Chile’s last-minute decision not to host this year’s COP undercuts efforts by local communities and Indigenous Peoples to expose climate-related injustices happening in Santiago’s backyard. In response, CIEL is working with Chilean partners to make sure that Chilean voices are still heard and that human rights concerns remain at the center of the climate negotiations.
For many months, climate leaders and international stakeholders — including organizations like CIEL — were preparing to gather in Santiago for the annual UN Climate Change Summit (aka, the COP) in December to talk climate solutions. Chilean civil society had gone to great lengths to mobilize around the COP, with hundreds of groups coming together to plan several days of events to urgently call for a human-rights-based response to the climate crisis.
It was going to be a rare opportunity to highlight the experience of millions of Chileans, who are already living with severe drought and other climate-related impacts, as well as to include the perspectives of Indigenous Peoples and civil society groups from across Latin America and the Caribbean. And one that only happens every five years, as the COP rotates through various UN regions.
Then, in an unprecedented move, Chilean President Piñera pulled the rug out from under all of us at the last second. In an apparent move to hide the significant social unrest that has recently exploded in Chile following decades of accumulating economic and social grievances, Piñera announced that Chile would no longer host this year’s COP in Santiago.
The importance of the 2019 COP: Putting Paris into action
Each year, delegates from nearly every country in the world, as well as civil society representatives and other stakeholders, meet for the annual UN climate summit. These talks are known as the “Conference of the Parties,” or COP for short. The purpose of these meetings is to take stock of global climate action and sketch out the way forward.
At this year’s COP25, climate negotiators are racing against the clock to finalize the last of the practical rules that will guide countries as the 2015 Paris Agreement comes into full force in 2020.
So, what rules are still needed? At this point, governments have agreed to most of the guidelines for implementing the Paris Agreement. All, that is, except for the rules to implement Article 6 of the Agreement, which allows countries to meet their goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by investing in joint market and non-market solutions, including “sustainable development” projects meant to reduce emissions.
What’s not to like about incentivizing sustainable development projects? In theory, sustainable development that helps address climate change seems like a good idea. However, the experiences of past “clean development” projects — from Barro Blanco in Panama to Bujagali in Uganda — reveal a harmful pattern of environmental destruction and human rights abuses because of projects ostensibly designed to help fight climate change. (And often a failure to reduce overall emissions, which is critical to climate action.) That’s why CIEL firmly believes that such sustainable development projects need to be subject to strong rules designed to effectively safeguard human rights and the environment.
Unfortunately, this problematic pattern has extended to the very heart of Chile, where “sustainable development” projects have been wreaking havoc. One such project is being constructed just an hour’s drive away from the site where — until very recently — COP25 was set to be held.
Alto Maipo: The dark side of Chile’s “clean development”
For several years, CIEL has supported partners in Chile who have been hit hard by the negative impacts of a project that enjoys the “clean development” label under the UN’s framework for addressing climate change.
This project — the Alto Maipo Hydroelectric Project — is a large-scale hydroelectric project currently under construction in the Maipo River Valley, just outside of Santiago. It’s touted by the Chilean government as a source of clean energy because it’s supposed to use the flow of the Maipo River to generate electricity. In reality, it’s exacerbating the impacts of climate change that are already being acutely felt across the country, while directly harming the people of the valley whose rights are being impacted and who have not been allowed to effectively participate in the planning and development of the project.
For instance, the Alto Maipo project is designed to divert the main tributaries of the Maipo River through 67 kilometers of tunnels bored through the Andes Mountains. This is disturbing the surrounding glaciers and accelerating desertification in a region that is already facing a crippling drought. Historically known for its rushing rapids and towering glaciers, the Maipo River Valley now hosts large stretches of barren land, dying vegetation, and ever-rising temperatures.
The Maipo River and its tributaries, which are at critically low levels, still provide most of the drinking water for Santiago — a city of 7 million people — which is projected to suffer from severe water shortages in the next few years. Further, more than 120,000 hectares of agricultural land also depend on the Maipo River for irrigation, which is increasingly vital in the context of the country’s drought-induced agricultural emergency. These impacts will only further endanger local communities’ rights to water and food.
Towards a sustainable solution: Climate action that protects human rights
It is clear that the devastating environmental consequences of the Alto Maipo Hydroelectric Project are threatening Chileans’ basic rights to food, water, and a healthy environment and, by extension, their rights to life and health. From the outset, the project has also violated local communities’ rights to democratic participation, given the lack of any meaningful engagement with affected people in the design and implementation of the project. Holding the COP in Chile this year would have given us a unique opportunity to highlight these human rights concerns related to Alto Maipo’s “clean development” project, including by bringing climate leaders to the project site to witness firsthand the devastation it has caused.
Now that the COP is set to take place in Madrid instead, it’s going to be harder for climate leaders and citizen activists — not just from the Maipo River Valley, but from across the entire region — to ensure that their perspectives and concerns are heard at the climate negotiations.
Nonetheless, CIEL is committed to ensuring that Chilean voices are heard and that stories like those of the communities who live in the Maipo River Valley are highlighted at COP25. Climate leaders need to recognize and understand the human and environmental damage that has been caused by projects under the guise of “sustainable development.” And, going forward, we need to do better.
That’s why next month, when the world convenes in Madrid for COP25, our Chilean partners will be with us to communicate their grave concerns about this “sustainable development” project to climate negotiators. And when the time comes to finalize the rules for sustainable development projects under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, we will join together in the fight for strong protections for the environment and human rights. Because “climate action” should never again be used to legitimize projects that destroy the environment and put people at risk.
We’ll see you in Madrid.
Originally posted on November 26, 2019