El Panul: the last forest resisting Santiago's voracious real estate appetite

[caption id="attachment_8204" align="alignleft" width="300"] Photo Flickr Red Precordillera[/caption]

In the foothills of La Florida lies El Panul, a plot of land spanning roughly 340 hectares that today pits residents against real estate interests seeking to develop the last urban area of the municipality where native vegetation still exists.

A business opportunity, some will say. A concrete danger for the community, say others. Why? The area located on the slopes of the Andes acts, as explained by Lucio Cuenca, director of OLCA (Latin American Observatory of Environmental Conflicts), "like a forest that contains situations that lead to natural disasters such as mudslides, which is especially important today when we face such an obvious situation as climate change."

The company behind the project is the real estate firm Gesterra, which intends to use the El Panul estate lands to build 1,157 houses and 22 apartment buildings across more than 92 hectares in total, which would require the removal of some protected native species. El Panul is located at the end of Rojas Magallanes street and extends to the Lo Cañas area, above the San Carlos canal.

Below that boundary lies a large number of new condominiums and others built there from the late 1980s and early 1990s, which suffered nature's wrath in 1994 when a mudslide destroyed entire neighborhoods and killed more than 20 people.

Currently, the real estate pre-project has the approval of the Public Works Department of La Florida Municipality, but thanks to efforts by its opponents, it was rejected by the Environmental Assessment Service (SEA).

Neighborhood network fighting back against Gesterra

Estefanía González, a geography graduate from the University of Chile and member of the territorial planning and biodiversity team at the Citizen Network for the Defense of the Precordillera, explained to ElDesconcierto.cl that residents' concerns go back a long way. They had already warned authorities in the 1990s about the risks of a mudslide, and were not heard. Today, with the Gesterra project threatening a native forest on top of that, they have been drawn into open conflict with those behind the idea. "The strategic location of this plot has led us to call it the last forest within the urban zone. Therefore, the ecosystem services it provides not only to the municipality but to the entire region are quite significant," she says.

The 24-year-old, who serves as spokesperson for the Network, explains that after the experience of the 1990s they organized more effectively and have been able to determine, for example, that the El Panul estate belongs to the same owners as the real estate company seeking to develop the area and clear the native vegetation. As a result, they have waged a tenacious fight on all possible fronts, including at the municipal level.

The pre-project has already been running for a year; the brake the La Florida activists managed to apply will force Gesterra to resubmit a new project, which would delay any construction at the site.

"Many things have happened — councilors have been promising for years to modify the regulatory plan by carrying out a risk study and environmental assessment that recognizes the site as native forest. Because in 2008, when the new native forest law came out, it prohibited the felling of conservation species such as the guayacán, and with the modification of the regulatory plan it should be updated to recognize the species and comply with the new regulation. (…) To this day the Regulatory Plan has not been updated, and we managed to stop the project at the Environmental Impact Assessment Service precisely because of the natural risk and vegetation issues," González explains.

Since the pre-project has now been running for a year, the brake the La Florida activists managed to apply will force Gesterra to resubmit a new project, which would delay any construction at the site. But Estefanía warns that the municipality, and specifically Mayor Rodolfo Carter, has a favorable predisposition.

"A new study began a few weeks ago; the results should be ready by the end of December, but the municipality, without knowing the study's findings, is already proposing a zoning plan for the area that includes amenities and services — when what we want is for nothing to be built there. We find it incoherent because after all the negligence since 2008, during a whole year nothing was done, and now instead of waiting for the study results, they're already proposing something," she concludes.

ElDesconcierto.cl attempted on multiple occasions to contact the mayor, but his communications team excused him from commenting on the matter.

Conflicting visions of the city

For Lucio Cuenca, director of the Latin American Observatory of Environmental Conflicts (OLCA), the Panul case reflects the opposing conceptions of the city expressed by authorities and real estate firms on one side, and residents, urban planners, and the scientific community on the other.

"This city already has a history of natural disasters and the consequences they have brought. Therefore, insisting on expanding the city toward the precordillera, especially where there are primary forests that, once lost, will never recover, is not very sensible to put it mildly," says Cuenca.

Lucio Cuenca notes that the regulation opponents invoked to stop the project is somewhat vague but ultimately effective, thanks to decrees signed during the dictatorship aimed at protecting the Andean zone from natural disasters. However, he warns of irregularities pointing to a favorable attitude toward the real estate project on the part of the authorities. "There have been murky situations such as commissioning risk analysis studies for the area, with tenders that were not publicly advertised so no one would apply, etc. In other words, a series of maneuvers that can be interpreted as the political will ultimately favoring the clearing of the forest and the installation of the real estate project," he notes.

"This city already has a history of natural disasters and the consequences they have brought. Therefore, insisting on expanding the city toward the precordillera, especially where there are primary forests that, once lost, will never recover, is not very sensible to put it mildly."

The OLCA director also highlights the work carried out by Red Precordillera in this case, having seen it up close. "They run guided tours of the area and a broad cross-section of La Florida has joined, now making use of the area through this organization. Along with inspiring appreciation for the forest and its meaning from an ecosystem standpoint, there is also this other vision — the whole social movement that has been growing, with a different proposal to manage it as a public park. I think they have more legitimacy to use the space," he concludes.

Arson and parliamentary support

Unfortunately, the Panul has made the news more for fires than for residents' fight to protect it — precisely from events like those fires. For Estefanía González, there is no ambiguity. "We have no doubt that they themselves have set the forest fires," she asserts.

The Red Precordillera spokesperson recounts that for the two major fires in early 2013, in the height of summer, they noticed a pattern: the flames always started after 3 in the afternoon, when the wind blows hardest. "We were there helping residents fight the fire, and in the second event we found the fire's point of origin. We found a spino tree marked with a bag tied to a branch and a fire with the smell of gasoline — and note that it wasn't us who smelled it but the fire department's own expert, with whom we conducted the procedure together," she testifies.

González's view is backed by Lucio Cuenca, who defends the active role they have taken to protect the area. "When there have been arson fires, they have tackled those outbreaks together with the fire department," he says.

Meanwhile, Carlos Montes, congressman for the La Florida district and current senator-elect for Eastern Santiago, expressed in a meeting with residents his concern for the ecological benefit the Panul native forest represents. "The defense of the precordillera and more specifically El Panul appeals to an ecological sensitivity that we have championed for decades. The important thing is that this argument can benefit the residents in their fight, because that lung of La Florida belongs to all of us," he stated.