Chile and its environmental policy

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Chile and its environmental policy

The Republic of Chile is a country in South America occupying a long coastal strip between the Andes mountains and the Pacific Ocean which is divided into 13 regions. It has a population of almost 15 million, one third of whom live in the greater Santiago area. It borders Argentina to the east, Bolivia to the northeast and Peru to the north.

Chile is an active member in the international arena which it had just completed a 2-year non-permanent position on the UN Security Council in January 2005. It joined the UN family of agencies and participates in UN peacekeeping activities and also is an associate member of Mercosur and a full member of APEC, which this membership making Chile has been an important actor on international economic issues and hemispheric free trade. Besides, the Chilean Government has diplomatic relations with most countries. It settled its territorial disputes with Argentina during the 1990s. Chile and Bolivia severed diplomatic ties in 1978 over Bolivia's desire to reacquire territory it lost to Chile in 1879-83 War of the Pacific. The two countries maintain consular relations.

Chile as a industralising and developing countries, the rapid economic growth bought with it a worsening of certain environmental problems, such as air pollution from growing energy and motor vehicles in urban area, access of safe drinking water, desertification. To deal with these environmental problems, Chile work quite well in progress. The National Commission of the Medio.ambiente is the institution of the State to proceed the environmental work since 1994. Under its effort, the First Marine Area in the history of Chile is declared under Protection on 5 August 2004 which is an important achievement proceeded lately. Moreover, the CONAMA established a wide net of international relationship on environment policy on behalf of Chile. In February of 1997, Chile and Canada signed Agreement of Environmental Cooperation. One of the fundamental aspects in the Agreement of Environmental Cooperation between Chile and Canada is the promotion of the transparency and the public participation in the environmental management. The agreement reflects the high priority that the environmental considerations have for both parts. And this is not the only environmental treaty signed by Chile, there are mainly 16 international environmental treaties Chile signed which the earliest were the well-known Convention for the protection of the flora and fauna and the scenic beauties of America (or Convention of Washington) on 12 of October of 1940. Chile is absolutely one of the pioneer countries in environmental protection. And Chile also signed the famous Protocol of Kyoto on 13 April 1995.

The environmental problems in Chile mainly are air pollution in Santiago, the water pollution in rural of Chile, the desertification of the continental Chile.

Air pollution problems in Chile:

According to one comparison of total suspended particulate (TSP) concentration in major cities from the ESI’s data, Santiago’s annual average in the early 1990s was about the same as Bangkok’s and 50% higher than Bombay’s and more than twice the upper bound of WHO recommendations. There are two causes that led Santiago to have such a problem. First, the population of Santiago has grown from 1.4 million in 1960 to an estimated 4.8 million on the early 1990s, representing 37 percent of the country's population. Second, industrial pollution represents another problem that arises primarily from the mining sector and smelter operations. However, Chile now could reduce CO2 emissions by almost 20% from the 2010 baseline with no net welfare loss, though a 10% reduction is closer to optimal. What make this big progress? We could see that the costs of air pollution is not only harming citizen’s health, which include the costs of cleaning, reduced vegetation and agricultural productivity, and vision impairment resulting in lost amenity value and lost revenue from tourism. An additional cost category is productivity loss incurred due to emergency measures imposed during periods of intense air pollution. The emergency measures include the closing of schools, restricting the operation of polluting industries, and limiting the operation of vehicles. Thus, the first principle of an environmental strategy is the applications of integrated environmental management based on the comparison of costs and benefits, that is, to let the prices of all goods reflect their full social costs. To do so, the CONAMA preceded a series of policy in the past 10 years, which buses in Chile drop from 14000 to 7500 now. Diesel use drop from 5000 ppm sulfur to 300 ppm sulfur. No more all leaded gasoline. Electricity no more generated by coal but instead of natural gas. And start from 1990, the CONAMA would declare high pollution episodes when the PM10 (pollutes) daily average is high. On the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center, CONAMA was invited to share their experience and they told there is the public awareness produces the changes. As their air getting better, they sell credits for its pollution reduction on a global market and that their costs and benefits strategy is extremely successful. Chile economic growth was rising rapidly in accordance with the decreasing pollutants since 1990. And that Chile could finally reach up the first period of Kyoto Control (2008-2012) that there CO2.

Water pollution in rural Chile:

Chile is a country where 90 percent of city residents have access to drinking water, while 70 percent of rural residents go without it. Water is the basic service to communities and its contribution to the eradication of water related mortality and diseases among the rural population in Chile comprised of 2 million of inhabitants. Initially, the drinking water in the northern Chile suffers from serious arsenic concentrations, which increase people’s risks to get lung cancer. The arsenic in water comes from the arsenic-rich rocks in these areas and also the industrial waste and the mining. However, improve the water quality was not a easy job in these rural area, for example, the remote Mapuche community of Chol Chol, there is no electricity and it is therefore impossible to connect the incubator, the one vital piece of equipment for the hydrogen sulphide test to monitor the water quality. |To overcome the barrier, Chile cooperate with IDRC (International Development Research Center) and the internal operations in 1996 to raise fund for an project which is to bring together two communities living at opposite ends of the world near the two poles, but sharing the same problems in monitoring their drinking water quality, the Cree Nation of Split Lake, Manitoba and the Mapuche of the Temuco region, to transfer the technology they had acquired and to discuss the benefits of treated water. Also, the Water and Sanitation Program, which is administrated by World Bank, had also put a great effort on the drinking water in Chile. The National Program of Rural Drinking Water (APR) in Chile has over 40 years of existence and has been one of the most successful social programs implemented in this country. The program helped currently 1.5 million rural inhabitants are benefited with quality water and sanitation services.

The desertification in Chile:

The desertification now was not solved as good as the air and water pollution in Chile cause problems of water quality and insufficient drainage causing land degradation in irrigated land and methods of prevention and rehabilitation. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of UN and the Inter-American Development Bank, IFAD, UNDP, UNEP, the Government of Chile contribute to the Regional Course on Desertification and Sustainable Development to have landscape engineering.

To conclude, environmental problems are a long battle, which need an enormous of money, technique, and human resources of support. It can’t be solved by one nation alone and always need helps of international organization. However, there is always the problem that the enforcement capacity is limited which country is more likely to under control than over control the environmental problem. To increase the capacity, public awareness is the key point in order to give pressure to the government responsible environment department, like CONAMA. As the National Action Program (NAP) in Chile, although it is that important efforts are being made by the UNCCD, it’s not enough to get a stronger thrust in implementing NAP in the cause of the slow work of CONAMA. To make the internal organization work faster, public awareness is absolutely a good monitor. Also, it is remarkable that the Chilean government has been developing infrastructure for the rural water supply for 40 years investing a total of over US$ 400 million. However, 80% of the total investment has been executed during the last decade through the Ministry of public works. We can see that there always a abusing use of funding, which make the environment problems worse or getting slower in progress. There is a need to increase the transparency in between the International Organization and the internal organization.