Thursday, March 28

‘We need politicians and experts’: how Chile is putting the climate crisis first | chili


Hidden behind the Andes in a quiet corner of South America, a formidable generation of former student leaders is organizing one of the most exciting progressive movements in the world.

On March 11, Gabriel Boric, 35, a tattooed leftist with a steadfast determination to reform Chile from the bottom up, will become the youngest president in the country’s history, and his green agenda resonates around the world As time goes on about an impending climate catastrophe. .

“It is very exciting to see what these young people have done,” says Maisa Rojas, 49, a renowned Chilean climate scientist who has been appointed environment minister in a cabinet that includes several students from Boric’s generation of protesters.

“These people were university leaders just 10 years ago, but they have brought a whole new perspective to the challenges of the 21st century.St. century, including climate change.

Gabriel Boric in Santiago, Chile, in January.
Gabriel Boric in Santiago, Chile, in January. Photo: Alberto Valdes / EPA

On January 24, Boric appointed a majority-female cabinet for the first time in Chile’s history. Rojas, one of 14 women among the 24 ministers, is a leading academic at the University of Chile, where she first studied physics in the 1990s, and director of the country’s Interdisciplinary Center for Climate and Resilience Research. .

She has a PhD in atmospheric physics from Lincoln College, Oxford, and was one of the authors of the ominous August 2021 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which warned that major climate changes, caused by human activity, are now They were inevitable and irreversible.

But now, after a distinguished career in academia, Rojas will lead Boric’s ambitious pledge to build a green, sustainable and resilient future for Chile.

“I think there is a lot of room for Chile to become a leader in the fight against climate change,” he says. “I would love to be able to convince other countries that tackling climate change ambitiously is in their best interest.”

Also Read  'Game of Whac-a-Mole': why Russian disinformation is still running amok on social media | Social media

While international leadership would be vitally important in a region known for its climate outcasts, led by notorious Brazilian President Jaír Bolsonaro, Chile’s extraordinary variety of landscapes and climates also make the country uniquely vulnerable to climate change at home. , with prolonged droughts becoming more common. .

From the driest desert in the world, Atacama, in the north of the country, through the arid valleys of central Chile to the spectacular fjords and glaciers of Patagonia, mining, forestry, agriculture and fishing dominate an economy based on in raw materials that is among the strongest in South America. .

And just as Rojas speaks calmly and methodically about the climate crisis, she is clear in linking the health of the planet to the development models that have brought it to the brink of the abyss.

Endangered flowers in the Atacama desert, the driest desert in the world.
Endangered flowers in the Atacama Desert, Chile, the driest desert in the world. Photo: Jose Caviedes/EPA

“Global warming is a symptom of the way our civilization has developed in the 200 years since the Industrial Revolution,” she says. “That has had two consequences: one is obviously the degradation of our physical environment, but the other is the structural inequality that, in the case of Chile, is the basis of the social unrest that began in 2019 and led to the drafting of the new Constitution.”

In October 2019, major era-defining anti-inequality protests broke out in Chile, prompting party leaders to sign an agreement to work on replacing the current constitution, which was drafted under the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).

The assembly that was convened to draft the new constitution has since passed a resolution declaring that the process is taking place in the context of a climate emergency.

Elsewhere, Chile has committed to net-zero emissions by 2050 as part of ambitious climate goals. In June last year, abundant solar and wind potential prompted the lower house of Congress to pass a bill that would bring forward a ban on the installation of new coal-fired power plants from 2040 to 2025.

Also Read  At what time will electricity be more expensive and cheaper this Monday?

The Senate has yet to rule on the law, which according to Rojas is an absolute priority. “When we address climate change, it’s not just an environmental issue,” he says. “We need to look at the structural elements of our society, which also means changing our development path.”

The Santa Inés glacier in the Seno Ballena fjord in Punta Arenas, southern Chile.
The retreat of the Santa Inés glacier in the Seno Ballena fjord in Punta Arenas, southern Chile. Photograph: Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty

“The narrative of economic growth versus environmental protection is a false dichotomy that belongs to the 20th century.the century – I am not saying that we will transform Chile into a large national park without industries, but we certainly have to do things differently”.

Rojas is measured and thoughtful when she speaks, openly admitting that it is not a natural policy. “It feels weird being a climate scientist in the world of politics, I definitely feel a bit out of place,” she says.

“But we definitely need both politicians and experts to be involved in this process. Just because I’m an expert doesn’t mean I’ll be a better minister than a politician.”

Graphic

Rojas was reluctantly pushed into politics at first. After the first round of Chile’s presidential election in November, a very different future seemed to loom when José Antonio Kast, a conservative who made it his mission to reject and play down the climate crisis, edged out Boric by two percentage points.

“I was heartbroken and in total shock,” she recalls, “I said at the time, I can’t stay in my comfort zone at the academy now, I have to get involved.”

Together with several concerned scientists, Rojas wrote a letter to the British scientific journal Nature to express his concern that a climate change denier won the elections in Chile.

Also Read  Moon Knight review – Oscar Isaac is a crime-fighting Frank Spencer | television & radio

Soon after, she was included in Boric’s campaign team as an environmental spokesperson, before he was victorious in the December runoff, winning more votes in the process than any presidential candidate in Chilean history.

While this is Rojas’s first political role, in the past she has led international climate efforts and was appointed coordinator of the scientific advisory committee for the Cop25 summit when Chile was due to host the conference in 2019.

Although she eventually moved to Madrid when unrest broke out in Chile, Rojas says the role was a wake-up call that helped her understand the dynamics of high-level politics, as well as the private sector, where she had no experience, and the various branches of government.

The elected president of Chile, Gabriel Boric (center with blue shirt), presents his first cabinet in Santiago de Chile.
Chile’s president-elect, Gabriel Boric (center in blue shirt), presents his first cabinet in Santiago, Chile, in January. Photograph: Reuters

She also says that it marked a turning point for the narrative surrounding the climate crisis. “Climate change really became headline news in 2019 with Cop25,” she says. “It stopped being something that would happen by the end of the century and could harm polar bears in the Arctic.”

But at Cop26 in Glasgow last November, while working with the team on the annual report on the climate crisis, Rojas felt an unfamiliar sensation. “For the first time in my life I felt something like ‘eco-anxiety’: I was really worried about what was going on,” she says.

Rojas says he is still trying to figure out how he will manage expectations and deliver on promises made during the campaign, saying a “ratchet” mechanism, in which goals are set and made more ambitious periodically, might be preferable.

“Expectations are very high,” he says of the incoming Borian government, which is still riding a wave of optimism ahead of its inauguration. “We all know that politics is the art of the possible, but I am sure we can deliver.”


www.theguardian.com

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *