Mayor Carter and real estate company Gesterra increasingly close to completing the destruction of Panul
Just as Red por la Defensa de la Precordillera had foreseen (Santiago on the brink of an environmental crime), the agreement between La Florida's mayor Rodolfo Carter (UDI) and real estate company Gesterra to fell Santiago's last native forest has been exposed.
Just as Red por la Defensa de la Precordillera had foreseen (Santiago on the brink of an environmental crime), the agreement between La Florida's mayor Rodolfo Carter (UDI) and real estate company Gesterra to fell Santiago's last native forest has been exposed.
The mayor commissioned a biodiversity study that would enable the mega real estate project to proceed in the heart of the forest. If this comes to pass, it would mean the death of Panul in the coming decades, given the fragile state of its ecosystem — especially due to human action.
To complete this environmental crime, the study will conclude that there are two different forests in Panul: a mature sclerophyllous forest and a thorny forest in the center of the fundo. The latter supposedly has "little" environmental value (as the mayor stated last Friday, January 26, at the Municipal Council), meaning real estate company Gesterra could build there in exchange for a strip of green areas above the 900-meter contour.
Since the municipality needed to justify these absurdities (that there are two forests in Panul, one more important than the other), it contracted a firm ideally suited for this purpose: the consultancy SGA, led by Jaime Solari, brother of former minister Ricardo Solari (PS), who has been behind major and controversial projects such as the Metrogas plant in Peñalolén (situated on the San Ramón fault and deeply rejected by the community) and the Electroandina-CODELCO thermoelectric plant in Tocopilla. He has also advised Canadian mining company Barrick Gold (Pascua Lama) and Aes Gener (Alto Maipo). In other words, SGA is a heavyweight nationally when it comes to providing technical cover for projects that plunder the environment and affect people's lives and health. (The long environmental arm of Ricardo Solari's brother)
The most outrageous thing is that the municipality is using public funds to finance a study tailor-made for the real estate project. This will nullify the risk-based amendment to the Zoning Plan (approved just days ago) that was supposedly meant to prohibit heavy machinery from entering the native forest. Thus, Panul's life is being negotiated behind the backs of residents.
For its part, the Michelle Bachelet government has not fulfilled its commitment to finding a resolution to the conflict. After eight months of proceedings and meetings, Intendant Claudio Orrego states that they have no official proposal on the matter.
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