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Environmental Backsliding, by Julio Torres
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By Julio Torres, academic at the Faculty of Forest Sciences and Nature Conservation of the University of Chile
It is not unusual for environmental activism to use alarmist rhetoric to argue its case. Alarmism mobilizes, and if fueled by exaggeration and oversimplification, when well employed, it serves a just cause.
The opening statement of the recent letter by Pamela Poo and Melisa Mallega makes this clear: "The triple crisis is devastating ecosystems, species, crops, and the material means for the subsistence of our species." From this statement, they criticize the sectoral permits bill, warning of an environmental regression never before seen under a democratic government. However, in the debate over permitting, we have never heard investment project stakeholders claim that what is needed is free rein to exploit the environment. What we have observed is the opposite argument, suggesting that the campaign against permitting responds to the hidden aim of advancing toward catastrophic environmental regression, as Poo and Mallega assert.
Seeking mechanisms to accelerate investment is not incompatible with sustainable development, and we must be emphatic in rejecting discourses that seek to alarm and sow distrust. In fact, sustainable development is incompatible with a society dominated by distrust.
