Mining and logging companies ‘leaving all of Chile without water’ [View all]

[Catherina]

Mining and logging companies ‘leaving all of Chile without water’
April 25, 2013


Chile’s government told to stop allowing firms to exhaust water sources with little regard for local people

More than 100 environmental, social and indigenous organizations protested in the Chilean capital, Santiago, this week to demand that the state regain control of the management of water, which was privatized by the then dictatorship in 1981.

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The demonstrators delivered a letter to President Sebastián Piñera, complaining that the water shortages affecting local communities were due not only to persistent drought but to structural problems in the policies governing the exploitation of natural resources.

“We have discovered that there is water in Chile, but that the wall that separates it from us is called ‘profit’ and was built by the (1981) water code, the constitution, international agreements like the binational mining treaty (with Argentina) and, fundamentally, the imposition of a culture where it is seen as normal for the water that falls from the sky to have owners,” the letter says.

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The movement is fighting for the repeal of the water code, adopted by the 1973-90 dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, which made water private property by granting the state the right to grant water use rights to companies free of charge and in perpetuity. The code allows water use rights to be bought, sold or leased, without taking into consideration local priorities for water use, the organisations complain.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2013/apr/24/mining-logging-chile-without-water