The smoke has almost cleared, the blazes that raged over half a million hectares of forests, bush and grassland mostly extinguished, but the air is still thick with recriminations against Chile\u2019s eucalyptus and pine plantation owners who are accused of putting profits before safety.<\/p>\n
Following the worst fires in the country\u2019s history, activists are asking whether the unregulated expansion of the forestry industry under the dictator Augusto Pinochet will lead to more problems in a future that is likely to be hotter and drier as a result of climate change.<\/p>\n
Eleven people were killed and close to 1,600 dwellings were lost to the fires which erupted in January, along with hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest and farmland.<\/p>\n
Fire chiefs said that multiple factors caused the blazes, but environmentalists say the toll was higher than it should have been because plantations had expanded to the edge of communities and companies had failed to insert firebreaks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been warning the forestry sector for the last eight years about the growing threats; and these plantations are never subjected to environmental risk assessments \u2013 they\u2019re completely unregulated,\u201d said Sara Larra\u00edn, former presidential candidate and director of the environmental NGO Chile Sustentable.<\/p>\n
The US Forest Service deems eucalyptus plantations \u201chighly flammable\u201d and recommends that they should always be separated from human settlements by firebreaks. With respect to Monterey pine \u2013 the most common species planted in Chile \u2013 the same body states that \u201cfire is a particular hazard to young, thin-barked trees and can be disastrous in dense plantations where persistent lower limbs become festooned with dead needles, resulting in an ideal situation for crowning fires.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Chile, however, many plantations border villages, towns and even cities.<\/p>\n
And this summer\u2019s fires are not the first time that such proximity has caused problems. A devastating 2014 fire in Valpara\u00edso \u2013 which destroyed 2,400 homes and killed 15 people \u2013 began on a farm and spread through a eucalyptus plantation to the outer suburbs of the city.<\/p>\n
Activists say that the seeds of the problem were sown decades ago, when Chile\u2019s forestry industry was established in the early years of the Pinochet dictatorship. A 1974 government decree subsidised 70% of plantation costs, and over the next 40 years \u2013 and after the return to democracy \u2013 the sector received around $ 800m in taxpayers\u2019 money. Three-quarters of the cash went to the two companies that dominate the industry: Arauco and CMPC.<\/p>\n
Arauco\u2019s senior vice-president, Charles Kimber, said the industry had been unfairly demonised despite its important role in rebuilding Chile after what he called \u201ccommunist-socialist regime, dictatorship\u201d \u2013 a reference to the democratically elected Salvador Allende government overthrown by a military coup in 1973.<\/p>\n
When asked why plantations weren\u2019t adequately separated from urban sectors, Kimber said: \u201cUndoubtedly there needs to be a much better effort regarding interurban zones, by government, by municipalities, by companies, by individual forest owners.\u201d<\/p>\n
Managed by two of Chile\u2019s richest industrialist families, Arauco and Forestal Mininco-CMPC enjoy combined annual sales of over $10bn, much of it from pulp and timber sales to the US.<\/p>\n
The general manager of Forestal Mininco, Eduardo Hern\u00e1ndez, told local media that \u201caccording to Chilean law as administered by the Forestry Commission-Conaf, plantation companies only need to present a management plan for the prevention and control of fires, with no specifications required for including firebreaks.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sector as a whole contributes 2.6% to the country\u2019s GDP and employs about 300,000 workers (5% of Chile\u2019s labour force).<\/p>\n
However, many critics in Chile argue that the huge wealth generated by the plantations doesn\u2019t truly benefit the regions where they are located, two of which, Maule and La Araucan\u00eda, have some of Chile\u2019s highest levels of poverty and unemployment.<\/p>\n
Santa Olga, a village that was razed to the ground in January, illustrates this disparity: of its 1,500 homes, only 350 had a direct potable water supply and were connected to a sewage system, the other houses using a cesspit and asking their neighbours for water. Electric power was directly supplied to less than half of the homes.<\/p>\n
The big companies claim that 90% of plantations were planted on degraded land, but environmentalists and local inhabitants disagree.<\/p>\n
Santa Olga\u2019s fire chief, Carlos Hern\u00e1ndez, lost his home, fire station and the sawmill where he worked in January\u2019s \u201cmega blaze\u201d. Now aged 33, he recalls how his home region, including the city of Constituci\u00f3n, was surrounded by vast native forests of Roble beech.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d collect digue\u00f1es fungus from the trees and use them in a nice little salad; and people would gather forest mushrooms, to eat and sell to a local tomato sauce manufacturer \u2013 but those woods have all disappeared now.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fate of the native forests: wood chips for export.<\/p>\n
Dr Mary Kalin-Arroyo, biologist and director of the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity at the University of Chile, said that people should be encouraged to move away from the plantations and into better-planned, greener and more spacious small towns and cities.<\/p>\n
Rural land, she argued, should be divided between industrial forests, other areas allowed to recover their native vegetation, and the remaining native forests.<\/p>\n
Kalin-Arroyo said that due to global warming, all of Chile\u2019s forests are at a greater risk. \u201cWe\u2019re going to have to live with the increased occurrence of forest fires,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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