A United Nations climate conference was moved to Spain amid continuing unrest in Chile, but that did not stop local environmentalists from moving forward with their alternative 10-day event.
More than 100 environmental organisations launched their parallel conference in Chile’s capital Santiago on Monday, day one of the official COP25 conference in Madrid.
Residents of drought-impacted communities and other grassroots groups held a protest Monday morning in the plaza that has become the epicentre of demonstrations in Santiago against inequality and injustice over the past six weeks.
Barbara Astudillo did not show up empty-handed. She travelled 172km (107 miles) south to Santiago from Cabildo, her home community in the drought-stricken Petorca region, carrying animal bones, which she arranged and affixed to a tall stick in the plaza.
“We have had water problems for more than 15 years,” Astudillo told Al Jazeera.
Climate change has affected rainfall patterns and glaciers in different parts of the country, but that is not the root problem in Petorca, said Astudillo. Water is privatised in Chile, and extensive avocado plantations in Petorca are using most of it, she said.
“Water is a human right,” she said. “The UN says that water is a human right. But that has never existed here.”
Trucks deliver water to Cabildo residents, but it is not enough and sometimes the quality and quantity cause sanitary problems, said Astudillo. Small-scale farmers in the region raise cows and goats for cheese, but their animals are dying of thirst.
“I brought these bones to represent them,” she said, holding the staff of bones amid the protest in the plaza.
Access to water and land have always been the central issues for Modatima, the Movement for the Defence of Access to Water, Land and Environmental Protection, according to Rodrigo Mundaca, the movement’s spokesperson. Water was privatised during the 1973-1990 military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet and Modatima has been fighting for the right to water ever since.
“It is related to the model of dispossession,” Mundaca, who was awarded the Nuremberg International Human Rights Award in September, told Al Jazeera.
“Chile’s development model is extractivist,” he said. “There is a vision of development that sees natural resources as infinite.”
Modatima is one of the many organisations participating in the parallel climate conference in Chile.
“The social crisis is also an ecological crisis,” Civil Society for Climate Action notes on its announcement of the ten-day gathering in Santiago, where a people’s forum and other parallel events are also taking place this week.
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