Chile Faces Rainforest Dilemma as Deforestation Set to Double
11/03/00
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY
Chile is poised to double its rate of deforestation with one huge temperate rainforest destroying mega-project, courtesy of the dinosaur of timber companies, otherwise known as Boise Cascade. Yet, there may be a ray of hope in that an emerging coalition of business interests and environmentalists realizes that Chile's "forests are a lot more valuable to Chile's economy left uncut than exported as raw wood to North America." This is usually the case. Shockingly, this huge project was approved without an environmental study being done that covered the entire project area -- including leaving out the surrounding forest region that is to be harvested. This highly questionable project approval has been challenged and a ruling is expected soon.
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Chile faces rainforest dilemma
Industries that co-exist with the ecosystem are clashing with large-scale logging plans
Special to The Globe and Mail
November 2, 2000
JIMMY LANGMAN
PUERTO MONTT, CHILE -- Every year ecotourists from around the world are drawn to southern Chile's Lake District and northern Patagonia. The region boasts Andean mountains, vast stands of temperate rainforest, rapid rivers, volcanoes and turquoise lakes. It's a perfect place for hiking, kayaking and fly fishing.
The area is also ideal for salmon farming. In less than a decade, Chile has become the world's second-largest producer and exporter of salmon. Now the U.S. multinational Boise Cascade Corp. has new plans for the district: a controversial project to build what would be the world's largest timber mill in the middle of the region, a project four times larger than current logging ventures in Chile and one that could endanger rare old-growth forest.
The tourism and salmon industries, which together employ about 55,000 people in the region, have joined forces with environmental groups to try to stop the $180-million (U.S.) port-and-mill project, known as Cascada Chile. The project would double the country's exports of native-forest wood products. Critics say it would also double the rate of deforestation in a nation that can ill afford it.
"This company . . . wants to destroy our forests. Our forests are a lot more valuable to Chile's economy left uncut than exported as raw wood to North America," said Mauricio Fierro, president of Geo Austral, an environmental group based in Puerto Montt, capital of the Lakes District.
There was a time when such views would have been rejected outright by Chile's business community. But Cascada Chile has provoked a sea change in attitudes. The effort to preserve the country's dwindling temperate rainforests has many allies in the business community, whose members agree that protecting the native forest makes long-term economic sense.
"In this region we are selling nature, and Cascada Chile represents practically the death of tourism," said Rolando Soto, of Puerto Montt's Chamber of Tourism.
"We need to decide what is most important for the economy of this zone. Cascada Chile represents a shortsighted view. In terms of jobs, tourism employs a lot more people."
Only 30 metres from the proposed mill site at Ilque Bay, a few kilometres from Puerto Montt, the Patagonia Salmon Farming Co. has been farming and exporting salmon for more than a decade.
Owner Hans Kossmann worries that possible pollution from ships toting logs to the plant would ruin his business. "Water quality is the essence of our business," he said, adding that more needs to be known about the impact of deforestation on watersheds.
Cascada Chile would create only about 200 jobs but would annually produce and export up to 114 thousand cubic metres of wood chips as well as 540 million square metres of oriented strand board (wood chips glued together, similar to plywood). That's the equivalent of 866,000 telephone poles, according to one estimate.
Environmentalists say this sort of voracious output would speed the destruction of the most biologically diverse region in Chile, home to one of the world's last two extensive temperate rainforests. The other is in decline in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and Canada. Temperate rainforests are rare, ecologists note, appearing in less than 0.2 per cent of Earth's land area.
Despite significant public and political opposition, Chile's national environmental agency (known by its Spanish acronym, CONAMA) approved Cascada Chile's environmental impact study.
That approval was challenged by environmental groups, whose lawyers filed a complaint under the Canada-Chile Agreement on Environmental Co-operation, part of the free-trade agreement signed by the two countries in 1997. Under the pact, which is modeled after the North American free-trade deal, each signatory country is committed to enforcing its own environmental laws -- something that the environmental groups argue was not done in this case.
Chilean law requires an environmental study be done on the entire area of influence of a project, but CONAMA looked only at Cascada Chile's planned port-and-plant site, rather than including the surrounding forest region, the groups say. A ruling on the challenge is expected soon.
Doug Bartels, public relations co-ordinator for Boise Cascade, calls the environmental challenge a "desperate and futile measure."
"It would be difficult to imagine that Canadians would have any involvement or desire to overrule decisions made by the people and government of Chile regarding their own country," he added.
Even if the ruling favours the environmentalists, it will not have the power to force a government agency to act in a particular way. But a lawyer for one of the groups says it could push Cascada Chile into conducting a new environmental study.
"It would show a lack of respect for Canada and the international community if the government does not do anything at all if we win," said lawyer Jose Ignacio Pinochet. "It would be practically impossible for CONAMA to allow [the project] to go forward with their existing environmental study."
Meanwhile, Mr. Bartels said the timetable for the project, a joint venture with a Chilean company, Maderas Condor, hasn't been worked out.