Imagine one of the last places on earth that has remained wild and untouched by humans all this time, covered by folds of glaciers, which have unfortunately begun to melt away but only to reveal beautiful pale blue water that almost replicates the sky on land. Now imagine, five ugly dams with 2, 750 megawatts of power hindering the speechless beauty of this unoccupied part of southern Chilean Patagonia.
The HidroAysén project was approved by the Chilean government on 20 May, despite having faced consistent protest. This bill will affect six national parks, 11 national reserves, 26 priority conservation sites, 16 wetlands and 32 private protected areas in Patagonia. The dams would ultimately flood at least 5,700 hectares of globally rare forest ecosystems all for the sake of GDP growth.
80,000 protesters flocked to Plaza Italia in inner-city Santiago to protest, most of whom were peaceful but some of which began attacking the police, who then responded with water cannons and tear gas. All this came a week after a previous protest in Santiago against the dam project (pun fully intended) and some 50,000 protesters in Valparaíso as well as tens of thousands of protesters in 26 other cities. Latino celebrities have now jumped on the bandwagon in demonstrating their support against the project.
In reality more should be done to increase the amount of power obtained from renewable sources like solar from the driest desert in the world or the incredible amounts of geothermal energy. Oh, and did I mention that the President's wife's brother is the head of the energy company that is most definitely going to profit enormously from this venture?
This is all happening at the same time as Chile’s decision to sell copyright of all Chilean seeds to big, multi-national transgenic seed companies like Monsanto (USA), basically forcing Chileans to only produce transgenic fruit and vegetables as well as making small farmers and private owners pay a hefty fee for having even a small plantation of seeds.
(Image from timesonline.com)
all sounds like a terrible shame doesn't it. chile seems like such a beautiful country with lovely natural scenery. chaos indeed jules.
ReplyDeleteTell me about it! It is such a beautiful country, just one full of contradictions. It's great how people are protesting but at the same time everyone in Santiago wastes water and doesn't recycle. How's that protecting this beautiful land?
ReplyDeleteHey thanks for you help with the visuals. I think my blog looks so much better now. You turn to write something new now. :D