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Is Senafor Born Lame?

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By Simón Berti, President of the College of Forest Engineers.

Yesterday, the Chamber of Deputies rejected Article Four of the bill that transforms Conaf into the National Forest Service (Sernafor), recently passed by the Senate.

This rejection was orchestrated by the Minister of the Environment and vocally demanded by the Minister of Agriculture, who in the Senate had agreed that a key issue for the dignity and competence of the new institution should be resolved by a technical commission.

This commission determined that regarding forests, Sernafor's opinion should be binding; otherwise, the core of its work—forests—would be subject to the Ministry of the Environment.

This Ministry wants complete guardianship over Sernafor. The danger is that they only see one aspect, the environmental one, and we already know how they have systematically ignored the social and economic dimensions in the country.

The environmentalists' approach is to prohibit and prohibit. The approach of forest engineering is to manage forests sustainably. This is how Europe recovered its forest resources after the wars. This authority is what they want to strip from the new Sernafor, not to mention they have already taken away all the national parks.

What will happen when small and medium landowners are forced not to touch their forests? Most likely, they will introduce livestock or the forests will "accidentally" burn. Thus, instead of adding value to native forests through sustainable management, their degradation is incentivized.

We hope that in the next vote, after the mixed commission, senators and deputies will allow Sernafor to be born with dignity.

Source:BiobioChile