News

The Warning Signs and Lost Time in the Forestry Sector

Sponsors

By René Muñoz, Manager of Acoforag

The bill creating Sernafor has not yet been approved by the mixed committees on agriculture, environment, climate change, and national assets in Congress.

The wildfire bill lacks political support due to its flawed approach and failure to address fires holistically, encompassing prevention, control, reforestation and/or afforestation, and crime investigation.

The promotion bill has not yet been submitted to Congress due to the lack of conviction among our authorities about the need to increase planted forests in the country.

Law 21.455 on climate change does not recognize planted forests as carbon sinks—meaning that in Chile, trees forming plantations (mainly radiata pine and eucalyptus) legally do not capture CO2.

There’s no need to even mention the amendments to Law 20.283 on native forest recovery and forestry promotion.

On the other hand, the Forestry Policy Council, which gathers opinions and consensus for the development and consolidation of the country's forestry sector, is completely paralyzed and lacks the leading role it should have in enforcing the proposals of the National Forestry Policy defined for the 2015–2035 period.

This policy includes strategic pillars such as advancing forestry institutions, productivity and growth, inclusion and equity, and the protection and conservation of the country's forest heritage.

Bad news for the sector
But the warning signs continue: the loss of 350,000 hectares of planted forests and 250,000 hectares of native forests due to wildfires, the high intentionality of fires (80% in the southern macrozone), the lack of judicial action (900 wildfire reports in the 2023–2024 season from companies associated with Corma, with only 2 arrests, Corma 2024), and the ongoing violence against forestry workers and contractors in the southern region since 1997—27 years now.

To complete the picture of the sector’s current situation, companies CMPC and ARAUCO have announced their withdrawal of investments from Chile to Brazil, a country offering them legal conditions and certainties that Chile is unable to provide, whether due to incompetence, inefficiency, or ideological bias among authorities.

Faced with this complex scenario of painfully slow progress for the sector’s real needs, we express our concern that every day we delay in making decisions—whether through ad-hoc laws, forestry promotion, or new industry investments—we will inevitably have to wait for a planted forest’s rotation cycle to see results (14 to 22 years).

The warning signs and lost time will, one way or another, come back to haunt us.

Source:BiobioChile.cl