” I know that being present for the mobilization in Seattle during the World Trade Organization ministerial was one of the most important things I have ever done. We demanded transparency and participation. Critics who call me a globaphobe could not be further from the truth. I am not afraid of the global village; rather, I defend it. I am, however, afraid of the same thing that we all fear, but that many are unwilling to come to grips with: that we have lost control of our governments and our economies; that the people who are in control care only about maximizing their profits, no matter what the human or natural expense.
Still, I will not let this fear freeze me like an endangered Andean deer in the headlights of extinction. There is work to be done, and life to be celebrated. Concepts like the Gondwana Project seem very dreamy when contemplating the context of current geo-politics. There is a saying, though, that to have principles is to come out of adversity with your dreams intact. The adversity is evident, but my travels have shown me that there are many people dedicated to keeping our common dreams alive.
