By: Flavia Liberona
(Read news in El Mostrador)
During the last few months we have witnessed an intense campaign by the salmon industry, whose purpose seems to be to highlight its importance as a national productive activity, emphasizing the employment it generates in the southern regions and, at the same time, pointing out the difficulties it faces in obtaining the environmental and sectoral permits that allow it to operate. However, nothing is said about its non-compliance with Chilean sectorial (aquaculture), environmental and labor regulations.
Following the enactment of Law 21.600, which creates the Biodiversity and Protected Areas Service and the National System of Protected Areas (SBAP), the salmon farming union came out to question an alleged effect on employment in the southern regions of the country, even pointing out that, through the Ministry of the Environment's official statement that informed the entry into force of this law, the government would seek to "reduce" the salmon farming sector, This is not true, since this law does not expire nor does it prevent the operation of any of the 411 concessions granted within protected areas, but rather it only freezes the granting of concessions currently in process within protected areas, according to what was approved in Congress itself, and as long as a concession is not granted and is not operating, there is no employment associated with it.
It is worth pointing out, then, some things about the questioned law, which before being approved had nine years of legislative processing in the Parliament, being first reviewed by the Senate, then by the Chamber of Deputies and Deputies, to then go to the Joint Commission and finally be approved in both chambers. Throughout this long process, it received observations, contributions and comments from different sectors, which helped to shape the text that was finally approved.
Although Law 21,600 establishes that sectoral concessions may not be granted in three categories of protected areas (National Parks, Natural Monuments and Virgin Region Reserves), it is important to note that these limitations already existed, as they are established in the Washington Convention, an international agreement signed and ratified by Chile in 1967.
On the other hand, the recently approved legal text states that sectoral concessions may be granted in three categories of protected areas (National Reserves, Multiple Use Conservation Areas and Indigenous Peoples' Conservation Areas), for which three requirements must be met: the existence of a management plan for the protected area where the concession is requested, the authorization of the Biodiversity Service, and compatibility with the conservation objectives.
As the protected areas where applications are pending do not have management plans, it is not possible to grant such concessions, which is why the MMA informed that, according to the law, such procedures must be frozen. In order for this to become effective, Fundación Terram believes that it is necessary for President Boric to instruct the competent bodies in this regard.
If one wanted to go a little further than the criteria established in the Washington Convention, which does allow productive activities in national reserves, as long as they are compatible with the conservation objectives, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is more restrictive than Law 21,600, since it states that intensive aquaculture activities should not be carried out in any category of protected area.
Having clarified the legal framework for granting concessions within the aforementioned categories of protected areas, it is important to highlight another more fundamental aspect, namely the fact that as long as a concession has not been granted, there cannot be associated employment, which is why it is striking to hear union and parliamentary voices claiming that this will affect employment, because it cannot be true.
If the salmon industry or the parliamentarians who question the SBAP Law are really concerned about employment, then it is hard to understand why there are dozens of concessions that, having been granted years ago, have not yet produced a single salmon, because in all these cases no employment has been generated, but they have increased the wealth of these companies, since these concessions on national property, when granted, become financial assets that can serve, for example, as collateral to request a loan.
But not only that. The fact that the holders of these concessions do not carry out farming activities under the conditions established by the General Law of Fisheries and Aquaculture leads them to incur in grounds for expiration, as we have denounced from Terram Foundation, without finding until today a response from the authorities, which translates into complying with the law, expiring what should be expired.
In this sense, it seems that the industry is determined to raise a sort of campaign of terror towards its workers, when in fact no jobs have been put at stake with this new law. But make no mistake about it, what the salmon industry is doing is, under the guise of labor, raising its voice for its financial assets.
In this regard, it is important that the government provides clear and transparent data on salmon employment, as there are currently no official figures on direct and indirect employment generated by this industry. The most recent information corresponds to a publication by the National Institute of Statistics in 2016 and, although we know that the salmon industry has made public some direct and indirect employment figures, there are obvious difficulties in corroborating this information, particularly with regard to indirect employment.
Unfortunately, we are currently spectators of assertions that lack rigorousness in terms of what is established in the recently approved law, as well as the non-existent employment associated with these, while the systematic environmental, sectorial and labor non-compliances of this industry are omitted. It should be recalled that this year alone, the Superintendency of the Environment initiated more than 30 sanctioning procedures against salmon farming companies that produced above the authorized limits in their environmental permits, most of them inside protected areas.