For the Defense of Life and the Protection of Nature: Industrial Chemical Salmon out of Protected Areas and Ancestral Territories

For the Defense of Life and the Protection of Nature

INDUSTRIAL CHEMICAL SALMON OUT OF PROTECTED AREAS AND ANCESTRAL TERRITORIES!

The Chilean-based salmon mega-industry constitutes an exporting colonial enclave that has occupied and destroyed protected areas and Mapuche, Kawesqar and Yagán ancestral territories for decades. Currently, 32 Chilean business groups and family conglomerates, and Norwegian, Canadian, Japanese, Chinese and German transnationals, own 416 industrial concessions within National Parks and Protected Areas in the Patagonia regions.

The opaque and corrupt government administrations of our natural heritage have allowed the existence of 19 concessions in the Alberto De Agostini National Park, 4 in the Laguna San Rafael National Park, and 4 in the Magdalena National Park. In turn, 317 concessions operate industrially in the Las Guaitecas Forest Reserve, 67 in the Kawésqar National Reserve, 8 in the Pitipalena-Añihue Coastal Marine Protected Area, and 5 in the Comau Fjord.

Three decades of neoliberal policies have allowed the production of farmed salmonids -exotic carnivorous species introduced from the northern hemisphere to the waters of southern Chile- to have increased by 3,600% between 1990 and 2017. In 2022 production The salmon farm in Chilean Patagonia already reached 1 million tons per year with productions that are 90% destined for export, valued at 6,600 million dollars (6.6 billion dollars) per year.

The 1,370 salmon concessions handed out for free and weakly supervised by the State, have privatized their billion-dollar profits, while externalizing their costs to the environment, public health, the rights of their workers and workers, and the communities of native peoples, carrying out all their dirty phase productive using coastal territories, vulnerable ecosystems, and existing water resources in protected areas and national parks.

After creating areas of «environmental sacrifice» generating a situation of ecocide, especially in fjords, inland channels, they export their billion-dollar productions certified as «environmentally friendly and socially responsible.»

This is combined with overexploitation and the various abuses of the rights of their own workers, an example of which is the 74 workers who have died due to corporate indifference, in processing plants, farming centers, and maritime transport. and by land between 2013-2022, as a result of long working hours and precarious job security conditions.

Faced with the current business offensive before the vote on the bill that creates the Biodiversity and Protected Areas Service, we reject the campaign of disinformation and intimidation of defenders of the environment and human rights, financed by the salmon employers that generates tension and confusion among public opinion, workers, socio-environmental organizations and communities of native peoples, with respect to this bill.

The real problem is constituted by the interests of the large transnational companies and Chilean business groups, that seek to perpetuate a productivist and extractivist model of exploitation of Nature, which permanently endangers life and biodiversity in our territories.

Therefore, we point out that:

– The struggle of the socio-environmental movement and communities of indigenous peoples will continue until the total withdrawal of industrial salmon concessions in protected areas and vulnerable ecosystems, such as rivers, lakes and fjords.

– We support boycott actions against the consumption of industrial chemical salmon at a national and international level, so that the government establishes a moratorium on the destructive process of territorial and productive expansion that this industry develops in the southern coastal areas and in the territories of the Mapuche peoples, Kawesqar and Yagan.

Let’s protect our Nature: without salmon there is no destruction!

Our protected areas, national parks and ancestral territories will not be sacrificial zones for the destructive salmon colonialism!

No more of the lies and salmon intimidation. Get out of our national parks, protected areas and ancestral territories!!

Centro Ecoceanos

Movement for Water and Territories (MAT)

May 29^th, 2023

Organizaciones Firmantes

Observatorio Latinoamericano de Conflictos Ambientales OLCA

Escuela Superior Campesina de Curaco de Vélez, Chiloé

Consejo Ecológico de Molina

Aire Puro

We kimün

Hidrodefensa

Chile Sin Ecocidio

Gaceta Ambiental

Agrupación Ambiental Social y Cultural Putaendo Resiste

Coordinadora Nacional de Mujeres de Pueblos Originarios CONAMUPUORI

Salvemos Olmué

Comisión de DD.HH de Limache se adhiere a la declaración

Protege los molles

Comisión de DD.HH de Limache se adhiere a la declaración

Mujeres por el Buen Vivir de Puchuncavi

Red por la Defensa de la Precordillera

Parque Comunitario Panul

Fundación Ciudadanos y Clima

Comunidades Kawésqar por la defensa del Mar :
– Comunidad Kawesqar Ata’p
– Comunidad Kawésqar Grupos Familiares Nomades del Mar
– Comunidad Kawésqar Residentes en Río Primero
– Comunidad Kawésqar Inés Caro
– Red de mujeres Ecmpo de Magallanes .

– Sen Sen Mapu Libre
– Melipeuco Rios Libres