Why doesn’t the government want to sign the Escazú Agreement?

Escazú is a small town in Costa Rica. Strategically located in the geographic center of the country, its name gave rise to an environmental treaty, that as is usually used in this type of documents, took the name of the city. The Escazú Agreement, promoted in its genesis by Costa Rica and Chile, seeks to improve access to information, justice and public participation in environmental matters in countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The pact aims to protect three basic rights: access to environmental information (anyone can request it), public participation in environmental decision-making processes (to monitor possible projects that may have a negative impact on the environment), and access to environmental justice (which can be driven by any citizen).

Chile was so immersed in the origin of the treaty that the former Minister of the Environment, Marcelo Mena, confided that he was about to be called the “Santiago Agreement”.

Although the word Escazú comes from the indigenous voice itzkazu, what does it mean resting place, after cheerfully promoting it, the subject lost enthusiasm in La Moneda and for a long time it stopped being an oasis for the government, to become rather a sticky subject.

The discussion began to take a surprising turn in September 2018, when the Minister of the Environment, Carolina Schmidt, announced that Chile was postponing the signing of the treaty, a delay that finally gave way to the final decision not to adhere to the pact. the one that was ratified yesterday by the Executive.

The underlying argument of the government is that your signature would create uncertainty, because it contains legal bases that would condition Chilean legislation and that they expose the country to be taken to international tribunals. A delicate subject, wields La Moneda, by the border altercations with Peru and Bolivia.

Furthermore, the government argues that our legislation is very complete in environmental matters and the principles of the agreement are contained in very specific laws.

But these arguments, unsurprisingly, unleashed the political anger of some, and also environmental disenchantment.

Since then, Different environmental groups have cried out, pleaded, but above all, criticized the decision not to endorse the pact.

The government has made its defenses. Yesterday, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Andrés Allamand affirmed through a letter presented to the environmental commissions of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, that it is “The signing of the Escazú Agreement is inconvenient given the ambiguity and breadth of its terms, its eventual self-enforcement and the mandatory nature of its rules that would prevail over internal environmental legislation, all of which will generate a growing judicialization of environmental procedures and will pose a global picture of serious legal uncertainty ”.

Carolina Schmidt even appealed to a more semantic issue. The decision not to sign the pact, he said, is due to “the way it was drafted” and because it “contains ambiguities.”

However, environmental voices have pointed out that the underlying reasonIt is the fear of the government to submit to citizen pressure, in addition to succumbing to some voices in the business community.

“The government only points out that signing the Escazú Agreement is ‘inconvenient for Chile.’ It is clear, from an exhaustive analysis of the text, that the reasons for the rejection of the Escazú signature they are exclusively political and based on the reluctance that maximum publicity, citizen participation, or access to environmental justice provoke in conservative sectors”Wrote Marcelo Mena and Ana Lya Uriarte in an opinion column in La Tercera.

For the agreement to start working, need 11 countries to join before September 26 (There are already nine committed), but that could be postponed, if the 11 signatures are not achieved.

In fact, Chile does not sign before this peremptory date, nor is it irreversible, because the country can join later. But of course, many say that even if it does, it will be late, and it will no longer be on the honor roll that exclusively houses the first subscribers.

Deutsche Welle published a column yesterday in which it said that with its decision, Chile was renouncing its aspiration for environmental leadership.

But despite all these criticisms, and while the conflict continues to boil, the government seems unshakable in its position of not adhering to the pact, as unshakeable as the faith of the Creole activism to reverse the decision and get the country to put its stamp on the treaty.