FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 30, 2019
Just five weeks prior to the critical UN Climate Conference in Santiago, Chilean President Piñera announced COP-25 will not take place in December as planned due to ongoing “civil unrest” in Chile. The Conference was expected to deliver an urgent call for countries to increase their national climate ambition in 2020 and to strengthen mechanisms related to the protection of frontline communities, establish safeguards to prevent harms resulting from carbon trading, and integrate gender and indigenous rights and knowledge in climate action. In anticipation of COP-25, Chilean partners, indigenous peoples, and groups around the globe have been organizing events and mobilizations around this important conference for over a year.
Sébastien Duyck, Senior Attorney at CIEL:
“The climate crisis and profound social inequities have common root causes: prioritizing private and corporate interests over those of people and of the planet. Governments have an obligation to serve the public, protect the commons, and respect their human rights obligations – not retaliate against demonstrators, withhold civil liberties, and violate human rights.
“We stand in solidarity with civil society and indigenous peoples in Chile who have suffered from inequalities and injustices and who have mobilized to call for urgent reforms. If Chile hopes the world will turn a blind eye to the repression in its streets by cancelling COP-25, it is sorely mistaken. We commit to remaining vigilant as this dangerous, unjust situation develops in Chile, and we call upon the government to uphold its human rights obligations and to investigate and hold perpetrators of human rights violations to account.
“No matter where or when COP-25 happens, governments have the legal obligation to increase their climate ambition to prevent the most dangerous impacts of climate change on peoples and communities. Civil society will continue to demand nothing less and will hold them accountable if they fail to do so.”
Marcela Mella, Coordinadora Ciudadana No Alto Maipo:
“COP-25 represented an unprecedented opportunity for the world to understand the human rights impacts not only of climate change, but also the impacts of climate action, because we are experiencing them right here in Chile, just an hour away from the conference venue. Instead of protecting the rivers Chileans depend on, the government has legitimized the Alto Maipo hydroelectric project as positive climate action under the UN Climate Framework’s ‘Clean Development Mechanism.’ As the No Alto Maipo Movement, we’ve spent years defending our land and rights that are threatened by this project, which is already exacerbating desertification, exacerbating fissuring of our glaciers, and endangering the right to water for millions of Chileans. As the international community continues to monitor developments in the streets of Santiago and beyond, we ask that it also stand in solidarity with the No Alto Maipo movement as we continue our fight for justice and rights as well.”
Juan Pablo Orrego, Ecosistemas
“What is happening in our country is a direct result of the model we inherited from the times of the dictatorship, based on the exploitation of nature, and that for complex reasons hasn’t been modified since. If we degrade our territory we degrade ourselves. Today’s social uprising and the government’s handling of the situation is giving the rest of the world a glimpse into the economic, social and environmental dysfunctionality of Chilean society that we have been struggling against for decades. Governments have failed to protect watersheds, rivers, forests, biodiversity and the blessed territory that give Chileans life and livelihoods. It’s symptomatic that now Chile will not be able to host the COP-25.”